Dragon Warrior 7:
The Revival of God

Review by Chi Phan

What do we know about Dragon Warrior 7? We know that it is the biggest selling rpg game in Japan ever. We know that it tooks years to make this as the last Dragon Warrior game was release on the NES system. Basically the 16 bit era didn't receive a Dragon Warrior game and now only till the late days of the 32 bit era was there a Dragon Warrior game available to the public. So is this game worth the long awaited wait?? Did this game live up to the billing of the best selling rpg game in Japan?? In short, "no". Let's break it down as to what went wrong with this game.

Beginning of an adventure. Is this a Traveler's Gate? A Legendary Hero! The story of Dragon Warrior 7 is quite basic. It's sort of a mix between Legend of Mana and Chrono Trigger but with bad result. Mind you that Legend of Mana doesn't exactly contain a good story itself but the similarities are there. The story start off with you, the hero helping out your childhood friend Kiefer on his adventure quest to discover more about the ruins that occupied your country or in this case your island/continent. You see, in the world of Dragon Warrior 7, there appears to be only one continent in all the world. Kiefer doesn't believe this to be true as he believes there are other continents out there. Believing that the answer lies in the old Ruins, Kiefer enlist your help as well as Maribel (another childhood friend) to explore it. The trio soon discover that the old Ruins contains 4 rooms with Traveler's Gates. Each Traveler's Gates appears to have missing shards. The trio soon found some shards that fit into one of the Traveler's Gates. Upon fitting the shards into one of the Traveler's Gates, the trio were teleported away to an unknown timeline and place. Here they learn that they are in the past with a world filled with different islands, countries, and continents. Upon seeing this, the trio decides to set about in restoring their worlds to what it was like in the past by traveling back and forth between the past and present in hopes of finding more land shards. During their travel in the past, they help out the people from the different regions that they meet as well as learn about the battle between the Demon Lord and God which resulted in the different regions disappearing from the world of Dragon Warrior 7. Well that's the best I can do to sum up the story of Dragon Warrior 7. Now the problem with this story is that there's really no concrete plotline behind it. In fact the quest itself is the story. What you really have is a bunch of mini stories throughout the game instead of one solid story with a villian. In fact 90% of the game is base on traveling from region to region and learning about the stories behind each region and it's people. Hence the mini stories. The story doesn't really focus at all on the characters or any main particular villian. As stated before, the quest itself is the story. For this reason is why the story is flat in this game. No emotional scene behind the story or any attempt to focus on the characters at all. Rpgs are like one big novel. You can't have a big novel if it's made up of mini stories base on nameless forgetting sprites characters. This is very much like the way Legend of Mana story unfolded. Not to my liking and I'm sure many gamers will find this story uninteresting.

An Epic battle long ago. Another bad part in this game is the presentations of characters. If you look at the instructions book, you will notice the display of characters from the main characters to the supporting cast. This may mislead you into thinking what great characters this game got. Unfortunately that's not the case. The characters are very dull with little personalities attached to them. There is no real attempt to develope the characters at all or get the characters involved in the games at all. The supporting secondary cast like Hondara and Princess Leesa have no real purpose in the game at all. They might as well be nameless sprites. The hero like with Suikoden series doesn't talk. When you have a hero who doesn't talk then you need a good supporting party cast to help bring life to the hero. Here the supporting cast are more or less a get along gang in for the ride. They like the hero hardly talk at all or even interact in the game. All the characters are very plain with little background to them. Melvin is an interesting character but again. No real attempt to develope him or let us know more about this legendary hero who faught beside God. Keifer, a potential cool character that was never developed to his fullest potential. Let's put it this way, none of these characters are going to be on anyone's top 20 list of favorite rpg characters. Bottomline, you won't be seeing any campfire scene in this game between the characters involved.

