Dragon Quest VII: Fragments of the Forgotten Past - Nintendo 3DS Game | Classic JRPG Adventure | Perfect for Travel & Commuting Entertainment

This review will be a work in progress since I only received this game last week and RPG's can take a LONG time to get in to. After well over 20 hours I've gotten a pretty good sense of the game. This is your classic level grinder much like the RPG's I grew up with. I'm an old school RPG'er going back to the infancy of the genre, prior even to the original NES, and I have a huge soft spot for leveling up, buying new weapons and armor and collecting items. In this case you search the world for tablet fragments to unlock island and I've also started collecting monster stamps. To give an idea of where I'm at with about 28 hours invested in the game I have a total of 4 out of 417 monster stamps and that's not for lack of trying.I stand by my initial reaction the the graphics are entirely underwhelming. There are a ton of jaggies and pop-ups and the graphics, in general, are well below what the 3DS is capable of, particularly the New 3DS which isn't surprising since its an update to a 16 year old Playstation game. The outside environments are bland, repetitive and more often than not, barren. Should we call it dated or retro? So far the game has been very linear with a lot of hand holding. At the same time I end up walking back and forth over and over again between locations which has taken up much of the 28 hours of play time.As I said, I'm a sucker for level grinding but these battles are incredibly repetitive. My characters almost always do the same thing regardless of the enemy. Maribel is my main magic user and has six spells but I almost always use Bang or Sap in the case of a boss. Ruff has three offensive abilities but I can't really see how they differ at all in effect. I generally don't even pay attention to which creature is attacking me with regards to how I fight since under the hood there is very little difference between them.It took more than two hours before I really got into doing much in the game but at this point I've finished opening up around seven islands. DQ VII is unique as far as I've seen in the it feels episodic with each island representing on episode. So it depends on whether you prefer a broad sweeping plot or a series of mini plots. The first island was pretty dull but the second two were an improvement. I can think of a lot of RPG's I've played with better plots but it suffices if you just love leveling and collecting.There's clearly a lot of hate for my review based on my negatives but so be it. 28 hours in and it feels like a average and dated RPG. I never played the original Dragon Quest VII so I don't have an emotional investment in it. My four stars is probably very generous because I have a soft spot for games like this and it does bring me back to some of the RPG's I played years ago. I'm also kind of a sucker for Dragon Quest since I played the original Dragon Warrior on the NES way back in the day. Regardless of my feeling about the quality I commend Square Enix for making the game available to a new audience.I bought this game in 2019 for $23 and now it costs $90?!?! Inflation and rarity going crazyyy…Good game btw, would recommend to any turn based RPG fan.I ordered this game really excited to play, because I had read the reviews and it looked like it would be a lot of fun. For the most part, it turned out that I was right. The storyline is great so far and has already had some good plot twists, and I've only been playing for approximately 3 hours.However, there are some slightly difficult aspects that people should know are part of this game before buying it.First of all: the camera controls. You use the L and R buttons to turn the camera, and even though you can get a full 360 degree view of the world around you, it was hard - at least for me - to remember which buttons turn the camera which way. I kept running into monster battles I didnt want to fight because I kept turning the view in the wrong direction and getting stuck against walls and cliffs while trying to run away at times when my HP was low. And I'm used to being able to press both buttons at the same time to turn the camera to the view of my character's back. A quick warning: that trick doesnt work in this game.Second: the monster fighting itself is too easy. I grew up playing "Dragonquest 9: Sentinels of the Starry Skies" for the previous model of Nintendo ds, and even though the fights were harder, it was much more interesting to play as a result. On this one, I beat the first several real boss fights with almost no trouble. On DQ9, I would have had to level grind a LOT more to get as far as I did. And that makes this one a little too easy - at least in my opinion.My final verdict on this game: it's fun, but too easy for a young adult. Maybe a kid would have more of a challenge with the basic gameplay. But the camera system IS hard to use - probably for most people. So if you want a game with a fun, engaging, and easy to follow storyline, but tricky controls that take a bit of work to master, this is probably a good one for you.Thank you for reading this.Sincerely,- Tris: A fan of the Dragonquest games who likes this one, but doesn't love it as much as I hoped I would.Uno de los mejores JRPGs de la era del PS One ahora portátil y en 3D, luce muy bien con las mejoras gráficas hechas respecto a la versión original, así como el efecto 3D. Conserva las mecánicas clásicas de la saga, así como la emblemática banda sonora. Título obligado para todos los amantes del género. Por si fuera poco al mejor precio del mercado.Si jugaste la versión original del PS1 notaras de inmediato que esta nueva versión tiene colores mucho más alegres y los personajes en 3d se ven increibles con respecto a la versión en 2d (que ya se veían anticuados en el momento que salió el juego), si eres fan de los RPGs de la vieja escuela. Adquierelo ya!Dragon Quest VII es un gran título de la saga de los Dragon Quest, su aventura es muy fresca, llena de emoción y aventura que no pararas de disfrutar, recomiendo mucho este titulo para los fans y para quienes por primera vez se quiere embarcar en esta hermosa aventura de los Dragon Quest. No habrá decepción alguna u se muy bien que disfrutará cada detalle.Un remake de una joya de JRPG que salio para psone unicamente en Japon. Increiblemente adaptada y con mucho contenido para entretenerse por horas.Todos los dragon quest son geniales y este título no habia llegado a América. Tener la oportunidad de jugarlo es increíble.