To remake anything beloved is to walk a tightrope. There is always a delicate balance to be struck between keeping what made the original great intact and delivering on the remake’s promise to modernise, improve and strengthen. It’s such a hard task that one can be forgiven for being reluctant to undertake it even once, but in the case of Dragon Quest 7 Square Enix now faces down this conundrum a second time. Are they gluttons for punishment?
Dragon Quest 7 was first released for PlayStation way back in the year 2000. The game became known as a solid cult classic, and in particular garnered praise for its unique structure, with the narrative taking place across a series of islands each with its own largely self-enclosed narrative. Instead of one huge over-arching story, DQ7 is essentially a series of lovely vignettes that eventually broadly tie together. This structure also helped to lend this game the other thing it became famous for: its size. It is absolutely enormous, a proper poster child for the Japanese RPG stuffed-to-bursting.
Fast forward thirteen years, and Square Enix had a second crack of the whip with a remake for the Nintendo 3DS. This version, the first to be officially released in Europe, made a number of changes to streamline the game to the point where Square Enix referred to it as an ‘abridged’ version of the original. Tack on another thirteen years and somebody at Square Enix had clearly concluded that the 3DS version wasn’t abridged enough – as here we now are in 2026 with Dragon Quest 7: Reimagined.
As the title suggests, this is not an abridged version of that sprawling original. It is a reimagined version instead – reconsidered, with the cuts and design changes deeper and more wide-ranging than had been attempted on the 3DS. Remakes of games that are loved can be a scary business, but nobody could say here that Reimagined’s developers have been timid: they have gone for it, and been unafraid to wield the axe. The result is the most welcoming version of DQ7 yet – though that in turn comes at a cost.
Reimagined does not hold back. Because of the siloed nature of its narrative, it is easy enough to drop entire islands or plot lines, for instance, without damaging the overarching story. This game does that. Other places have been pruned back so significantly they are tough to recognise. Dragon Quest 7 was a truly non-handholdy RPG, which led to scenarios where players could be confused about where to go or what to do next, especially after some time away from the game. Reimagined aggressively curtails this – objectives are now clearly marked at all times. Key item nearby? It’ll be boldly highlighted on your map. Conversations between your allies often serve double duty as character building and ensuring you absolutely do not forget where to go next.
Battles are closer to the 3DS than the original, triggered by encountering visible enemies on the overworld rather than through pure random encounters. DQ7’s turn-based combat is still classic fare for this series and totally satisfying, though it has been gently softened in myriad ways. Enemy weaknesses are instantly highlighted from the very moment you first meet them. It’s much easier to heal fully and much harder for your party to wipe now – and even if that happens the punishment for doing so is breezy. The increased frequency of full, free heals at the Sacred Statues means Dragon Quest’s familiar careful resource management is a lot less important.
You can even cut down weaker enemies on the field, without entering combat at all, if you’re powerful enough. If you know your way around a turn-based RPG, you will inherently know in your very soul how much time that will inevitably save. In the end, failure has been made almost impossible and busywork has been all but eliminated. You likely won’t need to fret about the game’s admittedly generous difficulty options, for the default is already easy enough.
All of this is of the like that it will certainly provoke a range of responses, especially given the reputation of the original as an unwieldy beast. Undeniably brilliant without debate is Reimagined’s gorgeous new doll-like art style, though. For my money this is one of the most pleasing and lovely ways I’ve yet seen to bring sprite-based pixel art and the poppy colorful designs of Akira Toriyama into 3D.
These character models have a fascinating story, for Square Enix actually built scale dolls of each of Dragon Quest 7’s characters and then scanned and captured them in order to understand things like materials, lighting conditions, and articulation. I think you can really tell – they’re slightly uncanny, but they’re also absolutely brilliant. They’re expressive and detailed in all the right ways while retaining a playful vigor that is at the heart of Dragon Quest.
When you take it all in – the approachable art, the gameplay lubricated to the point where any attempt to grapple with its systems too thoroughly will have it slip through your fingers – one gets the sense that this is actually Square Enix taking what it knows is one of its most beloved entries in the Dragon Quest series with the hardcore and making a bold attempt to reorient that experience as the sort of game that could be somebody’s very first Dragon Quest. It makes for a curious comparison and companion piece to the recent remakes of the first three titles in the series. Those are more faithful to the originals. This is something else.
That something isn’t bad, either. In fact, I think it’s rather good. But it is a different kind of good to the original versions of Dragon Quest 7. What was once a game filled with friction, difficulty, challenge, scale – yes, arguably too much scale – has now sanded down every rough edge in sight. It is the Japanese RPG equivalent of when you buy those rubber things to pad the edges of your coffee table so your toddler doesn’t fall over and take their eye out.
I’m sort of alright with that. The brisk and cheerful journey that has been presented here does play to DQ7’s strengths, allowing even the most casual and vaguely curious player to meander from one island to the next experiencing the various storylines and vignettes on offer. With how deep these cuts and changes go there was a danger of throwing the baby out with the bathwater, as the saying goes, but I do think that fate has been largely avoided. There’s some regrettable cuts, yes. More experienced fans like myself may very well bemoan the handholding or the lack of difficulty – but I also expect this game isn’t really made for me. I had the constitution, after all, to get through the previous two versions even when they were at their most sluggish and grindy.
In short, this is a fascinating new way to experience a classic, and while plainly not as definingly brilliant as the original, it is certainly a more approachable and modern way to understand why it was so. I just wish, as with some of the Final Fantasy titles, this version existed alongside a reliable way to play one of the other versions on existing systems. Both side-by-side, with players offered a choice between the two, would be perfect. But this reimagining on its own isn’t bad, either.
A copy of Dragon Quest 7 Reimagined was provided by Square Enix.