Dance the night away. Another section that isn't very good. If the saying is true, graphics don't make an rpg then Dragon Warrior 7 is lucky. The graphics in this game is very dull and unimaginative. The colors aren't very good. Pretty plain use of colors here. No one is going to be wow by how colorful this game is. Second, the graphics is a drawback of the old school ways in a 3-D environment. The sprites are small short sprites much like those of the old school ways but I've seen better handdrawn sprites from 16 bit games. Hell, the sprites in Chrono Trigger looked much better than this game. The 3-D background in this game is poorly designs. It also doesn't help that the poor coloring of this game hurt it even more. If they want to make it more of an old school style then they should try and make it more like Tales of Destiny 1. That game was nicely done with short sprites and good use of colors. Lastly, if you're going to add FMV/CGI then make it look good. The FMV in this game are boring and quite dull. If you're going to make FMV then show some cool FMV featuring the characters of this game. Instead what you have are FMV of scenaries and nameless sprites that no one really care to look at. In other words, why did Enix bother to even add in the FMV is beyond me?? To simply put, I've seen much better graphics from 16 games.

Tyrannos, the sea monster. Musically wise. It's okay. It's not the best musical score out there but it's good enough that you really can't complain about it. There's alot of tunes in this game but none of them really stand out with the exception of one. The main Dragon Warrior 7 tune is the only one that you will probably recognize after a few months of not playing this game. In a strange sense, if you can remember the main Dragon Warrior 7 theme off the bat of you head when you hear it then the composer must be doing something right. But one really good musical theme isn't enough.

