You'd be forgiven for having some number of misgivings about Dragon Quest VII Reimagined; the Final Fantasy VII Remake trilogy isn't everyone's cup of tea, and while the previous Dragon Quest VII: Fragments of the Forgotten Past remake on the 3DS is approaching a decade old it still feels fairly fresh in the memories of Dragon Quest fans. A game being "Reimagined" always raises eyebrows. The good news, played short, is that Dragon Quest VII Reimagined is otherwise a great RPG, a fantastic starting point for new fans, and a worthy game in the series. Played long, there are a number of decisions that are at odds with each other and the basic experience, and I hope these get corrected with the upcoming Dragon Quest XII.

Stripped to the studs, this is Dragon Quest VII. People worried about the aesthetic of Dragon Quest VII can rest easy; the diorama-esque look is a credit to the game and a phenomenal way to emulate the old top-down view of the original, and Toriyama's charming character designs look as good as ever. The franchise's iconic monsters are also the best they've ever looked, with shining scales and slimy bodies all coming to life in 3D. The music is fairly bog-standard for the series (even ignoring Sugiyama's controversies, he was running out of steam at this point in the franchise), but they're thankfully orchestral and not rendered in MIDI format; this is as good as it'll ever sound. And the iconic Dragon Quest sound effects are all there: all the cursor beeps, the magic sounds, and the always-welcome critical hit prompts. New to this version of Dragon Quest VII is full voice acting. The performances are great, even including little shouts and quips from your party members during battle. The series trademark overdone accents in the various regions are all back and even fully performed, with Spanish, German, Italian, French and even a few variants of the King's English represented. The audio balance of the voice acting absolutely needs some work, however; a lot of inflected lines of dialogue are spoken so quietly that you can't hear them over the background music.

As always, the storytelling in Dragon Quest VII is highly episodic, focusing on vignettes as the party travels to new places and encounters new struggles to solve. The game is rather slow to start, with some of the earlier adventures feeling a bit like shaggy dog stories, but eventually story threads start weaving with themselves as the party finds itself wandering into the aftermath of a long-finished battle against good and evil. Despite the charming visuals, Dragon Quest VII can have a very somber tone with bittersweet tales of families coming apart, revenge plots planned for years, and love that was never meant to be. Dragon Quest VII might even represent the pinnacle of the series' episodic format, given how the story revolves around rediscovering new islands (and thus new plots). But the basic story of a few spunky kids from a sleepy fishing village getting roped into restoring the world still works. That the game offers you a recap of the adventure every time you boot up is a welcome addition.

It's the battle system where I scrunch up my nose. The vocations are still there, and they're still fun to mess around with. I'd hazard this is the most fun the job system has ever been in Dragon Quest, with your "basic" vocations like the Thief or the Jester setting up for more advanced prestige vocations like the Pirate or the Luminary once they've been mastered. These advanced vocations can also lead to even cooler vocations, like the Champion or the Druid. There are tons of nuts and bolts to this, like not being able to keep any skills you've earned from one vocation to another, but Reimagined allows you to Moonlight as two Vocations at once, keeping one set of skills while allowing you to work on another. At the time of writing, I was unable to track down any of the Monster vocations. But I deeply enjoyed planning my party's growth... even if the Moonlighting ability took out a chunk of the difficulty out of the game.

The hits kept on coming with the rest of the battle system. Dragon Quest VII: Reimagined continues the Dragon Quest franchise's modern trend of presenting monsters on the field map and allowing you to strike them to begin battle with an advantage. Early on, these battles were challenging enough to be engaging, but low-stakes enough to where I could face the entire Ballymolloy region with my party wielding cypress sticks and still keep afloat. But later on, the many decisions work against themselves; preemptively striking an enemy that's weak enough kills it instantly (albeit, granting diminished rewards in the form of less experience, gold and vocation points). At first, I thought this was convenient. Later on, I found myself one-shotting enemies on the map fairly regularly, sometimes even walloping newer and tougher monsters as soon as they were introduced to me. It didn't help that so much of the risk in the game was diminished; defeated party members wake back up after battles with a single health point (churches don't even offer resurrection anymore), characters that gain an experience level regain all of their health and magic, and no sooner will you start to think that you've gone fairly deep into a dungeon will you find a holy statue that restores your characters and offers you a chance to save. Sailing across the ocean still submits you to random battles; tellingly, it was when I was sailing that I found myself considering distance and whether my characters could brave the voyage... before my characters hit their 20s and could one-shot groups of fish and shell slimes with no effort.

The sad part is that Reimagined gives you a king's ransom of options regarding your gameplay experience: damage taken, damage dealt, experience and gold yield from battles, whether your health restores at the end of a battle, whether enemies even react during battle... all this on top of the typical Easy/Medium/Hard difficulty options you can choose at the outset of your adventure. I came prepared for Dragon Quest; not a game that would pummel my face in, but one that would expect me to be careful and judicious in my actions during battle and require me to carefully manage my resources before heading into dungeons. What I got felt like an RPG that was scared of inconveniencing me with battles. It's an absolute shame, because it's quite fun to stack up buffs and then land a critical Kafrizzle on a boss that hits for almost 1,000 damage. It's just a shame that this means the enemy boss doesn't even get to pull off their devious combos.

Any other issues with Reimagined are minor. Characters no longer change their appearance based on their vocation, but that's to keep continuity with the new 3D cutscenes (which look spectacular). There is DLC allowing the cast to dress up as previous Dragon Quest characters; I'm not a fan of these outfits being available exclusively as paid DLC. 

The key thing is that in spite of the defanged battles, Dragon Quest VII Reimagined is still a very fun title; its stories still land, its cast is endlessly charming, and people who enjoy number-crunching will absolutely love the Vocation system. It's still a shame that the old puzzle-based intro from the PlayStation original isn't really included anymore; on basis of that and the difficulty issues, long-time fans might consider this a lacking take on Dragon Quest VII. But newcomers are encouraged to try this game out; people in need of a classic turn-based RPG are still well-served by jumping in. Just don't be afraid to turn up the difficulty some.