Dragon Quest VII: Reimagined

The fourth iteration of Dragon Quest VII to get a release is also the first to make the leap to HD, with a charming art style based on digitized models and many quality-of-life improvements over previous editions.  But does this notoriously slow-paced game benefit from yet another upgrade, or does it fail once more to invite new fans to the franchise?

Dragon Quest VII is arguably the series' most divisive entry, earning both praise and criticism for the slow pace of its story and its copious amount of backtracking.  It was also the last to retain the series' noted low production values, still using simple text-based menus and minimally-animated sprites right up to the end of the PS1 era; definitely a stark contrast to more visually impressive CGI works of the era like the Final Fantasy series.  The later rereleases on the 3DS and mobile platforms tightened it up and gave it an updated look, though it did little to improve its perception in the west.  In 2026 Square Enix commissioned Hexadrive to try again with another updated version, hoping to ride the wave of success they had with their remakes of 1, 2 and 3 in recent years.

The most notable element right away is the visual upgrade.  While the original was very bare-bones 3D environments and spritework with minimal animation (aside from a few scattered FMV cutscenes) and the 3DS version was essentially the same idea with 3D models, Reimagined... well, reimagines things.  The character models are based on dolls that were actually made and digitally scanned, and are surprisingly well-animated and expressive. Environments adopt a more photorealistic, diorama-like look to match the models, giving it a style that's a comfortable blend of realism and cartoon.  Voiceover was added too, bringing it in line with the recent remakes of 1-3.

Some other improvements from later Dragon Quest games were added to this one too.  Enemies are now visible on the map, giving you a chance to evade or battle them at your convenience.  You can also land a preemptive attack on them to get some easy damage before a fight starts, or if an enemy is significantly weaker than your party, instantly defeat them.  The UI is substantially improved over the usual text-based Dragon Quest menus, sorted into tabs for inventory, equipment, options and so forth, all visually represented.  Rather than having individual character inventories it's now unified, so you don't have to distribute items to each character ahead of time.

Another added mechanic is the ability to get "Worked up" and "Let Loose" - a bit like Pep from Dragon Quest XI, getting Worked Up gives a temporary (and semi-random) boost to your character's core stats, while "Letting Loose" allows them to unleash a powerful ability.  Unlike XI, however, these are tied to your character's current Vocation; each character gets a unique default class (and ability to go with it), while the more generic Vocations get abilities of their own.  These range from boosting a chance to land a critical hit with spells to negating the next attack taken to allowing you to cast spells at no cost for a turn or two.

The vocation system has been reworked once again too.  As mentioned, each character now has a unique default Vocation exclusive to them.  In addition to that, one can now only use skills from Vocations they currently have equipped; they can now also equip two at once with the new Moonlighting system, allowing them to create powerful hybrid Vocations and level up two at once to cut down on the grind.  This version adds an item that allows class changes at any time, cutting down on trips back to Alltrades Abbey.  Being able to train two classes at once helps with a major shortcoming of the older versions too, namely that two of your party members come late in the game and far behind on vocation levels; that's still the case here, but being able to train up two at a time cuts down on the grind considerably.  Monster Hearts are also reworked; rather than being used to unlock more Vocations they now serve as accessories, granting small bonuses like a higher chance to land critical hits or survive a fatal blow with 1 HP.  They also are no longer dropped in random battles, instead being found in chests or earned by defeating souped-up monsters that appear in specific spots on the map.

Other quality of life improvements are introduced too.  In addition to tightening up the pacing (again), the player now has the option to make granular adjustment for difficulty, damage taken and even the amount of XP, gold and vocation points you earn to speed up the gameplay (or slow it down, if you prefer).  So the game can appeal to newer and less patient RPG players as well as those more suited to the old-school challenge and grind.  Many portals back to the main island exist too, allowing for substantially less travel time as you progress through the story and main goals within.  On the other hand, there is a substantial amount of cut content compared to previous versions; there are significantly fewer islands to explore and the monster sanctuary/Traveler's Tablets mechanic from the 3DS is entirely removed in favor of generic postgame boss challenges and timed arena fights, both of which require substantial seed farming and level grinding to overcome.  Luck too, since said arena challenges are on a turn counter and enemies within them can heal you back to full and disable your party for long periods with debilitating status spam.  Not exactly my idea of fun.

Dragon Quest VII is still unapologetically long, generally slow paced and old-school in its core design, and while I can't say any of them are flawless, Reimagined is definitely its most accessible iteration to date.  It does still require quite a bit of revisiting areas to progress and it's still tens of hours of gameplay before you get a full party and access to the Vocation system, but the pacing is considerably quicker now and there's substantially less backtracking to max out classes and get through the story. All this, plus the charming visual style, captivating story it tells and the many new tweaks and additions, may finally make this the game that puts Dragon Quest VII on the map in the west.  I certainly hope it does; it's a great, epic RPG that deserves more recognition. Even better, maybe it will inspire people to go back and check out the earlier versions that have more to offer in the way of significant content.

 

Developer: Hexadrive
Publisher: Square Enix
Released: 2026
Platform: Switch, Switch 2, PlayStation 5, XBox Series, PC
Recommended Version: All of them seem to be on level with one another; although the Switch 2 version does come on a Game Key Card (full download with the cart simply serving as glorified DRM), so if you're opposed to that you may want to spring for another one.