The Fire Spirit. Against the Demon Lord! You're either going to love the gameplay or hate it depending on what you prefer. Dragon Warrior 7 gameplay is a drawback of the old school way. Especially the battle system. Before we get into the battle system. Let's look at the main theme of the gameplay. As stated in the story section. The gameplay or quest is to explore the world looking for shards to complete each of the world's region and bringing them back to the present day world. You get the basic traditional flare where you talk to townspeople and search through closets, pots, ect for items. The problem with this traditional rpg is that this game isn't very straight forward. Unless you are a gaming genuis, you're going to have a very frustrating time trying to figure out where to go next to find that missing shards to progress into the game further. The game does provide a fortune teller giving you hints as to where to find the next shard but most of those time, the hints are very vague. You will be very hard press to try and play this game without a strategy guide or a faqs. It's is very frustrating trying to play this game without cheating but having to end up cheating cause you don't know where to go next or how to solve a particular puzzle. Another frustrating thing is that this game unlike most rpgs doesn't provide enough money after battle. Either that or the weapons and armour are way too expensive in shops. Take your pick. You are going to find it very hard (an understatement) when trying to keep your equipment updated to the best and most effective version. Hell trying to keep one of your guys updated with the latest version of equipment is very hard in itself. Nevermind trying for the entire group. You'll be finding yourself short in supply of gold very quickly in this game. Like with most traditional rpg game, this game uses random battle. Unlike with most random battles in rpg games, this game provide a decent and good blend of random battles. In other words, you can walk for more than 5 steps and not have to worry about getting into a random battle. I'm pretty sure that alot of people are sick and tired of rpg games where every 2 or 3 steps, they end up in a random encounter. That's one of the good points about this game. Other things you should take a note in is that you can't save in dungeons. See the only way you can save is at a church. So if you're going to explore dungeons don't die or you're going to have to start exploring the dungeon all over again since your last save point is outside at a town in a church. This is extremely annoying when fighting bosses. Nothing is more annoying then dying in a boss fight then having to go throught the dungeon all over again just to fight the boss. Now there's also a lack of revival items. You can't buy revival item in shops. They can only be had in treasure chests. So the luxury of dying is taken away. And to make things worse, if you or your party dies, they can only be revive at a church but it costs money. The higher your level, the more it will cost to revive your party members. And with the lack of money to spare on your weapons and armour, you hardly can spare money on reviving your party members. Other than those points, this game is pretty much the usual traditional rpg game so you pretty much know what to expect from it. And now for one of the best feature of this game, the job classes. Dragon Warrior 7 uses job classes much like FF Tactics. Basically during the game, you will have the option of changing your characters into different fighting classes. Each fighting classes comes with their own unique skills, magic spells and physical stats. There are three level of fighting classes. Basic, intermediate, and advance levels. Inorder to get your fighters to intermediate levels then you would need to master some basic classes. And inorder to get to advance classes, you would need to master some intermediate classes. Now the great thing about this is that once you master a fighting class and learn all of it's skills and magic, you will still maintain those skills and magic even if you switch to a different fighting class. In other words, you can build yourself one hell of a fighter by mastering different fighting classes and obtaining their skills and magic. A very cool feature. Plus in addition to the regular human fighting classes available, you can also get monsters fighting classes as well. Of course the only way to get monster fighting classes is with an item called monster hearts. Now all of these fighting classes sound cool, right?? Well there's a catch. Unlike with other rpgs, gaining new skills and classes isn't decided on experience points. No. It's base on the number of times you fight. For example, if you want to get the magic spell heal more, you have to fight 40 times. So basically gaining higher class level is base on the amount of fights/battles you take part in. This is very annoying and boring. Winning this game is base on what skills and magic you have and not on what level you are at. So since this game doesn't provide that many random battles during your quests, you are going to spend a few days or so on just fighting numerous battles to get your skills. I mean I have spent over 20 hours alone on just the random battles to get my characters job classes up. Which just plain suck. Who here really wants to spend over 20 hours on just random battles alone?? Certainly not me as I've got better things to do with my time. The fighing class system would be more unique and better if they didn't make the criteria so high. Lowing the number of fights to require class skills reduces the amount of time wasted on random battles would make the game more enjoyable. Now with the battle system. The battle system is pretty much your basic traditional stuff. Attack, magic, item, and skills. This is a turn base battle system where your party members and the monsters take turns. You can have up to 4 party members in a battle. Note that in this game, most bosses tend to cheat and take 2 or more turns per round making boss fights very hard. It even get's harder if you don't have the skills necessary to help you survive. Now the battle screen view is an old school first person view. You likely haven't seen this kind of battle screen view since the early 16 bit days. Battle animation like with the graphics aren't good. When you attack the monsters, you're only see a blinking light/flash going across the monsters and a sound effect. Don't be expecting to see any cool magic spells or special attack animation. Since this is in first person view, you won't even be able to see what your party member look like in battles. In short there's really not much to discuss on the battle system since most people are aware what traditional turn base battle system look like. To sum up the gameplay. The good points, a very long quest that will last 90+ hours. This isn't including the time you spend on the mini games and random battles trying to get those skill points. If you add those then you would get 130+ hours gameplay. Another good points is the different fighting skills available for gamers to choose from. Not too many random battles to annoy you during your exploration of dungeons. The bad points. Too many annoying stuff that keeps you from fully enjoying this game. No save points in dungeons. Not enough money. Lack of direction on what to do next. Spending days and hours on fighting random battles just to acquire skills for your members. No revival items to buy. To be frank, the gameplay was more annoying than fun. A long quest is always good but when you only have an above average gameplay then it's pointless. Remember that gameplay is all about having fun. And I didn't have too much fun with this game.

