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  • Alternative Character Interpretation: Is Kiefer leaving the party to become the Guardian for the Roamers a triumphant moment of Character Development that demonstrates that he has matured past his rambunctious desire for adventure to take on true responsibility, or a final act of selfishness that overlooks the feelings of his friends and family and his duties as a prince for the sake of his own interests?
  • Arc Fatigue: This game is long. 100+ hours is not unheard of for the main story in the Playstation version. (The 3DS version will still take around 45-60) A large part of that is spent walking back and forth through the same thirteen screens over, and over, and over again, which gets tiring even if you have no problems with an RPG being that long.
    • It takes around two hours to get to your first battle.
    • With no detours, it takes around fifteen hours to unlock the job system.
    • The remake is better about this, though the game is still technically quite long (especially if you take an interest in the side quests, whether it's for fun or whether you want to get gear or level up to prepare you if you're finding enemies or bosses tough), it also does things such as making the temple in the prologue shorter so that you don't have to spend as much time trying to unlock the first island in the present as well as making it possible to potentially avoid enemy encounters, though since the combat is enjoyable the player may still choose to engage many enemies in battle anyway.
  • Base-Breaking Character: For a game with such a small party, it should say something that three of the six playable characters are seen as such:
    • Maribel is either an endearing and amusing character who demonstrates the strengths of the party chat system by displaying a wide range of emotions and depth or an insufferable Jerkass with no justifiable reason to stick around in the story for as long as she does. In particular, her leaving the party for several hours to take care of her sick father is alternatingly taken as the moment that fully redeems her for all of her past unpleasantness or the moment that cements her status as an unlikable character.
    • Kiefer is well-liked by many for his free-spirited personality and friendship with the main character, and hated by others for his general disregard for his father and sister's concern for his well-being. His eventual departure from the party to live as the Guardian of the Roamers is either seen as a shining moment of Character Development and an unexpectedly emotional sendoff to the character or an abrupt act of selfishness that leaves many hanging story threads and deprives the player of a key party member immediately before a time when they need him most.
    • Some like Aishe for her fanservicey design, ties to Kiefer, and fun-loving yet mature personality while others dislike her for suffering from Late Character Syndrome and feeling that she contributes little to the overall story. Notably, she is perhaps the only instance of the primary Ms. Fanservice character in a Dragon Quest game not turning out to be the Ensemble Dark Horse, and her presence in promotional and spin-off materials is noticeably thin compared to other similar characters in the series in response.
  • Breather Level:
    • Dialac/Regenstein. The scenario does not have any dungeon-crawling or boss fights, it's over pretty quickly. It's a sad scenario, though it can be a bit confusing to figure out what to do.
    • Verdham/Greenthumb Gardens is another breather — the boss of it is fought very early, and pretty much the entirety of the scenario takes place in town and ends somewhat abruptly.
      • It actually is an unusual example wherein it plays the role twice — after you finally repair the Broken Bridge, the party decides to investigate what's on the other side to find that it's Verdham/Greenthumb Gardens a couple of decades after they had been saved. The whole objective is to connect the dots as to what happened to some of the villagers and how Mentare/Wilted Heart came to be.
    • The first time you reach the Deja/Roamers. Unfortunately, this is when Kiefer leaves...
  • Broken Base:
    • Dharma Temple/Alltrades Abbey. Some people consider it the Best Level Ever (particularly in the remake where it's more balanced than the original) finding it to be reasonably challenging but not too much so. To these people, the storyline is a truly epic tale involving a missing high priest, an occupied temple, an ordinary man trying to protect his sister from a city of vice, a slightly creepy guard cast out of his position (who turns out to be okay in the end), and three heroes brought down to nothing who have to fight their way out of that city and make things right. It would almost make an excellent game in itself. As for everyone else's opinion...see That One Level below.
    • The fact that the Updated Re-release on the Nintendo 3DS is getting a completely new localization for its international release. Some people welcome this, as they're satisfied enough with the game finally averting No Export for You after close to 3 years, while others are against it due to the copious puns and accents in the dialogue of newer Dragon Quest localizations like IV and IX being annoying to them.
      • Adding to this is the change for the combat encounter system from random encounters to enemies appearing on the map. The latter sounds good on paper, but the developers used the PS1 dungeon layouts (which werent designed with avoiding monsters on the map) and gave the monsters extremely good tracking and player detection, making it very hard to avoid enemies. The devs also made the monster spawning timing extremely wonky, as monsters often spawn immediately after you finish the prior battle and sometimes nearly right on top of the player. What's more, holy water proves to be absolutely useless in avoiding these monsters even if you go into a dungeon while overleveled. This combination of issues resulted with many players feeling like the removal of random encounters ironically made encounters more frequent rather than less.
