Dragon Quest VII - Fragments of the Forgotten Past (Europe)
Nintendo 3DS
🇩🇪🇬🇧🇪🇸🇫🇷🇮🇹
Reviewed in 2016
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✪ Reviewed on November 9, 2024
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Dragon Quest VII on 3DS, remake of the epic PS1 JRPG with modern visuals. Stone fragments to assemble to travel through past civilisations. Colossal content and touching story. One of the most ambitious DQ entries.
Your verdict
Category
RPG1 player12+
Description
The hero and his friends sail to mysterious islands emerging from a water-covered world and free their inhabitants from ancient curses. Published by Square Enix, released in Japan in February 2013. Turn-based combat, stone tablet class system, fragmented world to restore island by island, over 200 hours of content. Japan exclusive.
Dragon Quest VII - Fragments of the Forgotten Past review
MAX
Art direction
★★★★★
"Iconic"
MAX
Music
★★★★★
"Legendary"
4/5
Story
★★★★★
"Captivating"
Akira Toriyama's inimitable line dresses every hero and every monster in a jovial roundness, recognisable among all. Colourful villages and expressive creatures compose a warm, limpid universe. This graphic signature, timeless and good-natured, remains the visual soul of the series.
Under Koichi Sugiyama's baton, orchestral themes of classical elegance accompany the slow rebirth of a drowned world. Broad, noble melodies underline each resurrected island and each reunion. This symphonic grandeur, faithful to the Dragon Quest tradition, wraps the adventure in a timeless warmth.
Gameplay
"Excellent"
Fun
"Mild"
Addictiveness
"Obsessive"
Piecing back together a vanished world by restoring island after island, switching your heroes' vocations and combing every nook sets up a sprawling adventure where each revealed fragment rekindles curiosity. The class system and the monsters to recruit prolong the obsession. The intro runs very long, but this generosity of content grips you for dozens of hours.
Difficulty
"Balanced"
Lifespan
"Massive"
Raising sunken islands one by one and breaking their curses makes for one of the longest adventures in the genre. The sprawling main quest, the vocation system and a profusion of quests stretch on for countless hours without flagging. That outsized scope, paired with a vignette-driven story, earns the title a stubborn reputation as a JRPG marathon.
Technical info
💾1,2 GB📅16/09/2016
Published by Square Enix
Dragon Quest VII - Fragments of the Forgotten Past (3DS) price, value & rarity
Fragments of the Forgotten Past stands as one of Square Enix's largest European localisations on 3DS, with a full French translation that marked the return of the Dragon Quest brand to Western markets after a long gap. The PAL release had a limited commercial life, quickly overtaken by digital, which makes complete copies harder to track down. A central piece for anyone aligning the DQ series in French on a handheld.
Is Dragon Quest VII - Fragments of the Forgotten Past still worth playing in 2026?
Released in 2013 in Japan then 2016 in the West on 3DS, Square Enix's project is the remake of a Dragon Quest renowned for its outsized scope, whose quest is to restore a world whose islands have vanished, by travelling into the past to bring them back one by one. The clear turn based combat, the very deep vocation system and the writing, a mix of often bittersweet island tales, make for a colossal adventure. The very long start before the first battle puts off. An immense and generous Japanese RPG, recommended for patient fans of classic adventure and of classes to explore.