I'm the greatest Tula Player. I have a love and hate relationship with the extras and replay value in this game. I'll go with the good points. There are alot of good extras stuff available from this game. From mini games to extra cool items. Replay value can come from the two bonus dungeons available. Mini games can range from collecting tiny metals to get cool items from the Metal King to having your own Monster Park. The Monster Park is where you can collect all the monsters from the game and put them there. The game also have casinos for you to play in to get cool items that you can't get anywhere else. Another unique feature is where you can build your own unique immigrant village. The kind of immigrant village you get depends on the people you recruit. Each different types of immigrant village offers different unique items to be had that you can't get anywhere else. These extras take a very long time to get and you can literally spend over 50 hours on it. You can get 2 bonus dungeons to explore and find unique monsters and fight optional bosses that you can't in the regular games. The extra stuff is there, no question about it. Now for the bad points. Some of those extra are literally hard to accomplish. I mean hard and time consuming to the point where you ask yourself is this any fun. The whole point of extras and mini games are to give you a little fun distraction from the main game itself when you need a break from the random battles and exploring of dungeons. But instead what you get is frustrations from the mini games. Here are a couple of example of this. The immigrant village. On the surface, creating your own immigrant village looks fun and cool. And having the ability to created different types of immigrant to get cool stuff looks fun as hell. Problem is that inorder to get these different types of villages, you need to recruit a certain number of types of people. Now this is very hard. For one, the types of immigrant you get is random. Second, the more immigrant you have, the harder it is to find immigrants out there. Once you get about 30 or so immigrants, it is very hard to find more immigrants. Not only is it more harder to find more immigrants but to find the kind of immigrants you need is extremely rare. If you ever manage to get a special type of immigrant village, consider yourself lucky. Another example is the bonus dungeons. Getting these bonus dungeons is very hard to do by yourself. For one you need to collect ? shards. Collecting those shards are very hard to do. If you're thinking, no problem, I'll get a strategy guide. Then think no more. The strategy guide ain't going to help you. In fact the strategy guides hardly help at all when it comes to the extras. This is what makes it so frustrating. If you're a gamer and you have no access to the internet. Chances are you won't be able to do and complete any of the extra features in this game. Even if you have internet access, you still will have a difficult time with them. I would give it 10 points but unfortunately I'm going to knock 2 points off for making those extras too difficult to achieve and too time consuming.

On a closing note. Dragon Warrior 7 is a game that was highly anticipated by rpg fans in North America. After hearing how this game is the number #1 selling rpg game ever in Japan. Most expected this game to be special. Afterall, an rpg have to be special inorder to be the number #1 selling rpg game ever in Japan. With word spreading like wildfire that the graphics of this game wasn't very good, this game still became the number #1 best selling rpg game. With average graphics at best, most expected this game to provide a good long in-depth storyline and great gameplay. Afterall, in terms of rpgs, the big three that makes an rpg great are story, gameplay, and graphics. If you rule out graphics, then that leaves only story and gameplay to boost this game ratings. Unfortunately both the story and gameplay are only a little better than average. How this game became the number #1 best selling rpg in Japan is beyond me. Maybe it just shows you that the Japanese love rpgs so much that pretty much all rpgs will sell well no matter what. The good news is that North American gamers don't treat rpgs as a religion and it's likely a game like Dragon Warrior 7 won't sell well. And to be frank, Dragon Warrior 7 doesn't deserve to sell well. If you consider buying this game, then make sure you rent it first. If you're already aware that the graphics aren't very good then I warn you ahead that don't expect much from the gameplay and the story too. This rpg game will only satisfied the old school rpgers. Final Score: 6/10 Time to complete: 130+ hours. Difficulty: Hard. Favorite character: ?? Kiefer Least favorite character: Maribel Most useful skill: Howl Best fighting class to get first: Shepard Best magic to get: vivify Best fighting skill: punch Also try: ??? Legend of Mana?? Up next: Hoshigami

STORY An above average story with an okay plotline. Not a story that you remember about in the long run.	6
CHARACTERS A bland group of characters with no real personality or background developement. Really hard to find a favorite among this group.	5
GRAPHICS At best an average looking rpg with plain colors. Very disappointing use of the Playstation capability here.	5
MUSIC A decent selection of tunes but only one really good tune out of the whole bunch.	7
GAMEPLAY A very long game but one that contains too many annoyances to fully enjoy the game itself.	7
EXTRAS/REPLAY Lots of extras in this game from mini games to bonus dungeons to explore. Downside is that most of those mini games are very hard to accomplish.	8