@TriforceBun

Oh that's good about the weapons at least which I guess bodes well for the stats thing too. I was just hoping that a character's stat progression wasn't dependent on what vocation a character was currently using. So say I wanted my character to become a caster later on, I wouldn't be screwed out of it because he was a Warrior earlier on or vice versa. Though as it is now, it already seems like they have set paths that they should follow. We'll see how it works out.

@VofEscaflowne
Other DQ games that allow class changing don't "lock" you in via stats like that. The way DQ6 and 9 do it is by having set stat "bundles" apply to your character depending on what class you are, and then changing those stats on the fly when you change classes. In short, you can't really screw yourself out of being strong in any particular class as your stats will adjust accordingly. At least, that's how it worked in those games and I imagine it's how it works here too.

@TriforceBun

Yeah I remember that's how it worked in IX. It's just that the vocation stat bonuses vary quite a bit between characters so if anything, it's based on what vocation suits a character better. Unless if there's something else at play that I'm not aware of. I know Ruff was better suited as a Thief than anyone else from the agility bonus it gave.

Oh yeah so do I buy my own equipment or do I expect to find drops, chests, etc? What's the proper way of playing?

@carlosrox

When your party gets wiped out, you are revived at the last church you visited and keep the XP and items gained, but lose half your cash (cash deposited at a bank is safe). Since the banks seem rare in this game so far, I say buy all the items you need before setting out for a dungeon. You might find in a chest equipment you just bought. Just sell it.

@carlosrox

Good items from chests seem pretty rare so far so yeah, I just buy what I can afford at the moment which is usually not much. The most gold I've gotten so far was a bit over 4000 and some items are selling for 6000+... often just end up skipping a lot of stuff.

Yeah, most RPGs let you kinda buy a ton of stuff at once; DQ has always been a bit more selective with its equips. You'll have to choose between offense and defense in most towns ("Do I get this new weapon for Kiefer or this piece of headgear to make Maribel more dur-ibel?"). I've always liked this bit of choice; no need to buy everything in every town.

So, how's everyone doing?
I'm currently near 30 hours in and I'm leveling up my mage, warrior and martial artist (yes, boring vocations I know), and I have completed the Yggdrasil story.

One thing I find is that I now dread new towns. They're basically all the same towns reorganized slightly, and they require me to run around and in and out of houses in order to talk to everyone. Maybe I just need a bit of a break?

Also, I'm often taken out of the story when I have to fight somebody who appears as a normal NPC character during exploration, but during the battle they're a smirking troll or something. Just weird.

@TriforceBun
Yeah, it was Greenthumb. I was glad to see it wiped from the map.

@ploot

This game's interesting because it's SO FREAKING HUGE. Like, in a more longform-style of storytelling (a la Final Fantasy), I could see it feeling like "padding," but since the plotting is so episodic, it pretty much feels like a giant collection of short stories that never ends. And I like that about it; from what I hear of the length, DQ7 could be a third of its size and still be a reasonable length for an RPG, so it's curious that they packed so much content into the game just for the heck of it. It makes for a big fat odyssey that I can return to over and over again with no end in sight. So...yeah, I feel like I got my money's worth in that sense.

That's not to say it's without its flaws; I recently learned a move in the Paladin class: Thin Air, which kiiiinda breaks the combat of the game a bit? 0 MP cost, deals up to 100 damage to ALL enemies in the field, and rarely misses or fails. That's kind of ridiculous, especially when I was getting use from a wide variety of spells and abilities beforehand. I think I'm going to put a lock on moves like this that completely outclass other abilities, at least for a while. And doing that, I've found the combat to be challenging and interesting.

I'm about 40 hours in: just finished the Wetlock section of the game, which might be my favorite island so far. A neat little adventure for sure, and it ends with my little band getting the gratitude they rightly deserve.

Speaking of Greenthumb, (35+ hour spoilers?) I was surprised to find that it gets revisited in a little side story...and kind of redeems itself! I liked all the characters more this time and it ends in a poignant way. The gameplay involved is still essentially running around, but the core plot is much better.

