Dragon Quest VII: Reimagined Review (Switch 2)

Ready to feel old? It’s been about 13 years since the launch of the 3DS remake of Dragon Quest VII, which itself was released about 13 years after the original on the PSX. That means that it’s time for yet another remake of the storied classic, which has been dubbed Dragon Quest VII: Reimagined this time around. This iteration goes a bit farther than its 3DS predecessor in making various nips and tucks that update the game for a new generation, and I’m pleased to report that this feels like the most enjoyable version of Dragon Quest VII yet.

The narrative places you in the role of a quiet boy living a peaceful life who believes there's more to the world beyond his small island home. He’s joined in this belief by the adventurous Prince Kiefer and the Mayor’s daughter, Maribel, and it isn’t long until this band of kids discover a mysterious shrine in which ancient stone tablets allow them to travel to various places in the past.

The plot then takes an almost anthological approach, where you and your party jump back in time to various islands and play out small and largely self-contained subplots on each one, such as saving a town that’s been overrun by robots or uncovering the mystery of a village in which everyone has been turned into animals. After resolving the conflict for that island, it magically reappears in the ocean in the present and you can visit to see how your actions led to a changed future.

It’s not a very character-driven plot like you may find in a grander adventure like Xenoblade, but what the story lacks in deep characterisation, it more than makes up for in its cosiness. Despite some occasionally dark themes, this is the sort of light, airy, and chipper experience that keeps you invested due to how consistently it maintains its positive atmosphere. As you work through these cute and uplifting stories of friendship and courage, you feel more connected to the places you’re uncovering, which leads to a much more emotional experience later on when the story starts to come together into one coherent strand.

One of the main selling points for this reimagining is the 'streamlining' of content, and while I’m sure this may be divisive among some fans, I’d say the changes made here were largely for the better. The original game was infamously bloated, most notably with it taking around two hours from the start of the game before you even enter your first combat scenario, and this reimagining has cut out a lot of the extraneous dialogue and backtracking that added so much padding. Fortunately, these cuts were made tastefully and led to an overall tighter game—what's lost in raw detail and content is made up for by an adventure that moves where the original tended to drag.

World exploration also tends to proceed at a thrilling pace, mostly due to the elimination of random battles that’s carried over from the 3DS remake. Rather than getting jumped every few steps, enemies now roam the map freely and can be deftly avoided if you’d rather just pass through an area. If their level is far enough below yours, they’ll even run away from you and swiping with your sword will net you the rewards you’d get from a battle without the hassle of jumping to the combat screen.

Couple this with nice quality of life features like fast travel and the Nose for Treasure skill, and it’s never been easier for completionists to rinse each area of every hidden chest and Mini Medal.

When you happen to come across a foe who’s closer to your level, battles follows the same bog-standard turn-based combat the franchise has always been known for, with you utilising an active party of up to four members to bash in some Slimes. Though the simple approach may feel a bit quaint compared to more mechanically advanced combat systems, like the Boost/Break system in Octopath Traveler or the Press Turn system in Shin Megami Tensei, that doesn’t mean that it isn’t still engaging.

Each character gradually amasses a swath of diverse skills and spells to bolster their role in the fight, and if you don’t want to get caught up with navigating all the menus, there are a variety of competent auto-battle macros you can set that do a great job handling just about any trash mob battles.

Similar to the Pep Powers of Dragon Quest XI, party members can now occasionally get ‘Worked Up’ after they’ve dealt and received enough damage. These powerful short-term buffs are connected to the character’s vocation (more on that in a bit) and can do things like block all damage for a turn or significantly increase damage output. They aren’t necessarily an ‘instant win’ button, but triggering one can certainly turn the tide of a battle that's slowly getting away from you. I also appreciated how they’re randomly triggered in the majority of cases, which keeps them from being an easy crutch to lean on and ensures they act more as a nice X factor that can suddenly mix up a battle.

Vocations are the class system used in DQVII and they follow the progression for a standard jobs system—each one is levelled separately from the character it’s equipped to, and that character unlocks newer skills and abilities as they move up in vocation ranks. As you progress through the world and explore, you slowly unlock more vocations, the more powerful of which require a character to master some prerequisite vocations before granting them access to the powerful stat buffs and abilities they come with.

For this remake, vocations have also gotten a nice freshening up to make them more compelling. Not only are there new vocations added, but you can now unlock the ability to 'Moonlight', which means you can add a second vocation to a character to further alter their stats and available abilities. It doesn’t quite match the heights of the cross-classing madness found in the Bravely Default or Octopath Traveler games, but it is another step in that direction and makes party building a much more interesting endeavour as you explore different builds and skill mixes.

In a massive step up from the pixel art graphics of the original and the somewhat chunky models of the 3DS remake, the visuals have been updated to reflect a more photorealistic toy-like atmosphere. Square actually made small handmade dolls of the various party members and scanned them in for extra detail, and every frame looks as if you're viewing a carefully crafted diorama.

This looks especially great on Switch 2, where an unbroken 60fps and at least 1080p resolution present everything with sharp detail and smooth motion. I’d go so far as to say that this is the best-looking Dragon Quest game Square Enix has ever produced, surpassing its previous efforts in the original release of Dragon Quest XI via its seamless blend of photorealism with Akira Toriyama’s cartoonish art style.

The soundtrack also got a makeover here, with all the music being re-recorded and treated with new orchestral arrangements that capture the essence of the original while introducing some new elements. These arrangements all perfectly reflect the whimsical and adventurous spirit that the Dragon Quest franchise is known for, keeping the atmosphere playful while occasionally taking things into a more serious realm.