Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this column are those of the participants and the moderator, and do not necessarily reflect those of the GIA. There is coarse language and potentially offensive material afoot. "I want to be a Blitzball when I grow up." Don't say we didn't warn you.

The column below is 95% DWVII spoilers. However it is worth nothing that none of you spoiled any of the far-flung and therefore deeply appreciated plot points that may grace the game's latter half. You may have done this because my statement of yesterday inspired sympathy ... probably you just forgot. In any case, your kindness, even if inadvertent, does not go unnoticed. You're all invited to my birthday party.

So then ... DW. Let's go.

Posing the question

Dear Agent: I was thinking of lyrics to "Old Time Rock and Role" that would express my dissatisfaction at yet another RPG I have not played that is now about to be dissected under the harsh glare of the Double Agent and her slobbering minions when it hit me: Outside of Japan, who cares about Dragon Quest? the insane bovine Daniel Nelson

Well. I do.

And I kind of got the impression that the rest of these people do, too....

Patience is a virtue

Dear Erin, Ok... I really tried hard to enjoy Dragon Warrior 7. I seriously did. I sat down, and grabbed my controller, and said, "Lets do some hardcore old school RPG action," right? Wrong. I got so bored within the first 3 or 4 hours. Is it just me, or are the characters so cliche that they have no personality whatsoever. The girl that's with you is a moron, clinging to you for no reason. And the prince is even worse, the stereotypical, rebellious nobility, who sneaks out and has fun when his dad isn't looking. I mean, haven't we heard it all before? Mind you, the battles aren't horrible. The monsters are well drawn, they're quick, etc. But, it takes you 3 hours to get to a battle ! I thought that when I heard this, they would fill that 3 hours with well developed characters, interesting backstory, something! Instead, we have 3 bonehead characters transported to some island from a fragment of whatever. I know people tote this in the air as the pinnicle of classic RPG games. Honestly though, they all must be on crack. I had no drive to play the game, no "exploration" instinct came up. Probably because everything looked so boring. A game that I want to explore is GTA3, or FFX. Something with some content, something interesting to discover and look at. Is it because I haven't gotten far enough into the story/game? Should I be more patient? I really wanted to give this game a chance, but unless it gets a lot better, I'll just play FFX again. KTallguy

Okay, well. Maybe not KTallguy. But the rest of these people....

No, your complaints are not entirely unfounded - and I wholly sympathize with your initial impressions.

Traipsing like a slack-jawed masticating cow at pasture back and forth across the island after Kiefer in the name of "adventure" occupies a few too many of DWVII's initial hours for my tastes, as well. Completely devoid of battles or backstory, the flat characters (and I'm not talking about the criminally ugly sprites, either) and lack anything remotely compelling in the line of a plot is enough to make a spoiled contemporary gamer's intestines leap up through their neck to hurriedly throttle their brain and end the inhumanity.

But ... it gets better. As I, your friendly neighborhood Double Agent, through the aid of my "slobbering minions," will hereafter manifest, it really, really does.

Vignette

This game could probably be classified as a sleeper hit. Not because it got bad reviews though, rather because few people knew about the game much less the series of games that preceded it. All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed playing this game from start to finish. I ended up with a staunch 140+ hours which was mostly spent trying to master job classes. Gameplay and graphics were rather dated but thoroughly enjoyable by this old RPG fart. The story seemed to lag from start to finish because of the extreme length of the game. It's hard to keep things interesting when everytime you unlock an area of the map after piecing together shards you basically do the same thing over and over (i.e. save the village!). One serious flaw were the characters. I'm a big Toriyama fan but...ugh...the main hero looked like a snot-nosed little kid wearing a beanie. Kiefer had a huge chin. Maribel took after the main hero. Melvin was old and aged. The only character of note was Aira (oh-la-la!). I already mentioned the storyline, so there's no need to re-hash that subject. THe only other problem I can think of is the job system. It takes a horrendous amount of time to master each job class and for sadistic clowns like me, that's a bad thing. I mastered every job class but I had to fight about 7-900 times to do so, and characters you don't get until near the end of the game have obviously not caught up. When all is said and done, it still is a great game and fun to play. There were loads of side quests and mini-games (of sorts) to while away the hours. I guess I have to rate it as average to above-average. A good solid 3.5 out of 5. - Justin

Admittedly, it is difficult to keep a storyline fresh for 100+ hours, especially when the pattern of gameplay is largely repetetive.

