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Dragon Quest VII: Fragments of the Forgotten Past Discussion (Nintendo 3DS) [game]
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09/16/16, 15:28 Edited: 09/16/16, 15:30
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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. @TriforceBunYeah, it was Greenthumb. I was glad to see it wiped from the map. |
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@plootThis 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. |
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@VofEscaflowneWhoa! 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. |
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@TriforceBunI 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. |
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@VofEscaflowneVIII 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. |
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