The latest JRPG remake from Square Enix turns a low-tech PS1 title into a very modern video game, while still honouring the old school charm of the original.
If you’re excited by the prospect of Dragon Quest 7 Reimagined, then it’s a fair bet that you’re pretty clued-up when it comes to Japanese role-playing games (JRPGs). One of the founding JRPG franchises, the first Dragon Quest appeared in 1986, although no mainline entry was ever released in Europe until Dragon Quest 8 two decades later. Square Enix has recently remade the first three NES games using its HD-2D technology, but Dragon Quest 7 has received a more extravagant reworking.
Dragon Quest 7 hasn’t been completely reinvented, in the style of Square Enix’s three-game remake of Final Fantasy 7, but it certainly feels an awful lot more modern than the original version, which was released on PlayStation in 2000 (although there was a well-received remake on 3DS in 2016, which did make it to Europe).
Unlike the HD-2D games, this reimagined version of the original is a fully 3D game, but it preserves the franchise’s iconic style, with a diorama style representation of its enormous game world and myriad dungeons. It’s a very pleasing retro modern look, with the character designs originally scanned in from physical dolls, while still maintaining the feel of artist Akira Toriyama’s original designs.
Dragon Quest games have always made a virtue of the relative simplicity of their battle systems; indeed, the reason line-dancing style turn-based combat is so prevalent in Japanese games is a direct result of the series’ popularity in its homeland, where it’s bigger even than Final Fantasy. But turn-based battles are back in vogue at the moment, in large part thanks to Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, and Dragon Quest’s inherent simplicity makes it a very good starting place for novice players.
Reimagined still supports some fairly deep and varied strategic approaches. You can have up to four party members at once in a battle, with each characters’ attributes derived from their vocations. As you progress through the game, they acquire the ability to pursue two vocations at once, and to swap new ones in whenever you want.
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This allows you to build up a team with complementary skills, such as powerful magic, damaging swordplay, healing, and buffing skills. Certain characters can equip weapons that damage all enemies or groups of them, while others rely on spells or abilities rather than weapon attacks. Characters also power up during battles, letting them unleash rare attacks that can prove vital tipping points, especially against bosses.
Everything feels deceptively simple at first but soon demands much more tactical nous. When you get to the later stages you have to work satisfyingly hard to overcome the bosses and mini-bosses, and yet the game leads you into the battling system’s intricacies in a very gentle manner – with no assumption of previous knowledge of the franchise or the genre in general.
In terms of story, Reimagined is very purposefully family friendly. Its overriding vibe is cute and endearing, with a plucky band of mostly teenage adventurers saving the world from evil. As with all Dragon Quest games, it’s up to you to name the protagonist, a son of a fisherman from a tiny village on Estard Island, whom we first glimpse restoring a boat in anticipation of adventuring with his best pal – Estard’s teenage Prince Kiefer.
Together with their nosy friend Maribel, the trio unlock a previously sealed temple and discover that by assembling puzzle piece stone fragments there, they can teleport back in time to a vast array of different islands, each of which is in the grip of some catastrophe. When you save each island from its grim fate, it rises out of the ocean back in your own time period.
Where once Estard Island sat alone and isolated in the ocean, it soon becomes the centre of an ever-growing archipelago. There’s an overall mission, that consists of finding stone fragments to open up portals to new past worlds, but the storyline also has a soap opera style layer as new companions join the team of adventurers, bringing new quests, while others drop out to pursue their own agendas.
At times, in time-honoured JRPG fashion, you do have to perform a certain amount of seemingly unnecessary toing and froing. The game reuses a lot of content but in a fairly clever way: once a new island reappears in the present time frame you can sail to it in your ship and perform new quests in a familiar backdrop, as you seek to collect all the stone fragments. But particularly towards the latter stages, it builds up to an epic crescendo that has a good flow to it.
Not that you will get there quickly: Dragon Quest 7 is a huge game. Its main storyline contains at least 60 hours of gameplay, which is obviously a big commitment. However, its quests are sufficiently varied, and there are enough dungeons to traverse, special monsters to battle, and useful items to collect to keep it interesting.
That said, Dragon Quest 7 does have a tendency to send you on tortuous fetch and carry routes and, at times, you yearn for the sort of darker undertones that can be found in the Zelda games, with the only hint of such being in the final stages of the story. Plus, the orchestral music, while high quality and ear-wormingly melodic, can eventually start to grate after you’ve spent tens of hours listening to it.
Even with the new graphics, Dragon Quest 7 is definitely showing its age, but it’s still highly absorbing and satisfyingly compelling, immersing you in a world which is a pleasure to traverse. And as far as the technical and design aspects of creating a modern remake of a retro classic are concerned, it impresses enormously.
Dragon Quest 7 will delight role-playing fans of all creeds, but it also possesses an accessibility that outshines many of its peers, so would make an ideal intro to the genre for the JRPG-curious. Dragon Quest will likely never be as popular in the West as it is in Japan but this reimagined version of one of the most beloved entries makes it easier to appreciate than ever.
Dragon Quest 7 Reimagined review summary
In Short: A loving remake of a JRPG classic, with pitch perfect graphics and charming, if simplistic, storytelling and combat.
Pros: Simple but effective battling system, great bosses, and some decent dungeons. Uplifting and multilayered storyline and excellent visual design that balances the new and old perfectly.
Cons: Overly long and with an awful lot of fetch quests. As fun as it is, the combat is fairly shallow and the storytelling lacks edge. Music can grate after a while.
Score: 7/10
Formats: PlayStation 5 (reviewed), Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC
Price: £59.99
Publisher: Square Enix
Developer: HexaDrive
Release Date: 5th February 2026
Age Rating: 12
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