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Players start out on an island kingdom that had always thought it was alone in a world that was otherwise a vast ocean. However, one day, the hero and his friends find an old map that shows the ocean with many island that seem to have disappeared, but there is a way to restore them. As players go about their adventure, they will find pieces of stone with parts of a symbol on each of them. When all of the pieces corresponding to that symbol are placed on a pedestal in the ancient ruins, this causes the party to travel back in time to one of the missing islands in the past. While visiting, players help the island's inhabitants with some sort of dilemma, and after that is dealt with the island becomes visible again in the present. This process is repeated several times throughout the game.
As mentioned earlier, Dragon Quest VII also has a very good class system. Characters level up in the normal way until they reach level 15, at which point they need to visit Dharma Island where they can begin to learn new classes. These are divided into three tiers starting with basic ones, moving up to mid-level ones, and finally advanced classes. Classes go up in levels not by the acquisition of experience points, but through the number of battles a character fights. Once a class is maxed out for a tier, new options at the next highest tier are opened up. Interestingly, there are also monster-based classes that can be learned, but these all work on their own, unrelated tier system.
There are also a few tweaks to battles this time out. At their core,
these are largely what one has come to expect from combat in the series, but
with the addition of special attacks for specific characters, and enemies
being able to make use of basic formations (ie. strong melee in the front,
with physically weak magic users bringing up the rear).
Other features in the game include mini-games, such as the ever-popular casino that has popped up in several other Dragon Quest games. There is also a game where players can collect monsters. However, these monsters don't fight with the party like in Dragon Quest V, but are sent to a Monster Park. Players can also find blueprints for the park that can add new elements to it. There is also a place called Immigrant Town where players can recruit new party members, and that sees its environment changed depending on what sort of populous the town has.
With the game taking at least 100 hours to complete, that means there is a lot of storytelling going on in Dragon Quest VII. The game's hero is the son of a fisherman who lives in the town of Fishbell. One day, the hero's father returns from a fishing trip with a map that he found. The hero and his friends, Keifer and Maribell, find the map quite interesting, as if portrays the world with many islands on it, not just Ester, where they live, and believed was all there was in the world besides the ocean.
After a little more research, the group learns that there actually were many more islands in the world, but that they were sealed away long ago. In order to restore them, they would need to collect tablet fragments and return them to some ancient ruins on their own island. When all of the pieces of a specific tablet were put back together, they would be able to travel into the past of one of these islands. There would inevitably be a problem that needs solving on each of these islands, and once that was dealt with it would be restored in the present. This process is repeated several times, with the group meeting a wide cast of characters along the way, where each island has its own story to tell. Along the way, it becomes more and more apparent that a great evil called the Demon Lord is behind all much of the trouble on the islands, and is responsible for sealing them away.
After all of the islands return to the present, the Demon Lord appears, and seals away a bunch of them again, including the hero and his friends' homeland this time. In order to get to him, the group must revive the four elemental spirits who will help the group reach the Demon Lord. After the final confrontation, the heros are victorious, and the world is restored once more.
Dragon Quest VII went on to become one of the most popular games released on the PlayStation in Japan, selling over 4 million copies. In North America, it was a very different story, with the game only selling 200,000 copies. Nonetheless, Enix was pleased with these numbers, and we continue to see a steady stream of releases in the series making their way to the West.
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