So yeah, still plugging away at DQVII. This is one of those games that you can really get a lot of value out of if you fully invest in it, but I can see some types of players tiring of the side stories and wanting something more dramatic to happen. Not me though, I'm fine with these tales going on for weeks.

76 hours later and I beat the game. What a hell of a game. It just further solidifies that Dragon Quest is my favorite series in video games.

@Scrawnton
I didn't know that! That's neat. I find the DQ series to be particularly charming, and it's probably my favorite 3rd-party series, to be honest. That or Mega Man or Ace Attorney.

Currently 53 hours in and finally unlocked the full Monster Meadows area. Once again, I'm somewhat overwhelmed by the sidequests going on in the game. I still find myself thirsty for a higher difficulty level, though--a recent "you're supposed to lose" fight simply ended after a few turns since I clearly wasn't close to losing with my hardy team. And Ruff's learned a move called Scorch which outclasses everything else to a crazy degree (at 0 MP cost, of course). Otherwise, still enjoying my adventure through this massive title.

@TriforceBun

Oh yeah, I should work more on the Monster Meadows thing. Is that new to this game or was it in the original? I feel a bit confused with the StreetPass/online tablets exchange and if it's even worth doing or how hard they are. Seems most would be way too easy now...

EDIT: Also I keep thinking maybe I'm a bit overleveled for where I am? Though I never spent time leveling all that much aside from the constant barrage of enemies in dungeons. I just got Mervyn and he's level 19 while I'm 25-26.

I just finished a full days worth of save scumming the casino to get three liquid metal slime helmets and now I should be go to do the end game content.

@VofEscaflowne
Not sure, as I haven't payed the original. Monster Meadows is a bit confusing in that you don't see your captures until you've unlocked it in the "present" (which happened for me around the 50 hour mark).

@Scrawnton
Which machine pays off the most?

@TriforceBun not sure how far you are but the casino in bucannan has a 100coin slot machine on the top floor. Max payout is 3,000,000 coins for 77777, but I got all the coins i needed with four 30k payouts and a 60k one.

Finally got to the final battle and attempted it twice... nope. I don't think I'll ever bother beating it at this point. If I had other JRPGs at the moment, I probably would've abandoned this some time ago but this game is just borderline trash. There's been maybe a couple of good moments in the many, MANY stories, none of which really progress the main story that were somewhat interesting and fun but the rest of the game is a total snore fest. No characters are memorable, every NPC just looks the same and doesn't feel like they have much of an identity. The game is a cakewalk for 99% of the whole game. "Random" encounters are insane in dungeons and slows down the game to a crawl, most of which is revisiting areas several times throughout the story. It's just insulting to the player and is basically in your face padding to lengthen the game. No... if you're on the fence on this game, I highly recommend to stay away. I don't even know how it managed high review scores from some outlets but they must have never played a game before in their lives.

@VofEscaflowne

Whoa! That's some harsh ire, bud.

You're entitled to your opinion, but I can't really say I agree--except that the game is too easy, so it's kinda nice to hear that the final boss is as difficult as the rest of the series' last fights. But there's a lot I really like about DQ7; I find most of the stories at least interesting and some of them are particularly memorable. The writing is always charming, full of personality, and light on melodrama. There're a ton of Nintendo-like details in the character animations--different animations per character for opening chests and pots, small touches like NPCs making eye contact with who they're talking to, a unique dance and "strong hit death" animation for each of the massive amounts of monsters, etc.

Plenty of side things to do with the haven recruiting, Monster Meadows recruiting and tablet quests, plus the Mini-Medals and job customizations. Solid visuals and sounds, NPC clones notwithstanding, all wrapped up in a ridiculously huge quest that seems to never end (for better or for worse). It can get exhausting but it's also impressive just how much game is here. The content could be cut in half and no one would feel that it's too short. And while the main story is simple (a staple of the series), it feels rewarding actually being able to save all the continents and people within them and restoring the lands; feels like I'm making a real difference in this world.