But for me, enjoying what plot DW did feature hinged around concentrating on each of those little village scenarios as simple, happy plot in and of itself.

And, hey. You neglected to mention the single biggest character design - or, rather, non-character design - in the lot. What the hell was Gabo's problem? Did they neglect to provide Toriyama with a character bio? Did they mention the lad was a theoretically cool-sounding ex-White Wolf? Do I even need to ask?

Incredible crises

OK, first things first: Auron got fewer votes than Olga? Sigh...nobody appreciates older men. That column seemed a little inconsistent in spoiler marking, incidentally. Anyhow, DW7...god, there's a topic. I could write my letter in the spirit of the game and make it the size of a short story, but I'll try to be brief. I liked it, but in a way it was genuinely disturbing to see such an "old-school" modern game. I could feel my core hardening just plaing it. Still, aside from a few glaring exceptions (NOT ONE SINGLE PERSON IN THE ENTIRE VAST SEA OF HUMANITY LIKES BLEEPING TEXT), all the "traditional elements" have been polished to a nice new sheen. I particularly like the changes made to the battle system -- thanks to the many abilities and the nature of those abilities, there's quite a bit of strategy for a standard RPG battle system. It's nice to see a good compliment of free abilities, as well as some variety in those abilities rather than more and more powerful versions of the same basic attack (again, there are some exceptions...Vacuum and Stampede, in particular, are broken). The main characters are rather vague and don't do much, but the "party chat" feature works marvelously to add depth to them, and really makes the game feel like an overreaching quest rather than bits of "game" interspersed with bits of vaguely "plot", a problem most RPGs run into. The graphics were as bad as everyone says (while some of that can be chalked up to development time, the map sprites were inexcusably lazy), but the compliment of first-person view monsters were in fine form, and the battle effects were appealing in their simplicity after years of watching ten-minute spell animations involving planets crashing into each other. I'm not much of a Sugiyama fan, but I readily acknowledge his skill, and it was very nice to finally hear him in a format that did him justice. The plot of the game was a bit odd...by all rights, it should have been pointless and dull, but somehow it wasn't. I liked the episodic format, and I even liked the "crisis towns", despite the fact that they're really nothing but an endless chain of fetch quests filling the 80 hours between the game's two plot segments. They were just done with such STYLE, and due to the sheer number of them it became a lot of fun to see what the problem would be at each new town. The diversity of settings and curses kept things new and interesting, which, considering the fact that the gameplay was quite similar throughout, is an amazing feat. There was a lot of humour throughout, too, very offbeat stuff that I enjoyed. Wait, I said I was going to be brief, didn't I? Um...good game. Me like. Yes. ...yes. -AJ

Here is a realm in which I think DWVII has been somewhat overrated, but bear in mind that my opinion may be largely shaded by my irritation at having lost to a boss - not once, but six times - for the first time in ... well ... awhile.

The game's combat difficulty has seemed uneven to me at best - the class system has consistently allowed me to breeze through hours of the game, undefeated and relatively unchallenged, only to be cruelly splattered against some brick wall of a ludicrously badass boss whom my characters are specifically not cut out to tangle with.

I hate leveling-up for leveling-up's sake. I despise wandering around beating on Metalies trying to master the skills I actually want to have prior to venturing into any real quest sort of construct. Maybe if I had enough free time to take things at a more leisurely pace it would be another story, but, for the time being, I like to do that stuff along the way, ya? But lemme tell you right now ... when I swaggered on up to HellWind with my two Warriors, my Thief, and my Mage... lemme tell you - I was not long for the Lefan landscape.

It was back to Dharma for this little talking sausage - time to change everyone into something with a helluva lot more HP.

I don't have a problem with difficulty ... but I do have a problem with sauntering along like a bunch of peerless badasses through ten or so towns' worth of ass-saving, only to run aground of something I cannot beat without 6 hours' devoted prep time.

