Dragon Quest is having a moment. With the recent HD-2D remakes of Dragon Quest 1, 2, and 3, Square Enix is intent on reintroducing the classic JRPG series to a new audience. This continues with Dragon Quest VII: Reimagined ($59.99, reviewed on Switch but also available on PC, PlayStation, and Xbox), the second remake of the 25-year-old Dragon Quest VII. The new game arrives with a unique art style, new story content, and many mechanical changes that streamline the experience. I find it one of the most accessible recent RPG releases, thanks to the expanded depth from the revamped Job system. Still, it's relatively simple in terms of story and gameplay, so you might prefer Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 for more emotional depth or Final Fantasy VII Rebirth for deeper mechanics.

Story and Visuals: An Old-School Tale With a New-School Look

In Dragon Quest VII, you play as a young, nameless boy from Estard (you’re free to name him whatever you please), who dreams of adventure. After discovering a stone tablet fragment, you and your friend, Keifer, who is the Prince of Estard, become convinced that there's a whole undiscovered world beyond Estard's borders and are determined to see it. 

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Joined by your childhood friend, Maribel, you set off to repair the tablet and accidentally discover a way to travel back in time. Each restored tablet takes you and your friends to a continent that doesn’t exist in the present because it was destroyed by monsters in the past. Once your party vanquishes the ancient baddies, those islands are reborn in the present. 

I like this episodic approach to story progression. Each tablet is a new adventure in a new area, akin to watching an anime arc. That anime vibe is also due to the late, great Akira Toriyama, whose artwork gives party members, enemies, and locales a distinctly Dragon Ball look and feel. 

Each world is distinct, too. For example, I discovered an area where German-sounding people were turned to stone by magic rain. In another, I had to convince a soldier's angry brother to help fight an increasingly dangerous robot army. The stories are varied, with some wackier than others. Overall, Reimagined has a more lighthearted vibe than Elden Ring's dark tone.

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The "Reimagined" subtitle speaks not only to changes made to streamline gameplay (more on that in a bit) but to the new graphics. Square Enix has proven its willingness to explore unique visual styles in its remakes. The Dragon Quest remakes were redone in the same HD-2D style that the Octopath Traveler series popularized, while the Star Ocean: The Second Story remake used its own unique blend of 2D sprites against 3D backgrounds. 

With Reimagined, Dragon Quest VII stylizes the characters and world to resemble a diorama. The characters are not quite deformed enough to be considered chibi, but the new, isometric viewpoint makes characters look stout and toy-like. The small rooms and towns with invisible borders looked like they were floating in mid-air, and reminded me of the environments in the Super Mario RPG remake. That game evoked the early 1990s CG look and feel of the original title, and Reimagined taps into that energy. Characters and environments recall the polygons you'd see in a gaming magazine from back in the day, but Reimagined brings them to life with excellent visual fidelity.

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That goes for the audio, too. Most cutscenes are fully voice-acted and pleasantly British. The soundtrack is booming with classic, bombastic Dragon Quest music, which injects scenes with a palpable sense of grandeur and wonder. They do become repetitive after a while, but I never found them grating.

Gameplay: Classic Turn-Based Action With New Features

For all the game's visual splendor, Dragon Quest's gameplay remains largely traditional. It's a turn-based RPG at its core, and that hasn’t changed in Reimagined. You still leverage a menu-based system to select attacks, cast spells, and use items in an effort to deplete your enemies' health. Once you’ve done or taken enough damage, the game allows you to "Let Loose," which is essentially your character's special move. These big attacks are tied to your character's Vocation (Reimagined's version of the original's Job system), and are often stat-boosting moves that tee up a dramatically powerful follow-up attack.

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The game's depth lies in Vocations. At a certain point in the game, you can choose to change their Vocation. Doing so adjusts character stats and opens up new moves. In a nice touch, you can assign any Vocation to any character, adjusting your party to fit your playstyle. For example, you can set up an offense-heavy party that includes nothing but Warriors, or go all in on Mages. Or, if you're like me, you'll strike a balance between the two. New to Reimagined is the Moonlighting option. Once you choose your primary Vocation, you select another Vocation to moonlight with, combining their skills. You can be a Warrior Dancer, a Black Mage Martial Artist, or any other combo. Once you master enough Vocations, you gain access to different, more advanced Vocations.

This is a clever addition that adds replayability to your party members without totally restarting your character every time you learn a class. I found it easy to keep the Vocation I had mastered equipped while leveling up my second Vocation. It helps keep the classic Job system fresh, by today's standards.

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Reimagined is a distinctly old-school game, but it adds plenty of modern tools to make the grind that much easier. For starters, the RPG has no random encounters, tweakable experience gains, and an option that lets you adjust the battle speed to move the fight along at a faster pace. You can also set up your party to attack automatically, and specify how each character plays. The computer does a fine job at taking over, too. CPU-controlled party members are more item-dependent and almost immediately use their "Let Loose" moves on common enemies, but overall, they get the job done.

By default, I found the game easy on normal settings, without adjusting any parameters. With more than 30 hours of Reimagined gameplay under my belt, I rarely lost a fight. However, I appreciate the adjustable sliders, which make the game more accessible to a broader audience. I mostly used the sliders to level up my Vocations or boost the gold drops I got after winning battles to buy better armor and weapons.

Challenge and Pacing: Elements Best Left in the Past

However, streamlining the game makes exploration a one-note affair. The next objective is almost always highlighted on the map by an exclamation point, so it's very easy to roam from point A to point B. If you're ever lost, you can check in with your party members, who offer hints on where to go next.

Collecting stone fragments also lacked challenge, as most were simply scattered about the world. A few of the fragments were locked behind a puzzle or inaccessible until I completed a portion of the quest. On the rare occasion when I was stuck, one character's entire purpose was to offer hints to lead me to the stone's location.

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Now again, I never played the original Dragon Quest VII or the 3DS remake, so I can't speak to how their paces compare with this one's. Still, Reimagined takes a little too long to get going. It took about 15 hours before I could change Vocations. Besides that, the game follows the same loop of assembling a tablet, traveling back in time, and then returning to the present to see how your actions affected the world. The stories told within each realm aren't particularly complex or emotionally engaging. However, I did enjoy a few standout side stories, like one about two people who can't admit their feelings for each other. And there's a completely new story involving an older version of Keifer that I won't spoil here.

Unfortunately, your party is also lacking in the memorability department. The main character is basically an empty vessel, and none of the other party members are particularly interesting, save for the loudmouth Maribel, who negs you at every turn. There's nothing wrong with this simplicity; it just starts to feel like a product of its time after a while, despite the fresh coat of paint. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is the RPG to play for a rich narrative.

This simplicity works in Requiem's favor if you typically play RPGs in short bursts, as you don't feel the drag as much. I was especially happy with the tested Switch 2 version, which delivered a rock-solid 60fps and impressive visuals in both handheld and docked modes. It’s not as impressive as the recent Switch 2 port of Final Fantasy VII Remake, but it's a quality reimagining all the same.