7th Dragon: steppin' on flowers and stabbin' on dinosaurs

[Patrick]

So, I decided to start up 7th Dragon recently, and I am having a great time! I finished up the prologue, did the first big mission, and now I'm making my way through some mountains to the next city.

7th Dragon was made by Rieko Kodama of Phantasy Star and Skies of Arcadia fame, and Kazuya Niinou of Etrian Odyssey fame. The classes feel like they're ripped right out of EO (though with some skills mixed around), and the world feels a lot like Phantasy Star or Dragon Quest. It is a really nice combination. The story and visuals are extremely cozy. Towns are filled with quests, incidental dialogue, shopping, and things to see from poking around. your party walks around in a line, Phantasy Star style, and they spend a lot of time on screen during fights. They feel very present in the game. And the dragon fights are fun (although some of them are clearly dinosaurs). They aren't as tough as Etrian Odyssey's FOEs, but there are a ton of them, and the game encourages you to completely clear them out of areas. So instead of just grinding your way through a cave, you're strategizing on how to take them all out one at a time.

My party consists of:
A fighter (uses attack-down on enemies and can do a powerful attack to follow up on the mage's spells)
A knight (helps the party avoid damage from deadly flowers that have covered the world, can protect rows of the party using their shield)
A princess (attacks with her whip, heals party members, can restore everyone's mana, can mark enemies as 'wanted' to increase the knight's attack)
A mage (a big lightning attack, a bigger lightning attack, an untyped magic attack, can concentrate for an even bigger attack)

I especially like that the story and gameplay fit together well. People in towns talk about what's going on in the world (as well as their own little dramas), and things like prices at shops change if trade routes are blocked off. It feels well thought out and coherent. Plus it's just charming as all heck. I'm still early, but I'm digging what I've seen so far.

 

[Kazin]

I love the entire 7th Dragon series, and I'm glad you're having fun with the first game so far, as while it's still good, it's the weakest entry in the series. It's a bit too grindy, and man would a romhack that actually puts in a quest menu really improve the experience, but it's still oozes charm. Great soundtrack, too.

Whatever happens with this first game (like if you burn out on it or even if you beat it), please give 7th Dragon 2020 on PSP a shot. It's probably my favorite game in the series, though the 3DS game is right there with it in terms of quality (though that one is very similar to Phantasy Star IV in that it has tons of fanservice for fans of the earlier games. You can still play that game without having touched the rest of the series though).

Always happy to see more people play these games. Shoutout to the fantranslator, too, Pokeytax, who translated the DS game you're playing now, as well as the two PSP games. He used to post on TT 2.0, doesn't appear to be here as far as I know, but mostly lurked anyway. He did really good work, imo.

 

[Patrick]

Hey, I didn't know that the translator had a TT account. That's neat.

I'm aware that it's known for being grindy. I ended up finishing EOII whereas I bounced off of Untold, so being grindy isn't always the worst thing for me. We'll see if that becomes a problem down the road, but for now I'm digging it.

And yeah, I have the other games in the series in mind. I am planning to hack my Vita at some point, so the sequel may be the game that pushes me to do it. The Hardcore Gaming 101 articles on the series spoke highly of the later games as well, and I remember the Code VFD demo being interesting. The hacker class being able to mess with enemies was really neat.

 

[Kazin]

That hacker class has similarities to classes in 2020 and 2020-II as well, though they're a little different. They still mess with enemies via hacking, though. Class synergy, similar to the EO games (though admittedly not as deep in the 7th Dragon series), is pretty important and fun to mess around with.

That reminds me, actually - are you playing the version with the experience boosting/encounter lowering ring? I remember that hack balances things out pretty nicely, whereas the vanilla game had a crazy encounter rate, which was unfortunate because you don't get much exp from random mobs.

 

[Patrick]

I'm playing the "7th Dragon USA" version. I believe it's the most recent one (there were a couple of revisions after the first release). It has a lower encounter rate and flowers do a bit less damage.

 

[Patrick]

I’ve gotten through the first couple of bosses & made it over to the other continent. I really like the combat & dungeons. There are a lot of interesting choices, and more than a few times I’ve had to completely change strategies mid-battle. I really like that you need to approach random battles, common dragons, and bosses totally differently.

The towns & characters are still charming, but the number of quests has balooned out of control. I now get people’s complaints about them. My plan is to do whatever looks easy or interesting, then check the wikidot to see which ones give unique rewards. It’s not that any of them are bad either, there are just so many, and a lot of them just require grinding drops or remembering not to sell certain items. It’s just a lot.

Still, I’m loving the game overall. The gameplay & aesthetic just totally click for me and I’m expecting to spend a lot more time with this game.

 

[Kazin]

The aesthetic of 7th Dragon is impeccable, yeah. Fantastic art and music. One of the quests (late in the game, I'm afraid) unlocks the 8-bit soundtrack - it's worth doing, because those sound great as well. Although I think the patch may come with that option unlocked from the get go? Either way, be sure to check it out.