Getting into it

You gotta give Dragon Warrior 7 some credit for no false advertising. What you see is what you get. Take it or leave it, you know? I fortunately count myself among the takers. In order to enjoy the game, you really have to go in with an open mind and play it with a blank slate in your head - the same way you might have played when you were younger. Wonder why FF6 and FF4 were a lot more fun than the later ones? Thats why - you were younger, and you didn't play games while thinking. You played them while "feeling" them. Thats the secret of enjoying a game like this one - you gotta meditate 'fore playing and keep real life worries out of your mind. Thats what kills games like DW7 and makes Square games more popular - its hard to NOT think about things like "Did I waste my money on this?" if you're not swept away by cinematics. Keep a blank mind while playing DW7 and you'll go the whole hundred hours, I promise! Oh yeah... in anime/games, former guys like Ranma are the hottest of 'em all! Transgender anime/games forever! (Sorry, missed last topic) -- Enbreeze

I suppose that, ultimately, therein lies the charm of DWVII ... if you can once sink into that state of simple, childish wonder, the game really is nostalgia incarnate. Only this time two CDs' worth! Whoo!

He ain't shitting you

Erin, I must say that I've enjoyed all 70-something hours I've spent wondering when disc one of Dragon Warrior VII is going to end. I even enjoyed an hour and a half wondering when disc one was going to end last night, and I'll probably enjoy another hour of wondering when disc one is going to end tonight. That said, disc one of Dragon Warrior VII sure is long, isn't it? On a side note, I'm enjoying the game far more than I thought I would. I stopped playing the Dragon Warrior series seriously back with the original Dragon Warrior, and only dabbled in II and III and IV (with good reason: the titles were ridiculously rare), I've been amazed at how nostalgic DWVII has made me. Like I have, all along, been the biggest DW fan in the world. Even a non-gaming friend (Let's call her Masako), while making pasta at my apartment one day, said, "Hey, I know that music," as DWVII started up. (Dragon Quest is, like, INSIDE the people in Japan... though that's something for another day.) In an interview in Electronic Gaming Monthly, Yuji Horii says that his desire in making DWVII was not in making a world for people to "see" or "hear" (as per every next-gen Final Fantasy), it was to make a world for people to "feel." Now, I'm sure to certain people who compare DWVII's high sales numbers in Japan to the very American phenomenon of wrestling games (ahem), this just sounds like something a videogame producer would say about a game that took six years to make and looks and sounds like something on Super Nintendo, albeit with a little stronger Mode Seven and the Super FX3. Well, at precisely the 60-hour point, I realized what Yuji Horii was talking about. That is, I realized, "He ain't shitting me." When you get out of the Ruin, Maribel complaining she's "tired," and a few sailors are waiting to tell Maribel to come back to the village because her dad's sick, well, it all came as something of a surprise. I mean, Maribel's dad? How important a character has he been in the game? And that's precisely why he's sick, because Maribel's been off ignoring him for 60-something hours of random encounters and building levels. And in Billy's house, Billy's parents are discussing how his uncle Hondara got evicted from his house. Billy's dad wants to pay off his brother's debt, and he's arguing with Billy's mom about it. Until this point, we've known that Billy's uncle is something of a good-for-nothing -- only now do we get a hint that he's going to actually mean something in the context of the story. It's a classic RPG rule, you see: character A doesn't mean anything until character B talks about character A with character C in confidence. There was a part with a woman at a table in the bar, in Hamelia: (amazing I remember town names, I just realized) "Do you have a problem with a woman drinking alone?" she yells at you when you talk to her. A guy at the bar says, "That woman's always drinking alone." Only then do you realize that woman has some secret worth exploiting. Another classic RPG rule is: show the gamer early on something they CAN'T do. In DWVII, Horii does this from the moment we enter Estard Castle, rotate the camera, and see those hidden stairs. Inside is a locked door, with four treasure chests. Damn it, I haven't unlocked that door yet! And I'll keep playing until I do! And I'll keep playing until I reveal the WHOLE world, and prove those people who told Billy, "This is the only island in the world" wrong, once and for all. Seeing such elements implemented so well makes me eager to see a "next-gen" RPG by Yuji Horii. I don't know if it'd be safe to tell him that to his face, though; a short-story writer almost punched me when I said I'd love to see him write a novel. Good thing he was a few thousand miles away. Then again, the Japanese are very non-confrontational. That's why they secretly cried for three days when rumors surfaced about the next DQ being online. Because DQ game are a world for YOU, alone, to FEEL. Just you and Billy. Um... did I just refer to the hero as "Billy"? Sorry. I guess that's just how it gets after you've known him as Billy for so long. In fact, when I was in Akihabara on Saturday, when looking at some Dragon Quest VII pins in a glass display case, I immediately thought, "200 yen each. I should get one." The guy from the shop sauntered over, asked if he could help me. I said, "Yeah, I want a Dragon Quest VII pin." And he said, "You want the logo, the slime, Maribel, Keifer, or the Hero?" And I said, "I'll take Billy." And he said, "Billy? There's no Billy in Dragon Quest VII." And I was like, "Oh, sorry." Yeah. --tim rogers, who doesn't want to go back to a country without Kirin Afternoon Tea at every convenience store: Sunlight and mist turn a young leaf into tea. Tea can turn you into something new. Tea. A natural gift of love.

