They always get carried away and mess it up. Just give me a Mario-style motivation and leave me be. I’m in the situation now where I want to go out and kill dragons, but the NPCs are holding me up with meeting after meeting after speech after speech about how we need to kill those dragons. Guys, seriously, I’m on it! Let me go!
I hate to be “that reviewer” who is always bringing up the previous games in a series and whining about how much better they are, but sometimes it can’t be helped. Sometimes the older games just ‘get it’. 7th Dragon 2020 has improved upon almost all the major flaws of its predecessor, but they also removed the freedom and self-determination that made 7th Dragon so enjoyable for me.
Game progression is slow, linear and rigid because I’m always tied to a mission from headquarters. I can’t go where I like, I can’t fight who I want, I can’t take on the dragons in Shibuya until headquarters lets me, I can’t challenge the subway boss until headquarters lets me, the list goes on and on. Let’s clarify this once and for all: who’s the dragon expert here, them or me? Hint: it’s not them. So let me handle things my own way. If I want to punch above my weight, let me do it. If I get my ass handed to me, fine. It’s my ass, not yours.
It’s a shame that this is bothering me so much, because 2020 gets so many things right. For example, the mood is suitably dreary this time. In 7th Dragon, apart from one ruined village, the other citizens of the world were having a great time in their little hamlets, just chillin’ and groovin’ like their world wasn’t on a giant dragon’s dinner menu. 7th Dragon 2020 does a much better job of showing the pain and destruction and deprivation that would occur if man-eating monsters suddenly rained down from the sky on major cities of the world. They went a little too far in the opposite direction, though, to the point where they’ve killed so many NPCs that the emotional impact of a death is basically zero.
Another thing I’m enjoying is the ability to switch classes, cutting your levels in half. To be honest I can’t really see any advantages to doing so apart from a marginal stat boost (so marginal I can’t tell if it’s there) and the ability to redistribute SP. What’s good is that low levels make the dungeons and the dragons an actual challenge instead of a joke. Or maybe it’s the other way round and the developers expected gamers to switch down at level 30 and adjusted the difficulty of the game accordingly. I’m finding the difficulty level just right when I’m roughly 10 levels behind where I should be, so it’s probably the latter.
As for the story, that pathetic excuse to lecture and railroad me, any septic tank would be proud to be full of it. But I’ve long since given up expecting anything better from Imageepoch. I just wish they wouldn’t take so long to tell what’s a very simple story. And they take it so seriously too. It would be quite laughable if it wasn’t so boring. Anyway, 24 hours gone, 75 dragons left. Let’s finish this!
