Dragon Quest VII

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Dragon Quest VII: Fragments of the Forgotten Past sold 3.57 million copies in Japan within 17 days of going on sale in 2000. Enix published it for the original PlayStation, as one more entry in a role-playing series that Yuji Horii has presided over since its beginning. The figure raises a puzzle. Why would a sprawling, turn-based adventure find millions of buyers so quickly? What sort of world is assembled from islands that have vanished from the map? And what became of the game after it left Japan, and again after later machines tried to rebuild it?

  19434535

• 2. Islands Out of Time

  ›

  The island of Estard is all that remains of the world when the story opens. The hero's father comes home from a fishing trip carrying a fragment of an old map. The scrap hints that the sea once held many continents. The hero and his friend find a way to travel back to that vanished age. Every lost land they visit is in trouble. When the party fixes the crisis, the continent returns to the present day.

  Behind all of it stands the Demon King Orgodemir. Long ago he defeated the Almighty, who is called God in the Japanese script and in the English PlayStation release. His victory is the reason the continents disappeared. He later reappears in the present, poses as the Almighty to win humanity's worship, and seals the lands away again. The party summons the Four Great Spirits to expose him, then fights through to his fortress and destroys him for good. Afterwards they celebrate with the allies they made and return to ordinary lives.

  The Shrine of Mysteries is the hinge of the whole design. Instead of one large world to explore, the party travels by placing stone shards on pedestals there. When every missing shard for one pedestal has been found, the party is carried to that land as it was in the past. After the local trouble is solved, they return to Estard. From the beginning island they can sail a boat, fly a magic carpet, or use an object called the skystone to reach the restored land in the present. Walking is the fourth way to travel, and each method crosses different terrain. Rescued lands appear on the main map, and the ruins still lead back to their pasts.

  Even without finishing the side quests, one playthrough can take a hundred hours or more. Battles stay turn-based and are seen from a first person view. The world outside combat is rendered in 3D, but the fights themselves are shown in two dimensions. A newer touch lets players talk to their party members in and out of battle. The companions offer tips about strategy or the plot, or simply say how they feel.

  In the town called the Haven, known as Immigrant Town in the PlayStation release, players recruit residents from the towns they visit. The settlement changes with who lives there, so a crowd of merchants brings more shops. The casino offers poker, slot machines and a game called Lucky Panel. The Excellence Grading Organization, once named the World Ranking Federation, lets players compete for the highest stats. Captured monsters appear only in the Monster Meadows, and blueprints found along the way add new environments to that park.

  338446120

• 3. Jobs and Mastery

  ›

  Alltrades Abbey appears at about the point where characters stop learning spells and skills of their own, around experience level 15. There the party can hand out classes, and the game's deepest customization begins. The system is similar to the one in Dragon Quest VI.

  Sixteen human classes are named in the source: Warrior, Fighter, Cleric, Mage, Bard, Dancer, Jester, Thief, Idol, Pirate, Ranger, Gladiator, Paladin, Summoner, God Hand and Hero. Some are unlocked only by mastering others. Monster classes sit alongside them. A player opens one by using the matching monster heart, or by mastering the monster classes that come before it.

  Class levels are earned by fighting a set number of battles, not by collecting experience points. Each human class belongs to one of three tiers, called Basic, Intermediate and Advanced. Monster classes have more tiers than that. Reaching the 8th and final level of a class counts as mastering it, and mastering certain classes opens the higher-tier ones. A character learns new spells and skills at each class level, and the class also shapes the character's stats.

  One name changes abroad. The class called God Hand in Japan is titled Champion in the English versions.

  2038442162

• 4. The Travelers

  ›

  The hero has no default name, following a Dragon Quest tradition in which the player supplies one. The English versions call him Auster. He is a lifelong resident of Pilchard Bay on Estard and dreams of becoming a fisherman like his father. His two closest friends are Maribel and Kiefer. An impromptu adventure with Kiefer is what sets the story moving.

  Kiefer is a prince of Estard and heir to its throne, yet he seems to resent his royal blood. His family and advisors worry about him endlessly. He hunts for excitement and sees the hero as his closest friend. On a trip to an ancient land he falls in love and stays behind. Back in the present, the hero learns that Kiefer became a famous guardian of the Roamer tribe. Kiefer is also the main character of a separate game, Dragon Quest Monsters: Caravan Heart.

  Maribel Mayde is the daughter of the mayor of Pilchard Bay. Kiefer refuses to let social status color how he treats people, but Maribel can be condescending and even bossy. She also has a kind, sentimental side. She sometimes has to pressure the others into letting her join their adventures.