The 3rd Birthday

The Parasite Eve franchise was a nominal hit for Squaresoft in the PlayStation 1 era, blending survival horror and action RPG in a slick, well-presented fashion.  Over a decade later (and following the merger with Enix several years prior) a third game on the PSP was announced that would allegedly continue the long-dormant tale of Aya Brea.  But was the 3rd Birthday worth the wait, or was this one franchise best left at the relatively high point it ended on?

The start of my time as a devoted RPG fan can be traced back to a very specific era - the mid-to-late 90s, when technology was rounding a very big corner.  CDs were the new standard storage medium, 3D graphics were rapidly becoming the new norm and companies were finally stepping away from the stodgy tropes of the roleplaying genre, which up to that point had mostly been cookie-cutter D&D clones set in samey looking dungeons with only the barest minimum of a Find the Macguffin plot between a lot of monotonous stat crunching and monster bashing.  They were fast becoming epic movie-like productions, with inventive gameplay mechanics, imaginative settings not bound by any prior genre tropes (and actively avoiding them at every turn), and amazing stories with rich characters told by the small handful of people with the talent to write them and the tech and artistry to make them spring off the screen.  Squaresoft was undeniably an enormous part of that change too, with games like Final Fantasy VII, SaGa Frontier, Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy Tactics keeping me hooked for hundreds of hours as I learned all their mysteries, explored their amazing universes and followed their captivating storylines. 

Parasite Eve may not have been the most acclaimed game of theirs from that era, but I still had quite a lot of fun with it as both a "cinematic RPG" and a clever blend of action-RPG and horror elements, with an alternate campaign and some seriously in-depth weapon customization adding a fair bit of replay value.  I wasn't as fond of its sequel for a number of reasons, but it was a decent survival horror game and continued the story and themes in a logical way.  Then came this wretched abomination on the PSP nearly a decade later, which not only disregards the scientific basis and unsettling mood of the first two games (and the original novel), but actively makes a mockery of everything else fans liked about them too.  Aya has her personality completely removed in favor of becoming a submissive soldier to two arrogant schmucks who constantly feed her objectives, and who are about as emotive as robots themselves owing to the amazing VA direction.  The clever blend of action and RPG elements is discarded in favor of the worst kind of mundane third person cover shooter gameplay - mowing down wave after wave of bullet-sponge enemies for hours on end with virtually no variety or tactics to employ.  The only idea that approaches uniqueness is the ability to "Overdive" into an AI-controlled character to swap positions on the fly and gain access to a fresh supply of weapons, as well as occasionally "Liberating" into an enemy to deal a big burst of damage, but it never factors into the tactical aspect of the gameplay in any significant way, unless you really care about racking up an arbitrary level ranking and grinding out zillions of points to unlock new completely combat-inappropriate outfits.  Which you really shouldn't.

But it gets worse. The monster designs just look stupid and overdesigned rather than frightening ("oh, they're called the Twisted because they're all wrapped up like Twizzlers!  Ha ha ha, we're so clever!").  The story and writing couldn't be further removed from the adult themes and body horror of the original, and is instead exactly in line what you'd expect from the same era of Square Enix that brought us Final Fantasy XIII - a constant barrage of glittery visual effects, shitty one-liners and trite power-of-love-and-friendship tweeness as a desperate bid to distract you from it having more gaping plot holes, ugly art design and one-dimensional characters than Battlefield Earth.  Just to punctuate my point, even the game's writer has stated on multiple occasions that he has no explanation for the opening shootout that drives the plot; if you can't even give a reasonable explanation for the fundamental driving force behind your story, you have no business writing one, period.  And of course, the big twist is also the biggest insult of all - they kill off Aya in the most half-assed way imaginable and  reveal Eve's actually been inhabiting her body the entire game, ensuring there will never be another entry in this franchise again.  Did I also mention there's multiple shower scenes and her clothing gets more damaged as you take hits, so they've been about a half-inch away from whoring out a twelve-year-old the entire game?  Yeah... stay classy, Square Enix. 

I like to consider myself an optimist; I do my best to find something positive, or at the very least redeemable, in even the worst games out there.  In the 3rd Birthday's case, though, I simply can't; I've played thousands of video games in my life, but it's one of the few I can think of that's wholly without merit of any kind.  Not only is it a bad, terribly un-fun experience, but it's actively insulting to fans of the franchise it's spawned from and the intelligence of gamers in general.  Everyone involved with this dumpster fire - the board that approved its pitch, the designers, the artists, the developers, the committee of pretentious schmucks that wrote it, the QA team that spent months of thankless work slogging through it over and over again to get it to pass compliance, the producers that approved its gross-ass content, the publishers that bought ad space to promote it and shipped copies of it to stores, and every single person they suckered into shelling out $50 for it - wasted their time and money.  It may not be the worst-playing game Square Enix has ever produced, but it certainly is the most disrespectful to their audience and emblematic of every single thing wrong with the company during the period it came out in. The only silver lining is that it barely missed the era of handheld platforms that support integrated microtransactions and loot boxes, because you know they wouldn't hesitate to cram that shit in too if they could.  Even so, giving it the lowest possible score on my rating scale can't adequately convey how heinous it is, so I'm doing something I've never done before: I'm awarding every other game I've ever reviewed on RPGreats an honorary extra half-star, because even the very worst of them don't deserve to be on the same level as the 3rd Birthday.  

I feel gross even posting these screenshots but I think it'd be cowardly not to show you just how low this game stoops

Developer: Hexadrive
Publisher: Square Enix
Released: 2010
Platforms: PlayStation Portable 

Recommended Version: N/A