Already released in Japan, Chris Privitere takes a look at how the North American release for 7th Dragon III is coming along from Atlus. Healers need not apply for this adventure.

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Atlus had the demo version of 7th Dragon III available for play at their overcrowded booth this year. In the U.S.'s first 7th Dragon game, RPGamers get a chance to save the world from dragons. Though at first, it appears that they are just going to go into a VR demo.

In the demo, which will be up within two weeks on the eShop, players choose a 3 member party from 4 pregenerated characters. My party consisted of the Samurai, Hacker, and Duelist classes. I was on Casual difficulty, as opposed to the other option, standard. So healing didn't seem to be a necessary component for my adventure.

After an intro cutscene where a rabbit creature doesn't want to let me try their VR booth until a mysterious girl presents her special VIP ticket, I went into the dungeon. Gameplay here was standard first person dungeon crawling. Think an easy version of Etrian Odyssey. Each dungeon floor had a mini boss, which was the only time a battle option other than "Auto" was needed.

Those mini bosses were where the classes could shine, though. The Samurai was able to do a multi hit attack called Whirlwind, attacking up to three monsters or just one monster three times. The Hacker could use his "Hack" move on enemies, which set them up for follow up attacks that either refilled the party's mana or made enemies attack each other. Finally, the Duelist drew a card each turn. Each card was of a different element type, dictacting what element's spells she could cast. She could save them up to have lots of options, or just cast whatever came to her hand that turn.

Following the easy victory over each mini-boss, mostly made possible by realizing the giant cloud fire monster was indeed weak to ice, a quick stop at one of the save points was in store. The green ones in the dungeons restored lifeforce and mana (think HP and MP). Following two floors of enemies and mini-bosses, the party exited the simulation and was told to go up to the offices of the simulation-creating company. The party had apparently passed some sort of exam. In those offices, they were greeted with a blue save point, which didn't restore anything, and some cutscenes.

These cutscenes established that while some dragons were dealt with in the past, things were not all good, and the VR simulation was really a test to find people able to kill dragons. Apparently my party was just who they had in mind. But further discussions were interrupted by an attack by...of course...dragons! After rushing outside to save the lady who gave them a VIP ticket from a giant dragon, a boss fight began. This fight was longer and required managing mana and lifeforce more than the previous fights. And, thankfully, the collection of healing items gained through two floors of dungeon crawling came in handy here. After a much longer battle, the dragon went down, and another even larger dragon showed up.

The fate of the party with this dragon, and the finer points of history learned in the cutscenes, will be left to the reader. The eShop demo for 7th Dragon III will be out in a couple weeks where RPGamers can test their mettle against Standard and Casual difficulties and discover more about the world of 7th Dragon III. The game itself comes out on July 12, 2016 for Nintendo 3DS.