“Despite its formidable size, one of the first things seasoned JRPG fans will notice is that the introduction has been intelligently streamlined.
I’m not convinced it always manages to justify such volume (you could say that for most JRPGs) but even if it takes its sweet time on occasion its payoffs reward your patience.
Completists, meanwhile, might be advised to clear their schedule until December. But for most players the runtime will extend well into three figures. 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) will find little to hinder their progress. 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JRPG that captures the spirit of the respected original, though it doesn’t quite fill in all of the wrinkles of its outdated design.New players should be warned that this game is, even by JRPG standards, a huge commitment. 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.
