It’s highly playable and fairly enjoyable, but not that different from all the other dungeon crawlers I’ve played recently. In fact, Final Promise Story and Fuurai no Shiren 2 are the only dungeon crawlers I can definitively say are worse than this. Everything else – Unchainblades Rexx, Criminal Girls, WiZman’s World, etc – leaves 7th Dragon crawling in the dust on the other side of the world.
Will I be able to finish this game? I’m not very sure. The story simply goes that dragons have taken over the world and a band of adventurers (created and led by me) is out to kill them all and save everyone. What’s interesting is that there’s a counter on the bottom screen that shows exactly how many dragons there are left. It started out at 666, and after twelve hours of killing and adventuring it’s… let’s see… 584. That’s 82 dragons in 12 hours, or approximately 6.8 dragons per hour. Assuming things proceed at the same rate, I’ll need to spend another 85 hours on this game before I finish it, and do I really want to do that? First word: Hell. Second word: No.
Unless something radically changes about the gameplay in the next couple of hours, here are the factors that will most likely prevent me from finishing 7th Dragon
1. Damage floors, in the form of deadly flowers known as “furowaro” or something silly like that. Stepping on them will sap your party’s HP before you ever take on a single enemy. Warp out to heal and save and when you come back you have to go through all that pain again. This is the real reason it takes so long to take down those dragons, because they themselves aren’t that tough.
2. The encounter rate is way too frickin’ high. Especially on the world map. I’ve tried different items, I’ve tried different abilities and it’s still way too high for me.
3. Coupled with the above, I hate the way low-level enemies keep attacking even when they should know better.
4. The game is stingy with EXP and item drops, even for dungeon bosses. On one hand all the bosses so far have been so pathetically weak that I’m not surprised, but on the other hand, come on! What kind of boss battle doesn’t yield even a single level up? After all I went through getting through the bloody dungeon? It’s disgusting, that’s what it is.
5. Too many useless skills you have to waste skill points on in order to learn the few useful ones on the whole grid. I liked the way Final Promise Story did it, where they let you reset all your skill point assignments in exchange for a monetary penalty. Heavens knows I have more than enough money and nothing to spend it on.
6. Boring sidequests, mainly of the Twenty Bear Asses variety. I almost never do sidequests in this sort of game, but that doesn’t stop me from holding that fact against 7th Dragon anyway.
#1 and #2 are the ones I have a real problem with. If I can find an item/skill that reduces “furowaro” damage and/or stops it from growing back inside dungeons, and if I can find a way to stop non-dragon enemy encounters altogether, this game will take a massive, immediate turn for the better. It’s not an unreasonable expectation.
Everything else in the game I can deal with. I’m playing with an all-girl party now, as a tribute to Criminal Girls. I’m happy with my Samurai, Rogue, Mage and Healer, I can take down pretty much any enemy without too much trouble, I’ve got lots of money and items and I’ve found several shortcuts for getting through completed dungeons. If they’ll just fix those niggling little flaws, there might be hope for 7th Dragon after all.
Interesting review, never actually played the game though.
[…] about the factors I mentions in the previous post that might prevent me from finishing the game, well… Some of them have improved and some […]