  Ruff looks like an ordinary boy, though he began as a white wolf pup who was irrevocably turned human. He keeps obvious wolf traits and can act animalistic. He joins the heroes hoping to protect his family and stays out of loyalty. Sir Mervyn is a paladin from generations past who fought for God against the Demon Lord. God petrified him in stone so he could be reawakened if evil returned. The party finds him, and his age and unfamiliarity with the present leave the others befuddled.

  Aishe is the lead ritual dancer of the Roamer tribe, an ancient people charged with a temple needed to call forth the Almighty. She was raised and trained in swordsmanship, and she wants to complete her tribe's duty so they can finally move on. She is also a descendant of Kiefer. His choice to stay in the past therefore reaches directly into the party's present.

  443831121

• 5. Thirty-Five People, Four Years

  ›

  The game was officially announced in 1996, and it was first expected on the Nintendo 64DD. On the 15th of January 1997 came word that development had moved to the PlayStation. By the next day, stock in both Sony and Enix had risen significantly in Japan. Japanese stock analysts and industry observers lost faith in the long-term future of the Nintendo 64 line, and the move was described as a "semi-crisis situation" for Nintendo. Enix cited a larger potential market and the lower cost of manufacturing CDs.

  Yuji Horii designed the game, and Manabu Yamana directed it. Shintaro Majima served as art director. Akira Toriyama, the Dragon Ball creator who had drawn every earlier Dragon Quest, designed the characters. Koichi Sugiyama, another series veteran, composed the music. In an interview Horii said the team had concentrated more on puzzle solving than on the story.

  The team consisted of only about 35 people, and the schedule slipped again and again. The staff wanted to perfect the game under the weight of fan expectations. Before release it ranked as the most wanted game in Japan. Square, aware of the coming release, moved Final Fantasy IX to a later date. By 2000 the research firm DIHS predicted that the game would "create a 50 billion yen effect on the Japanese economy."

  This was the first game in the series with 3D graphics. The team hesitated to add CG movies and cinematics, because fans had written letters to Enix fearing that such scenes would change the overall feeling of the series. The game finally reached shops on the 26th of August 2000, and the sales figures would test that prediction.

  5923245235

• 6. Crossing the Ocean

  ›

  Enix of America began the English localization right after the Japanese release. The job meant translating over 70,000 pages of text with 20 translators and 5 copy editors. No effort was made to edit or censor the Japanese script. In the weeks before the American launch, Enix posted new details about the game's mechanics on its website every week.

  Paul Handelman, president of Enix America, said: "All the talk this month about new systems with the latest technological wizardry doesn't diminish the fact that at the end of the day, compelling game play is what it's all about, and Dragon Warrior VII provides just that." Dragon Warrior VII went on sale in the United States on the 1st of November 2001. It was the first main series title released outside Japan since Dragon Quest IV reached North America in 1992. It was also the last game in the series to carry Warrior in its title instead of Quest.

  Developer Heartbeat went on hiatus soon after the release. Justin Lucas, a product manager at Enix America, said the team "worked their tails off on Dragon Warrior 7 and Dragon Warrior 4. They decided to take a sabbatical for a while and rest up." He added that the break had nothing to do with the game's American sales.

  The back of the North American manual carried an advertisement for Dragon Warrior IV, an enhanced PlayStation remake of the Nintendo game of the same name. That localization was later cancelled because of Heartbeat's closure.

  The game was also the last Dragon Quest title Enix published outside Japan before it merged with Squaresoft in 2003 to form Square Enix. In that same year Square Enix registered the Dragon Quest trademark in the United States, intending to retire the Dragon Warrior name.

  6027575854

• 7. Praise and Complaints

  ›

  By the 6th of April 2001 sales in Japan had reached 4.06 million, which made it the best-selling PlayStation game there, and it later became an Ultimate Hits title. More than 3.9 million copies had sold by November 2000, enough to make it the region's top PlayStation seller of that year. It also set the record for the largest annual shipment of any independently sold game on the original PlayStation. Shipments reached four million on the 5th of January 2001, which made it the sixth best-selling game on any platform in Japan at that time. By March 2003 worldwide shipments passed 4.1 million units.

  The 4th Japan Media Arts Festival gave it the grand prize in the Digital (Interactive) Art Division in 2000. Judges praised it for being "engaging without depending on a high degree of realism" and "well refined and artfully executed." The 5th Japan Entertainment Software Awards, run by the Computer Entertainment Supplier's Association, gave it four awards: the Best Prize, Scenario Prize, Sales Prize and Popularity Prize. In 2006 readers of Famitsu magazine voted it the 9th best video game of all time.