    • When it was found that the international 3DS version replaced the remastered orchestral score with synthesized (albeit still remastered) versions of the music, the base split even further: Some felt ripped-off, some think the decision was Enforced by licensing issues, and others preferred the original soundtrack to begin with.
  • Complacent Gaming Syndrome: The game offers a wide variety of classes, but you’ll be hard pressed to find anyone who isn’t using some combination of Hero, Champion, and Druid by the end of the game. Basic & intermediate classes that don’t unlock those advanced classes tend to get skipped over as a result. This is made even worse in the 3DS version, which removes hybrid skills and locks intermediate and advanced skills to the class you learned them in, leaving little reason to venture outside of the “main” classes.
    • This is somewhat - though not entirely - mitigated with the 3DS monster tablet system. Not only do DLC tablets not have a job leveling cap (so you have the luxury of experimenting with other jobs without worrying about overleveling), but either through luck with the online tablet sharing system or (later) by creating your own tablets you can gain access to monster hearts that unlock certain monster classes far earlier than you can earn them through job mastery. There is even a trick for them that lets you encounter monsters you've yet to see in the game and get their hearts, allowing you to get an early start on "starter" monster vocations that don't appear until halfway through the game. The reason this only "somewhat" mitigates the issue is because monster vocations take longer than human ones to level up; you will gain access to the advanced human vocations far earlier than advanced monster vocations even if you farm for monster hearts. While advanced human vocations (unlike monster vocations) don't let you keep their skills when you switch jobs, there's little incentive to switch from hero, champion, or druid unless you want to gain job mastery bonuses to do the extremely hard postgame content.
  • Complete Monster:
    • Demon King Orgodemir is the franchise's version of Satan. Upon gaining power, Orgodemir entered a war with the Almighty and sent monsters to wipe out all life on the various islands of the world, succeeding in sealing away all but one of them. One of these islands, Buccanham, entered into an alliance with the Sea Dragon pirates in order to fight Orgodemir; in retaliation, he personally froze the pirates and their ship alive and cursed Buccanham so that any newborn baby would turn into a mindless monster on their first full moon, usually attacking their own parents before leaving. Upon losing to the Almighty's Thanatos Gambit, Orgodemir tricks the heroes into reviving his spirit, disguised as the Almighty. He then starts his conquest anew by sealing away the islands that pose a threat and flooding the entire world with monsters before being defeated for good.
    • Cardinal Sin is the leader of Orgodemir's forces at Alltrades Abbey and proves to be the most depraved of his many commanders. Having slain or imprisoned everyone working at the Abbey, Sin and his forces steal the skills of those who come wanting to change classes and drops them into a prison aptly described as a living hell. In Pilgrim's Perdition, Sin's victims are tempted by his minions to win their freedom by wielding the Soulstealer, a blade constructed from part of the wielder's soul, and stealing five souls. The victims' bodies are taken to Precipice Pass, where the survivors of the Abbey's fall are kept, and turned into the wardens; anyone who breaks the rules there are slaughtered. Those who successfully steal five souls, as well as those who escape the Pass, go to Allblades Arena and are forced to fight each other to the death for their freedom. The winners are escorted to Sin, who reveals there was never any chance at freedom and kills them on the spot.
    • Gracos is a Sea Demon who attacked an island that worshipped the Four Great Spirits by submerging it underwater, almost drowning everyone in it. Gracos later cursed the spirits of his victims to be trapped in his dungeons, unable to go to the afterlife, where Gracos torments them for his enjoyment. Later, Gracos tries to do the same to Wetlock. When confronted by the heroes, Gracos summones the spirits and give them the false promise of releasing them should they kill the heroes, despite him never planning on doing so. When defeated by the heroes, Gracos attempts to trap the heroes in his dungeon out of spite.
  • Contested Sequel: This is without a doubt the most divisive mainline entry in the Dragon Quest series, and has been viewed as such since its release. While some praise its plot as a masterpiece of storytelling that features an abundance of unforgettable characters and several of the most emotionally complex and gripping questlines in the series, others disparage it as a tedious and disjointed Random Events Plot that focuses so much on side characters that it is to the detriment of the main cast and story. Not helping matters is that it was notoriously graphically dated at the time of its release, with its defenders claiming that its simplistic visuals only serve to reinforce the strength of its writing and its detractors using them as evidence that the final product is an obsolete mess of half-finished ideas. While the remake, which updated the visuals to fully-3D models and streamlined the most infamously drawn out sections of the original, generally helped narrow the gap between these opinions, the discourse surrounding the game had at that point been going on for so long that it had no hope of fully resolving them.
