Dragon Warrior 7 - Review

Review Breakdown
Battle System	5
Interaction	4
Originality	4
Story	5
Music & Sound	4
Visuals	4
Challenge	medium
Completion Time	70-1000
Overall
I really want this encyclopedia

Only true RPGamers will ever beat this old school RPG and so after beating it, I am here writing this review. What can I ever say about this fairy tale RPG whose basis is strongly pillared by a town dungeon system? For one, its innovativness and twist to the old tale of the four heroes is loaded with so much nostalgia your brain would explode. This one-year epic RPG travels through time as lovable and creative as Chrono Trigger, but it maitains its realistic fell more than any other RPG ever (except for the MORPG's). What RPG am I talking about you ask? Well of course Dragon Warrior 7, it is only the name of the review.

At the start of this RPG every thing seems confusing yet innovative, but at end of the first 3 hours your taken back into a world you know and love, hopefully. (Before I get started with the bulk of this review I state here that I have never played any other Dragon Warriors. Please bear with me if a lot of this information in this review is from all Dragon Warriors, if this is so then think of it as a review for the entire series.)The story line is that you are a fisherman's son in the country of Estgard, the only country in the entire world because of a terrible disaster many centurys ago. You and some of your friends find some shards, an old ruin, and matching pedastals, and you suddenly embark on the journey that will be remembered thoughout the world. Your job is to go back in time to the other sealed continents and unseal them using the power of the shards. Even from that small story line you could see the pattern of town in chaos, mysteries travelers save the chaos through some crazy dungeon and then with the island in peace once again the travelers leave without a trace. This would get boring to the average impotent gamer but to a plot-loving RPGamer Enix has something in store for them.

5 hours into the game and you are at the first boss and are definitely marveling at the excellent battle system instead of unmasking the town, dungeon pattern. The battles revolve around the fact that you control the hero and not the whole party, instead you give them vague orders, which they follow. Then they dechiper your orders to there liking and execute the plan. This doesn't mean you have no control over them but it just means the hero is giving orders to NPCs in your party. So you can only tell them to attack or with a spell towards a group of enemies that are the same or one single enemy not in a group, the rest is up to the NPC's liking. So at the beginning of a round you give orders to your teammates and then commence the attack therefore explaining why it is turn-based and why it has to be turn based for the battle system to work. And since it is all barking out orders to NPC's the fighting is quicker and more realistic. Also since you take on the role of the hero and no one else it is in a fully 1st person viewpiot with many screens that pop up telling you what's happening in the battle. When I am training I can clock into around 2 battles per minute, which is incredibly fast compared to much longer battles in any other RPG. This RPG gives you one of the best turn based battle systems ever since it's fast pop ups coming from everyone on the field all linked together in one fluid battle sequence are just like flying swords and spells coming strait at you. This RPG by far, from this one aspect, gives you more realism than any other RPG hands down.

After 20 hours into the game you are introduced to the massive job system. It actually has 54 job classes and around 24 classes are human and around 35 are monster classes. Each class is broken down to 8 subclasses each like 8 levels of jobs. For a regular level up you need to fight strong enemies and for a job class level up you need to fight a lot of battles but you can't fight enemies considerably weaker than you. At the end of the game where you are going to most likely to be leveling up the most, there is a lot of variety of battles form huge single-kill-for-level-up enemies to the weakest enemies of the game. The system forces you to fight a large number of the big enemies so you can level up regular levels and job levels. This almost paper and pen System is truly the most lifelike battle system in all of the RPG world and deserves all those awards it picked up because of it.

Stop running you slime you!

After around 40-50 hours into the game you see the dungeons and town pattern. The 40-50 hour time slot is because of the lovable, and developed NPCs and towns you find throughout the game. The dissasters the towns and some of the characters are facing feel like they belong in a fairy tale filled with magic and closure but they are different then anything this world has seen before. When the hero arrives in a new town the people there are sure to make any blackened heart cry for the terrible and life like situations people are facing. And the fact that when visiting the town in the present it will make you cry again for that recognition you deserve. The characters and towns are instant lovable classics that you should remember for the longest of time. Some characters and towns show satire that was never unleashed onto the world until the smart producers at Enix came up with them to condemn us in the a subtle manner. Also all the people in the towns from the past have personalities that run through the family line and the present day people are eerily like the people of the past if you look carefully. This gives a strong foundation of the town, which layered on top of it, is the actions and what happens to the town to create a standing skyscraper of memories of the town.

During the course of this game you will see how life like everything is from the plot to the battles to the exploring everything is realistic. First the hero can actually talk to the characters like there real people, they give you advice and warns you about things but they mostly just bring more realism to there character by complaining and laughing and expressing human emotion even the non human ones. Also a character can only carry around 15 or so items then the rest goes in the bag, you then have to hand pick items to go to certain people and you need to organize everything yourself. Also everything from the battles that I already explained like the A.I, the fast pop ups with the 1st person view and the reason why its turn based all add to the lifelikeness of this RPG. All the personalities and jobs have been covered and everyone is animated throughout all the towns and ghettos. The scenery is fully 3-d and moves flawlessly without that much wait or static frames. It is truly the little things that standout in our minds as the definition of a great RPG.

After 70-1000 hours of game play the ending comes and blows your mind. With massive replay value it is almost impossible to get everything the first time around without help. I don't care what anybody says about this RPG having no significant plot behind it all, the ending is truly one of the best in all of RPG history. Everything in the game is tied up from top to bottom except for the lid with massive closure that gives you that relaxed feeling. All the little things in the game are wrapped up like a few NPC's life or some rare items. It started with the Amit Harvest and it is ending with the Amit harvest, a cycle RPG if you think hard enough about it. Everyone is joyous and every thing is tranquil and peaceful except for a huge chunk of the plot, which is up to your own judgment. It is truly a great ending for a hybrid of Chrono Trigger, Dungeons and Dragons, Final Fantasy 6, Phantasy Star and life itself.