Dragon Warrior VII (PS1) Playthrough [1 of 7]
209A playthrough of Enix's 2001 role-playing game for the Sony PlayStation, Dragon Warrior VII.
This is part one of a seven-part playthrough.
Part 2: https://youtu.be/yQfDc22jNkI
Part 3: https://youtu.be/PFW9c-9RSxA
Part 4: https://youtu.be/qPuHhLQsB2w
Part 5: https://youtu.be/f7_mNlkyFj8
Part 6: https://youtu.be/tV--XxsP4n4
Part 7: https://youtu.be/A6qfhH4Ix8U
A few timestamps
The Ancient Ruins 1:08:16
Rexwood 1:41:19
Engow 3:38:53
Dialac 5:01:22
Orph 5:46:22
Falrish 7:03:34
Verdham 9:47:52
Following the 1992 release of Dragon Warrior IV (https://youtu.be/2HukXrlEwk8 ), English-speaking fans of the series got left out in the cold. Enix America closed up shop in 1995, firmly squashing any hope of future localized releases until the company was reestablished in 2000. Once that happened, we weren't made to wait long. After nine long years, Dragon Warrior was back!
...and on the PlayStation? Yeah, Enix dealt Nintendo a huge blow when they jumped ship. Dragon Warrior VII was apparently intended to be a 64DD game, but it shifted tracks during development. Sounds a lot like Square's Final Fantasy VII announcement, doesnt it?
Dragon Warrior VII is one of those games that shines a light on the sometimes stark differences in taste between the Japanese and American markets. In Japan, it stands as the best-selling PlayStation game ever released. In the United States, it got a far more mixed reception, and a lot of people outright dismissed it, calling it ugly and outdated.
I mean, it was a post-Final Fantasy VII world, right?
But the thing is, it wasn't particularly ugly or outdated, even in 2001. At least, I didn't think so. I found the presentation really charming, and the game faithfully represented the brand as a solid, polished evolutionary step forward for the series' various gameplay systems. It wasn't interested in chasing Final Fantasy, and it caught a lot of flak in the US because of it.
In Dragon Warrior VII, the general idea is that other places in the world once existed, and you have the power to jump into these places of the past to fix history. Like Quantum Leap, sans possession. Once you've saved the people from certain doom, their descendents appear in the modern day, and piece-by-piece, you rebuild the world.
The stories of these places are told over the course of twenty episodic tales, each one tied to a pedestal in the temple you find at the beginning of the game. The stories appear unrelated at first, but over time the threads that bind them are revealed and give rise to a far grander overarching plot - a plot that gives the game its uniquely Enix-flavored emphasis on religion. (Remember ActRaiser, Terranigma, EVO, et al? The vibe is alive and well here, too.) It would spoil the story to discuss it here in any further depth, but the way everything comes together in DW7 is just as satisfying as it was in DW3 and 4.
Dragon Warrior VII is a beast of a game, though. There's an insane amount of content packed in here that will last you quite awhile. The first time I played it, I had put in about 90 hours by the time the credits rolled, and that was mostly sticking to the main story. There's a monster farm that you can help build, you can create your own city, there are several casinos to gamble at, and once you finish the game, there are bonus dungeons and superbosses to take on.
And then there's the incredible amount of text in the game. The script runs about a thousand pages long. No wonder the game took so long to make, or that it took a team of twenty-five a full year to translate it. The translation isn't particularly great - it's full of typos and the tone of the writing is really inconsistent - but the quality is pretty typical of RPGs of its time.
The battle system is in top-form and nicely streamlined, and the job system is back and more intimidating than ever. There are three tiers of classes, each class has its own abilities and stat boosts, certain combinations can give rise to special battle abilities, and you can take on monster classes to permanently learn all their unique moves. Every class has real merit, and you can build all of your characters however you like by cherry picking abilities.
The only complaint that I'd level at the game is that it's so damn long. Most of it is top-quality stuff, but I did find my attention swaying at times. It feels like it's making up for lost time (it had been five years since DW6) by packing two or three games' worth of content into a single mega release.
Even still, it's a fantastic RPG that rewards patience and dedication, and it offers everything a Dragon Warrior fan could've asked for. If you're a DW fan and have the time for such a sprawling game, I enthusiastically recommend it.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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