  • Demonic Spiders: Birds Of Terrordise are capable of doing lots of damage to the party by using Inferno. Of course, they are located in the final dungeon.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse: The tiny little Pod/Foo (later: Pip/Conk) families of monsters, who are critter versions of the default heroes of Dragon Quest III.
  • Fan Nickname:
    • Kiefer is iconically referred to as "Seed Thief" in Japan due to his status as a Decoy Protagonist Guest-Star Party Member causing many players to waste seeds of strength on him early on under the assumption that he'd be around for the entire game.
    • The pre-rendered cutscene where the Deja perform their ceremonial dance is affectionately referred to as the "Horror Movie" by Japanese players due to how deeply it plunges into the Unintentional Uncanny Valley.
  • Funny Moments:
    • While the attack on Providence has some disturbing moments (those poor animals), some dialogue easily qualifies as the funniest in the game, such as a man who notes the limitations of his sprite animations as he's fighting a monster. The winner here is a man who gets his soul switched, WITH HIS COW; the cow in human form somehow manages to get married and have children, and each successive generation is able to talk to cows.
    • In the English PS1 version, at the end of the scene where the party meets the Wind Spirit, Aira says 'That was the Wind Spirit? She was more like a tornado. Oh, I mean "slut".' This was not present in Japanese, and is therefore not in the 3DS version either.
    • The entirety of the scenario with the poisoned well. The Stupid Evil actions of the townsfolk are just plain hilarious.
  • Game-Breaker:
    • For a lot of people, Sword Dance is this. It's required if you want to beat the game in a decent time (and a "decent" time for this game is 100 hours!). Luckily, it doesn't take too long to get after you free Dharma. Sadly, there are several people who don't know about it or any "hybrid skills".
      • It was made much more difficult to obtain in the 3DS version, requiring rank 8 Pirate or rank 3 Hero classes, rather than mastering Warrior or Dancer, then hitting rank 5 in the other. Unfortunately, that means you can’t use it outside those two classes, due to rebalancing preventing you from using non-basic level skills outside their class. While Hero is Purposefully Overpowered, it takes a while to actually get, and Pirate only unlocks it when staying as that class is a waste of vocation xp.
    • Lucky Panel in the 3DS version. Since all the pairs are actual items now, winning this game constantly will give you items and equipment which can be considered a Disc-One Nuke, especially if you win the Zombiesbane in the Present Casino near Dharma/Alltrades, which will last you until after Coastal/Buccanham.
    • When farming against Metal Slimes, Blade of Ultimate Power becomes this, though only in the 3DS version. The change to flat damage allows for bypassing their massive defense stat, making the move practically a One Hit Kill on them.
    • In the 3DS version, the traveler's tablets. If you managed to keep your characters under level 20 by the time you finish Dharma/Alltrades Abbey, you can grind in the Slime Forest, where you can get the battles needed to level up your classes just by fighting Slime so you hardly get any experience points. You can literally level all your characters up to the advance classes only hours after unlocking the class system, making most of the game a joke. By the time Aishe joins, you can create your own tablets and basically make your own Slime Forest with no level cap. Meaning you can grind for classes indefinitely without raising your level.
  • Good Bad Bugs: A programming error in the remake causes Kiefer's defense to increase to a staggering 579 upon reaching level 50. Not that it will matter much, considering he leaves long before you can get him to that level.
  • Goddamned Bats: Vile Vials can dazzle your party with sand as well as make them fall asleep. Thankfully, it's not hard to cure it if you level up specific classes at Dharma/Alltrades Abbey.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: Litorud/El Ciclo is a town dominated by a clock tower stuck in a "Groundhog Day" Loop, being menaced by a villain using something called the Sands of Time.
  • It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: Keifer still leaves permanently at the end of the Roamers arc in the 3DS version, frustrating players who were hoping he could rejoin later on like Maribel.
  • Iron Woobie: It's a long game with a long list of these
    • Maeve. Because nothing says determined like letting the heroes kill you without protest in order to lift a curse on your home town.
    • Nava refuses to angst over her situation, instead quietly focusing on doing whatever she can to help others.
  • Memetic Mutation: Angrily demanding that Kiefer give back the seeds they had used on him after he leaves the party in addition to the equipment he had on is very common among Japanese players.
  • Moment of Awesome: Witnessing the humans finally rise up against the monsters after clearing the arena portion of Dharma/Alltrades Abbey but before fighting Cardinal Sin.
