Dragon Quest 7: Reimagined

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Posted on April 22, 2026
Categories: General — Tags: #video games, #dragon quest

After almost a hundred hours (!!), I have slayed the beast. Thoughts:

It was cute and fun and charming, made with tonnes of love. The majority of my time was a joy.
It’s a little easy. I played on hard, and still breezed through the game. They added healing statues throughout the game, including before boss fights. Part of the Dragon Quest experience (to me, at least) is slogging through a dungeon to get to the boss, and then barely surviving the battle. I only got that experience a handful of times.

That said, this game is clearly aimed at a younger audience, not a dude in his forties who played the previous two versions. If I’m being honest with myself, I don’t know if I still have the patience for a harder game.
Seeing enemies on the map: Awesome. Being able to land a hit before battle: Also awesome. Automatically defeating enemies at a lower level than you? Incredibly awesome.
The end game lost me a bit. The cutscenes got more frequent and longer, and the pacing felt off. It doesn’t help that my brain insists on speaking to every NPC whenever possibly to see all unique dialogue, which meant I visited every town in the game to chat to everyone before pressing on with the final dungeon.

Now I’m going to complain.

This game, I would argue, is one of the sadder Dragon Quest games, and I that’s how I like it. Most of the game involves restoring islands to the world map by journeying to the past and defeating whatever evil caused the island to be sealed away. On one of these trips, your companion Prince Kiefer decides to stay in the past to become the guardian of the Roamers, who have decided their lives to revive the Almighty.

You have to break the news to his family and it’s heartbreaking. As the player, you’re down a party member, and it’s a long time before you get another. You feel the loss.

But hey, it’s 2026! Let’s add a new optional side quest that lets an older Kiefer rejoin your party for the final dungeon. That won’t cheapen his sacrifice at all. It’s just the end of the game. It’s fine.

More egregiously, they changed Maribel’s story. At the start of the game she’s running around against her parents’ wishes, but after Kiefer leaves, they give her their blessing—they don’t want her to disappear the way he did. Late in the game her dad gets sick, and she leaves the party to stay at his side. It’s a loss, because she’s been there from the start, and she’s the most powerful magic user. But you can’t always have what you want.

Naw, it’s 2026. All you need to do is choose the right dialogue options, and Maribel will stick around. Her parents know how important her adventures are.

Many of the stories in this game are melancholy. It’s great. Kiefer and Maribel leaving your party reinforces this theme. Undoing these losses is a disservice to the story.

OK, I’ve vented. Pictures!

The early game party. Ruff—the kid on the wolf—joins you on one of the early islands. He’s the only one who never leaves.