Dragon Quest VII Reimagined
By Anthony Monroe Mar 3, 2026
SquareEnix has been on a roll recently with various remakes across The companies’ illustrious past, and right on the heels of it’s last Dragon Quest update, 2024’s Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake, and last years Dragon Quest 1 & 2 HD-2D Remake, comes a full blown reimagining of the franchises first foray into the original playstations catalogue.
Dragon Quest VII was already considered a classic among fans, but the game had a very storied creation. Originally slated to arrive much sooner than it did in 2000 in Japan, and 2001 in America, due to a Japanese publication getting a mole into the at the time Enix corporation. The developer opted to instead scrap their original story idea and completely start over, pushing back development time.
Due to this, many, especially in the west felt the game was dated graphically. Despite this it was majorly successful in Japan, and became a “cult classic” here in the west, where it once again took the moniker of “Dragon Warrior”.
The story hasn’t been tweaked much, but the bones have been squeezed into a very nice new skin. The graphics do a great job of showing off Akira Toriyama’s original character designs, and it’s going to be hard to say goodbye to this when the eventual “Dragon Quest” sequel comes out and we don’t have his charming designs anymore. As for this game, the graphics are as charming as ever, and seeing these characters in a whole new light, is very nice. It keeps a very close but updated and HD shine and light to all the characters and world maps you visit.
The gameplay brings the game into the current generation, while cutting a few things from the original in the interest of streamlining and brevity. Gone are the the regions of Gröndal, El Ciclo, and Providence.Side content like the Casino, The Haven, Monster Meadows, and the Excellence Grading Organisation are gone, though rewards are available elsewhere. New scenes from the protagonist and Maribel’s childhood round out the early story a bit, giving a little context to flesh out some narrative. Certain party characters also appear much earlier than they did in the original. Symbol battles take place of the series traditional random encounters, which a lot of JRPG’s are ditching these days. Among those additions were also a new difficulty select system, and the vocation system changed up a bit, featuring 20 vocations and unique abilities for each of those, while removing monster recruitment/vocations in favor of Monster Heart accessories.
Let’s talk about that difficulty settings option for a minute. The Main problem I have with the game is that it feels like there is no real challenge. That’s a problem that persists across all difficulties. I played on normal, and I hardly had problems with even boss encounters. There’s a lot of hand holding, which does detract from the game, as it gives a feeling of babies first RPG. I had this same issue with Super Mario RPGs remake. This could have been a much better game with better difficulty pacing.
The difficulty problem doesn’t stop the story from being a very charming, world rebuilding tale. The nameless Protagonist (as always in Dragon Quest) and his friends stumble upon a secret that changed the world for centuries. They end up being charged with restoring the world to how it was, as it was believed by them and their small island, that they were the only ones in a vast ocean. They soon learn that there were indeed many other islands, and someone was behind them being literally wiped from the map. They travel through various points in their worlds history, righting these wrongs and tragedies along the way. It’s a really cool concept and reversal of the save the world before tragedy strikes trope.
The character designs are as always a high point of the Dragon Quest games, from the iconic monsters like the Slime, to some of the best Toriyama designs to date. They opted to keep the design closer to the original with the characters taking an almost SD like look, and go with a somewhat isometrical design for the camera, keeping the spirit of the graphics in line with the original while giving them a very cool HD upgrade.
There is certainly a lot to love here: A sometimes touching, charming story, fun character designs, classic monsters and a classic battle system. Even though the difficulty and some of the cuts from the original detract a bit, the spirit of the game still soars like a bird aloft in the ocean breeze.
Leave a Reply