  • Moral Event Horizon: The captain of the Ruckers army crosses the line when he tosses Lucia off a cliff, despite her being only 8-years-old. Though Hybris goes a step too far in getting revenge, it's understandable that he would hate the Ruckers after that.
  • Nightmare Fuel:
    • Dialac/Regenstein. Frozen in stone by the Gray Rain, while most of the villagers were performing a ceremony meant to summon normal rain. In one case, one of the statues crumbles away the second you touch him. Oh, and one of the villagers was away when the rain fell, and spent all those years searching for a cure, only to find one long after it was too late to restore anyone. Yep, everyone in that town (except the one kid whose statue was protected from the elements) is dead, and there's nothing you can do about it.
    • Orgodemir's final final form is pretty unsettling. Basically, rather than going into more powerful-looking forms as the battle continues, he starts melting.
  • Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Maribel became much more likable amongst the western fanbase after her Character Development, and even moreso after the 3DS version which made Maribel more amusing and a better party member than before gameplay-wise.
  • Sequel Difficulty Spike: While Dragon Quest VI was more challenging than most Dragon Quest games, VII is much less forgiving. For one, several of the game's boss fights will get more difficult as the game progresses. In one segment, you have your spells sealed. Party members also leave for a while, one of which (Kiefer) leaves permanently. The game is also far longer than most games in the franchise, which could easily burn out players who underestimate how long Dragon Quest VII is.
  • Signature Scene: The first expedition in Ballymalloy, which has a very bittersweet ending that sets the tone for the rest of the game.
  • Slow-Paced Beginning: We hope you like exposition...you're going to be seeing a lot of it in the beginning. The 3DS version fixes this by making the intro much shorter.
  • Spoiled by the Format: Hooray, you revealed the entire world and beat Orgodemir! ...but if you're playing the original version, there's a whole other disk left, and you know it's not empty...
  • Tear Jerker: Not everything's resolved so happily, unfortunately.
    • Dialac/Regenstein is mostly a failure for the heroes: all of the petrified townsfolk except for Felix cannot be revived, as their statues are too damaged. The kid has to come to terms with the fact that everyone he knew is dead.
    • Even though Verdham/Greenthumb Gardens is saved, things don't entirely end well. The villager who left went and formed his own community nearby, named Mentare/Wilted Heart — because he never married and never got to be with the woman who loved him.
    • The death of Rocky and Wiggles, both of which go down in a Heroic Sacrifice.
    • The death of Hybris's childhood friend, which drives him to become He Who Fights Monsters.
  • That One Attack: Though he's rather manageable otherwise, Cumulus Vex can use Thin Air to wreak havoc on your party. He himself is also immune to Thin Air, which is annoying since he calls flunkies. In some ways, this is Laser-Guided Karma, since you might have been using Thin Air to clear groups of enemies.
  • That One Boss: Plenty.
    • Deathpal/Hacrobat is the first notable bump in the road. He seals your magic via the cave he resides in and is the first boss to potentially strike twicenote . Making this all the worse is that he has a dazzle ability that makes the fight all the more infuriating. In a way it's almost a sign of things to come, as Dharma Temple/Alltrades Abbey will soon be approaching, and he exemplifies what to expect from it. Thankfully the fight does have a saving grace in the Woodcutter who, while weak, can provide you with additional healing.
    • Inopp and Gonz (or as the remake puts them, Rashers and Stripes). Not the hopeless boss fight, but afterwards. Oh, and if you don't beat them first try then you have to go into the rematch without the free heal you get the first time around. Inopp in particular has the ability to snort sand out of his nose in order to blind party members.
    • Following Rashers and Stripes are the four bandits who can cast various status ailments on you. They're easier in the remake where they don't do much damage overall (though they still use many status ailments regardless), and you don't have to worry about losing gold if you lose, despite them being...you know, bandits.
    • The Time Sage/Time Being can be as difficult as it can be annoying. He and his minions have a substantial amount of health, and if you don't drain the minions' health fast the can restart the encounter. Even beyond that they can all hit pretty hard if you let your guard down, and the constant resetting can get tiresome, so expect to be here a while.
    • The ZoeMage/Envoy has the ability to cast Kasnooze and Fizzle as well as the ability to Kaswoosh the whole party, rendering them helpless and doing lots of damage. You can't use offensive magic either, since he can use Bounce. Of course, there's nothing stopping you from beating him at his own game if you have access to Armamentalist since they can use Bounce too, but not everyone will think of that or have access to the spell.
