In a fast-moving medium like games the passage of time can be particularly cruel, but remakes give us the opportunity to revisit games as our fallible brains recall them rather than as they actually were, and introduce them to new generations without having to look past stale graphics and design. Dragon Quest VII is a sensitive update of a 16-year-old JRPG that captures the spirit of the respected original, though it doesn’t quite fill in all of the wrinkles of its outdated design.

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New players should be warned that this game is, even by JRPG standards, a huge commitment. If you know exactly what you’re doing and where you’re going, you could conceivably finish the story within 75 hours – those who remember playing through the 2000 PlayStation original (released in North America a year later as Dragon Warrior VII

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“ The introduction has been intelligently streamlined.

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“ Dragon Quest 7 sends a positive message about embracing other cultures.

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“ Revamped graphics really do justice to the characterful monster designs.

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“ You’ll rarely need to worry too much about the composition of your team.

If every JRPG journey is essentially a coming-of-age tale about the world getting bigger – their youthful heroes learning and growing as they’re exposed to different places and people outside their home – Dragon Quest VII takes the metaphor more literally. The title gives the goal away: as you explore you’ll find stone fragments that, when placed on plinths at a mythical temple, unlock portals to new realms from a forgotten time. In each new place, you’ll arrive at a time of crisis with a problem to solve; once you’ve done that you’ll find the island is now accessible in the present day.This structural shift makes for a very different kind of journey. Where most JRPGs have a strong plot that drives you forward, this is essentially a collection of small, self-contained stories. At times it’s like watching a season of a favourite TV show that spends the first two-thirds on mystery-of-the-week episodes before belatedly bringing in the big bad for the closing stretch. You do lose something of the party’s personal journey, but these intimate little vignettes are nicely told and offer plenty of variety. You’ll be asked to convince a god-fearing community not to go ahead with a dangerous ritual, witness a thorny love triangle, and defend a city against an army of automatons (with a surprisingly moving coda).The downside is that while you’re supposedly helping the world get bigger, it doesn’t really feel like you’re expanding its boundaries because you’re often contained within a relatively small part of it. Even within each island there’s a lot of back and forth between areas. Rather than spending a short time in a new place and then moving on, as in most JRPGs, I sometimes felt stuck in a holding pattern for just a little too long. It doesn’t help that many of the people you meet look the same, with frequently recycled character models. The writing might be trying its best to convince you otherwise, but it’s hard to mourn the death of an NPC in one section when minutes later you arrive in a new town where he appears to have been cloned.In that light, it’s strange that the interface is so old-fashioned and occasionally counter-intuitive. You’ll often find NPCs repeating lines because you triggered another conversation when you were trying to skip through their dialogue, and while shopkeepers will kindly rearrange your items to make room for new purchases you’ll still have to go through the painstaking process of selling items individually and transferring things one by one between party members before they can be equipped.This new version attempts to address that with one of its new features, though this isn’t introduced for a surprisingly long time. Connecting to other players via StreetPass allows you to send monsters you’ve befriended to share special fragments. Each connection will raise your monster’s level, which in turn unlocks new dungeons with more powerful creatures to face. With such a substantial story and an embarrassment of optional diversions – some players will spend hours in the casino alone – this isn’t a game that really needs greater longevity, but the truly committed will be delighted to know it’s there.