Have you played past DQ games? I might consider DQ7 to be on the lower end of the DQ totem since the game does have some lulls here and there, but I also consider the series as a whole to be really strong and consistent.

@TriforceBun

I think the problem with making the final boss difficult while the rest of the game is super easy is that it comes out of nowhere and can catch players off guard with how unprepared they may be. I could grind and beat it, sure, but the world the game created up until that moment and the characters just aren't interesting enough for me to care. The writing is good though and has made me laugh at times but it also feels like the game is just too long for its own good, making me wish the main story was fleshed out more and had less side stories. But the problem with the side stories is just the gameplay repetition and making the player retrace their steps SO. MANY. TIMES. It just takes me out of the whole game and it ends up feeling like a huge, boring chore. Just me checking off another island in hopes that something actually happens for once... which it does like 2093820352 hours into the game. There's still a lot of charm or attention to detail in the game, I'll give it that. Animations like you said are amusing but without good and engaging gameplay to back it up, it amounts to not much in the end.

Job customizations I was hoping would be fun but the skills and balance are an absolute mess when compared to other games that have these features. You have almost no reason to use skills that require MP and instead are given some of the strongest skills that cost 0 MP and once you have those, you have no reason to use anything else as it just easily disposes of random encounters without effort. I repeated the same strategy over and over throughout most of the game because I had little reason to actually change it. And really, why should I? Random encounters, like I mentioned above, are a huge pain with their frequency. Okay, brag about no random encounters as a game's "feature" but stop shoving the on-screen encounters practically on top of the player in narrow hallways every 1-2 seconds.

I have played other games in the series. VI (apparently VII is just more of the same in VI which had I known, I probably would have skipped it) and IX (actually enjoyed this one though). I do have VIII pre-ordered and it seems to fix some of the issues I have with VII so we'll see how I feel about it.

@VofEscaflowne

VIII is pretty different from VII, and one of my favorites in the series. I'd definitely recommend giving it a shot; upon its release, it was really the kind of game I wanted modern Final Fantasy to be. It also doesn't have DQVII's revisiting mechanic that bugged you.

I agree with some of your criticisms; some of the town revisiting can get exhausting. I felt the need to talk to everyone, so each island has you doing that at least three times: once when you get there, again once you solve the town's problem, and a third time when you visit in the present. I didn't mind it as much since I still enjoyed the writing and the break from combat, but I can admit it's not for everyone.

I think the 0 MP moves you're mentioning might be my biggest issue with the game though (which ties back to combat ease). Many of the moves are balanced in this game, but then you get something like Scorch or Thin Air for 0 MP that just brutalizes the entire enemy team for no cost and it makes you wonder why you should do any other strategy. I had to discipline myself not to use those moves simply because they were so OP.

Your criticism of the storytelling kinda ties into the two main philosophies of JRPG story design, those being episodic vs. longform. DQ has always been more about the smaller stories than the main tale of defeating some ancient demon, although DQVII potentially makes that a bit more obvious. Interestingly, Gades in your avatar there is from Lufia 2, a game that's built very much in the DQ mold of storytelling, with each progressive town having its own "problem" to solve (usually in a nearby dungeon) before you can move on. I don't really see these smaller stories as filler so much as the meat of the game itself; like episodes in a season of a TV show as opposed to a singular, movie-like story.

I would still highly recommend DQVIII when it comes out.

@TriforceBun

Yeah I don't mind the mini stories as much in games but it's the balance of them, coupled with many other design decisions, that really brings down the experience for me. Lufia II for one isn't a game that will take 80+ hours to finish and also has fun, puzzle filled dungeons with encounters that you can actually skip if you use your weapons effectively in the dungeons. Dragon Quest VII had one of its first dungeons had a small puzzle to solve and that was it. I was hoping to see more but the design for the rest of the game was as basic as can be, riddled with dead end paths that offers almost no reason to explore. I just got into that "rinse and repeat" mentality of the design that it did end up feeling like filler. Take out most of the game's islands and the story loses almost nothing. I mean didn't they cut off like some 30 hours of filler from its original release? That says a lot about how this game was designed when that much can be removed.