    • HellCloud/Cumulus vex is the first boss to use magic attacks that can ignore your defenses and one-hit-kill you, and can attack twice in a row, leading to party members dying every round. Most notable is that he use Thin Air against you — which hurts you as much as it does most enemies. On top of this, he is a Flunky Boss who himself is immune to Thin Air.
  • That One Level: Dharma Temple/Alltrades Abbey. Let's clarify, shall we? You enter a perfectly normal looking area, but get flushed down to a crappy prison area, with all of your few, but helpful, spells and abilities stolen until the 3/4 point of the chapter here. There is no way back to the present until you beat Cardinal Ship/Sin, the shops sell crappy gear and items, there's an extremely hard-to-find mapshard/fragment that's hidden in some obscure little hut that you may not even know you can enter unless you tilt the camera ''just'' right, the monsters and bosses are notably stronger than your last adventure, you only have three underwhelming characters (the NPCs are decent at best, but ditch you as the story demands, leaving without any help often), you're still probably feeling a bit sore that Kiefer abruptly left the party, you cannot use return or outside spells to easily get to inns in order to rest or priests in order to revive or save (both of which you will likely need often, even if you buy tons of herbs), the dungeons are colossal and confusing (easily the largest and hardest in the game) with no checkpoints save for one crappy little town which is worse than the prison town you started at, you have to fight in a tournament of rather strong bosses (Allblades Arena). And to top that all off, even after you've freed the Abbey and unlock the job system, you don't even get any freebies when class changing, and you will need to grind your classes to a decent level to even hope to stand a chance against the bandit goons back in the present. Yuji Horii has gone to admit in interviews that he likes to kick players when they're down. The entire chapter created a Broken Base between those who liked VII and those who Rage Quit.
    • At least the game is kind enough to give you an item that replicates the Heal spell when used in battle and can be used indefinitely soon after you get here. You will be getting a lot of use out of it.
    • Dharma Temple/Alltrades Abbey is made easier in the 3DS version, though even then it's the first part of the game to provide a challenge since the previous levels are a bit of a cakewalk, at least by comparison. It also helps that you have access to the casino that you can use to get gear such as Cloaks Of Evasion to make it easier to avoid enemy attacks.
    • Any area that's 3D and requires you to navigate different sides and elevations simultaneously. Thankfully, there are only a few, but they can get pretty dang confusing, even with a guide.
  • That One Puzzle: The statue puzzle that you need to complete in order to get two tablet fragments. You need to make the statues face each other... but they move three at a time, instead of simply one or two. Good luck.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
    • Oh, the main story's pretty good, but the effect of abruptly introducing other lands to a world where your tiny kingdom was literally the only power left when your King isn't exactly the best at diplomacy is left largely unexplored. note 
    • Speaking of abruptly introducing other lands, it's a shame given how much personality is put into each town that nothing of consequence happens to their abrupt re-introduction onto the world stage, and there's no interaction between the many nations. For example, Falrod/Faraday has technology far more advanced than anybody else on the planet but nothing comes of it.
  • Toy Ship: Gabo/Ruff is heavily implied to have a major crush on Fosse/Jacqueline.
  • Unbuilt Trope: Maribel possesses all of the telltale signs of a standard Tsundere character, but actually predates when the archetype became codified in the public consciousness. This was acknowledged by the series' director Yuji Horii himself during an interview to promote the remake, where he noted that, in hindsight, Maribel was a tsundere before the word tsundere existed.
  • The Woobie: ELLIE. A Killer Robot who gets repurposed and reprogrammed by Jerkass Zebbot, used to help destroy all her kind, and still gets All of the Other Reindeer treatment from the angry villagers. Zebbot also turns her into a Replacement Goldfish for his dead fiancée, giving her the same name and treating her as a Robot Maid. Back in the present, she's still slaving away in their little cottage, trying to feed soup to Zebbot's long-skeletonized remains. Oh, and the ambitious young king of the region hauls her off to study, and his clumsy scientists waste no time in removing random parts to see how it affects her. Even when you stop this, she's just taken back home to spend the rest of her days in isolation, tending to her master's skeleton. Sure, she says she's happy, but... Luckily for her, the rest of her days aren't that long; if you ever choose to visit the house again, you'll find that she's broken down, finally joining Zebbot in death.
    • You kind of have to feel sorry for Sieble/Buddy. The town he's living in is a complete Doom Magnet, both of his pets sacrifice themselves to save his life, and he may end up the only survivor of the invasion of the Hellworms/Worms of Woe if you killed Chibi/Wiggles rather than warned him about the villagers' plot.

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