  The North American version sold almost 200,000 copies according to The Magic Box, nowhere near the Japanese total. Enix of America still said it was satisfied. IGN found all of the "100+ hours" enjoyable despite dated visuals and clunky presentation, and called the class system "one of the best class systems seen outside a strategy RPG." GameZone.com praised the concept and the nostalgia, calling the game "what role-playing games were meant to be." It said the high difficulty makes it "that much more of an accomplishment when you complete a quest."

  Other critics were harsher. GameShark.com described the opening two hours as "some of the most boring hours you will ever play in a video game." XenGamers.com said a player needs "the patience of a rock." Game Informer went as far as saying that "four million Japanese can be wrong."

  The long development meant the game arrived after the PlayStation 2 was already on sale, and the graphics drew complaints. GameSpot called them "not good" and warned fans who loved the full-motion video interludes of Final Fantasy VII not to expect to be wowed. IGN described a game making only the barest concessions to new technology but making up for it with "deep gameplay, massive quest, and sheer variety." Eric Bratcher reviewed it for Next Generation and gave it four stars out of five. His verdict was that "The harder-core you are, the more you'll love this definitely old-school RPG, but graphics hounds and those with short attention spans can sit this one out."

  2634465337

• 8. Rebuilt and Reissued

  ›

  Koichi Sugiyama composed the score, as he did for nearly every Dragon Quest game. Following what was done for Dragon Quest VI, the original sound version shipped with a symphonic suite in a two-disc set, Dragon Quest VII: Eden no Senshitachi Symphonic Suite + OST. The suite fills the first disc and the opening track of the second. The Symphonic Suite alone came out on Super Audio CD later that year and was reissued in 2009. A piano disc, Dragon Quest VII: Eden no Senshitachi on Piano, held 27 arranged tracks. In 2006 the suite was recorded again along with music from the rest of the series.

  On the 30th of October 2012, Square Enix announced a Nintendo 3DS remake for Japan, due in February 2013. Later that day it confirmed the 7th of February 2013. Like Dragon Quest IX, the remake used visible enemies in place of random encounters. It was not meant to leave Japan at first, partly because of the cost and time needed to localize so much content. Letters from core fans in France reached the developers and executives at Square Enix and Nintendo. Together with online demand, they changed the decision. A Nintendo Direct in November 2015 showed the game coming abroad in 2016 under the subtitle Fragments of the Forgotten Past.

  The 3DS version is abridged, and much of the original content was cut to shorten it, the intro among it. The international release carried a fully retranslated script in the style Square Enix had used since Dragon Quest VIII in 2005, with many changed names and terms. The Western release also swapped out the orchestral score, performed in Japan by the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra. In its place came the synthesized MIDI soundtrack from the Japan-only iOS and Android versions of 2015. That orchestral recording had its own soundtrack release on the 19th of March 2014. In Japan the remake sold over 800,000 copies in its first week, and 1,174,077 by the 17th of March 2013. Famitsu scored it 35 out of 40, praising the new orchestrated score, the improved graphics and the first dungeon.

  Dragon Quest VII Reimagined was announced on the 12th of September 2025. Producer Takeshi Ichikawa said it was "re-built from the ground up" and described a "new challenge" in the graphics, with environments made to resemble dioramas. Players can "Moonlight" as a second class, and each class gains "Vocational Perks." The story was streamlined for pacing and accessibility. The monster classes were replaced by a single advanced class called Monster Master. Characters can now belong to two classes at once. Kiefer briefly rejoins the party and can fight in the final battle against Orgodemir.

  The Haven, the Excellence Grading Organization, the Monster Meadows and every casino game except Lucky Panel were removed. A Battle Arena took the casino's place. Players run gauntlets against bosses, are graded on how many turns each round takes, and earn bigger rewards for finishing within a set number of turns. Paid downloadable content lets players face the main antagonists of the Erdrick Trilogy, meaning Dragon Quest, Dragon Quest II and Dragon Quest III. A free demo appeared on the 7th of January 2026. The full game followed on the 5th of February 2026 for Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and PC.

  The story also lives on the page. The manga Dragon Quest: Warriors of Eden ran in Enix's Monthly Shōnen Gangan from 2001 to 2006, collected in fourteen volumes. Kamui Fujiwara, who had previously drawn Dragon Quest: The Mark of Erdick, illustrated it. Because the original hero was silent, the comic gave him a personality and the name "Arus." It also added new characters and deeper relationships. In January 2026 Fujiwara began a sequel in Young Gangan titled Dragon Quest Eden.

  4849583210