This letter more or less covers how I feel on the general matter in much greater depth and detail than is possible for me in the snippet-sized blurbs I'm allowed between letters.

That, and, uh ... I'm overly prone to losing my points in overly complex sentences with little to no relevence to my greater thesis.

Dragon Warrior VII lacks the epic, nigh-art feel of the latest FF, surely - but while it may not always compel you to push on for the sake the plot, once you successfully fall into the game's pace, it compels you to play. And isn't that what we're supposed to be doing with these "game" things?

From the lips of Mr. DW himself....

Dragon Warrior VII doesn't get the respect it deserves. It's the ugly girl with a heart of gold. I've seen so many reviewers say that once you get past the outdated graphics the gameplay is what really brings DWVII home, which is really true. Plus add in the fact that this game can entertain you from 80-100 hrs is amazing. DWVII's class system is the deepest and best I've ever seen on a console RPG. The only complaint I have is that the character sprites don't change every time you change classes (with a few exceptions) a la the FFV did. The ability to talk to your companions really brings a lot of depth to the characters. You can always find out how they feel about most of the situations you get in. Sure DWVII doesn't have the grandiose narrative story telling that FF franchise has, but DW, for the most part, was never about that. DQ/DW games were more about immersing yourself in a fantasy world full of different experiences. The DQ series has remained Japan's #1 favorite RPG series for good reason. I could say that DWVII's lack of sales has to do with the fact that America is made up of nothing more than graphic whore simpletons, but too many other factors were involved. It just came out at a bad time. A. People hadn't seen a true DW sequel on a home console since the NES's DW4 so it wasn't really much of an established franchise that it could have been. B. It came out right before the new console war started up. Even though you can play DWVII on the PS2, people were more into seeing the new things that the PS2, Xbox and GC had to offer. C. Enix didn't really advertise this game that much at all as they should have. In the end DWVII brings up a good question. Does a game have to be totally innovative with experimental new ideas to bring to the table a fun and enjoyable gaming experience? DWVII does have a few new conventions but overall it goes with the tried and true. Does this mean it's a lesser game just because it doesn't go off in some far corner and experiment wildly? Pendy the DQ/DW guy http://dqnn.alefgard.com

No. And ... uh ... isn't that what I said?

Waxing poetic

Agent, I had ONE MORE THING to say about FFX. FINALLY, a RPG that rewards players for OVERKILL. Oh, come on. I know all of you have done it from time to time. 'Fess up. ^_^ Anywho, time to talk about Dragon Warrior VII. Actually, I think I'll play the role of Shakespeare. Dare I? Sonnet : Dragon Warrior VII, shall I compare thee to Final Fantasy X? Thou art as time consuming and lusciously addictive. E'en though sparse with mini games and sidequests. Thy storyline takes my breath away just the same. Thy characters art as lovely in mine imagination. And more customizable at that. Thy voice is more brass, yet melodious to my ears. Though not covered with a shining veneer of beauty; Thou shalt always remain as precious to mine heart. ~arc Okay, that was tremendously horrendous.

Told you people cared about DQ/DW.

Closing Comments:

Since A) my brain has long since melted after having spent most of the day with my mother, and B) the "lasting appeal" discussion planned for the weekend before last got regrettably scattered to the winds in light of our little screw-up, why don't we do that tomorrow? I'm a hippie. I'm into recycling.

But I suppose some qualification and reiteration's in order....

"Lasting appeal" is not to be confused with "replay value" and/or "irrational nostalgia." To me, "lasting appeal" describes a game that can be picked up by a first-timer 4, 5, even 10 years after its release and still enjoyed on some level. A game that offers an experience unique and well-executed enough to withstand the cruel test of time despite its (probably) archaic graphics and (probably) since overdone plot & concept.

Thoughts, guys?

-Erin Mehlos