Dragon Quest 7 remake both interests and worries me.

[kupomogli]

Dragon Warrior 7 on PS1 is my favorite game in the series with Dragon Quest 11 being my second favorite. Dragon Quest 11 as some of the best gameplay, but the pacing is awful.

For those who have played Dragon Warrior 7, the amount of dungeons, towns, etc, and their size and exploration, completely dwarfs any game in the series, especially, Dragon Quest 8, 9, and 11. These full 3D dungeons were just much smaller in comparison to Dragon Warrior 7's birds eye 3D view dungeons. Not only that, but the modern behind the back 3D adds pacing issues of its own, simply because in birds eye view, you immediately see the treasure chest, stairs, etc, that are behind the wall after you enter the house, dungeon, etc, so you immediately see what's in range without having to SPECIFICALLY look at it. So both games may be 80 hours long, but Dragon Warrior 7 is 80 hours long without modern day mechanics padding it out.

You know what other modern day "mechanics" pad out games? "Text." Not really a mechanic but publishers have obviously realized that padding out your game with absurd amounts of text, is extremely cheap in comparison to graphics and gameplay. Are they going to just add absurd amounts of dialogue to Dragon Quest 7 to in order to make the game longer? Are they going to cut down the size of the dungeons and cut down how explorable they were while adding text to keep the games long?

I think the only issue with the game, is some of the early game imbalancing issues on the PS1 version. When you get to the area with all the robots, every robot attacks twice, and the boss was two regular robots and one boss robot. This part did feel a little bit grindy because of just how hard this was, but afterwards, the remainder of the game didn't feel too difficult and was balanced very well. So despite some early game difficulty, Dragon Warrior 7 felt like it was the most balanced in the series until Dragon Quest 11 with super strong monsters(the only truly great game that has "draconian difficulty" as an option.)

The other thing about Dragon Warrior 7, is I used two memory cards to trade characters to get all the towns. When you get closer to the maximum amount of allies and there being less of each type out there, it gets really difficult to get those final ones, so you pretty much have to trade to make it easier. I started a brand new game, worked my way up to that point, and traded everything to get the casino. It was much faster than the time it was taking me to do it legitimate.

Now, while I state I'm worried about it, I also want to state that, I do think Square Enix has been doing really well bringing back their classic games. Now while I don't want these old ports and remakes, I can't argue that the changes were enough to make previous games, go from great to near perfect in at least one case, or amazing in another.

Crisis Core Reunion for instance. I'd score the original Crisis Core a 7/10, having to press L and R to change to different materia or to change to your attack, and the game did feel a lot like playing Parasite Eve on PS1 somewhat. It was completely action based, but the slower attacking and enemy AI is very Parasite Eve like. Reunion changes the combat I think making the AI attack a little bit more often, I could be mistaken, but I didn't think they would rebalance the game, so I did play it on hard difficulty, and because of the newer combat that is more similar to Final Fantasy 7 Remake with the changes of theirs, evading no longer uses a resource, attack skills and summons can be banked used when the player wants, and bosses special attack damage can be reduced by damaging them enough. The change made me like the game much more and is an 8/10 with Reunion, which is great, very few games are a 9 or 10 for me.

Tactics Ogre Reborn though is a 10/10. They took the original Tactics Ogre, they took the content of Tactics Ogre on PSP, they reworked a lot of the mechanics for the PSP version into a new streamlined class system and the game is a near perfect TRPG. There's no reason to ever play either the original or the PSP version of this game. It is a masterpiece, and while I still like Brigandine better, Forsena and Grand Edition, I would state the game is so good it's debatably better. The PS1 version was able to easily be broken, just equip everyone with bows or maybe turn everyone into ninjas and level them up as those, you'll never get hit. It's by far better than the PSP game which was just a absolute grind. Tactics Ogre on PSP is straight garbage, I couldn't even be bothered to finish the game despite finishing every route on the original game and every route on Reborn.

Tactics Ogre Reborn uses the actually great ideas in the PSP version of the game that just happen to be an absurd grind. Except for the fact that it changes these mechanics up. It's no longer a grind, you don't start with all level 1 classes every time you get something new They even change the way how the classes work so the game is designed for your parties to be a "build." The more knights you have for instance with guardian force to play extremely defensive, terror knights with broadswords or soldiers with allies that have broadswords, voulge, etc, these are the characters you'll use to cut enemies defense. Archers and other characters with baldur's bow or other status effect ranged weapons to shut out silence or add other status effects. Or instead of the archer, ninja to add silence, stun, or poison.

Now while Star Ocean the Second Story R looks beautiful, the gameplay is a mess imo. The open world is much larger, more padded out, but I didn't realize until late game that I could have actually fast traveled back everywhere I've been. So it makes the change in the open world a bit redundant and it was annoying until I realized that fast travel was added.

Anyways, I just wanted to say all of this to point out that in most cases, Square Enix has really been killing it on the remake/remaster front. Again, I don't care for remasters I'd rather have new games, but Square Enix has been doing it really well and it's a completely different game and the original game is still its own game at that point.

[Aussie2B]

I just hope the Dragon Quest 7 remake drives down the prices on the older versions. That's the only localized mainline entry that I've yet to buy in any form, and I'm more interested in playing original versions of games than remasters/remakes, unless I'm already well familiar with the original.

[kupomogli]

I just hope the Dragon Quest 7 remake drives down the prices on the older versions. That's the only localized mainline entry that I've yet to buy in any form, and I'm more interested in playing original versions of games than remasters/remakes, unless I'm already well familiar with the original.

I'm never going to sell Dragon Warrior 7 but I hate that these modern rereleases do tank the cost of the games. Instead of publishers actively making new games, let's just reduce the cost of classic games by doing yet another rerelease.

I mean here's the thing, people can say it brings the game to a new audience all they want, but if you've never played the games and want to play or own them. You can either purchase the games, they won't be devalued because there's not another release, if you really want to sell it that badly afterwards you'll get most if not all of your money back. But oh wait... you've got emulation. No one can complain about not being able to play the games if they don't collect when they can just emulate it at no cost. It's not like there's a rerelease in most cases.

Because not only does it reduce the cost of the games themselves, but, it also makes less of a reason to own the consoles. Example. There's next to no reason to own a Vita or a Wii U aside a few games that you can count on a single hand, you can play everything literally anywhere else. The consoles lose their identity when you just keep porting everything.

Then finally back to the reduced cost. You don't see car collectors crying about rereleasing a replicate 1965 Ford Mustang because they don't want to pay after market value. No, they buy the cars because they know they'll get their money back.

[Aussie2B]

If you're not going to sell, then you shouldn't care about the value of your stuff. If it's something you love, then a lower value is good because it can then be easily rebought if a replacement is needed for some reason.

There is no benefit to keeping the prices of old games high outside of elitism, of having something you can brag about and lord over people who can't afford it. If I could turn back the clock and have all games go back to '00s values, I would in an instant. I wouldn't care about stuff I have losing value, I'd just use it as an opportunity to buy up stuff I missed getting at sane prices. This hobby was waaaaay more fun when retro games were plentiful and dirt cheap and anybody could join in and build a nice collection.

I welcome every single rerelease that makes an expensive game available affordably again, whether through buying the new version or through older versions dropping in price. Not everybody wants to pirate, and not everybody wants to do what amounts to a very expensive rental. People want legal options for buying and owning games and to support the industry. And since I have a lot more fun with older games than most modern games, I'm happy to expand my collection of retro games via rereleases. It's not a zero-sum game. Most rereleases are a tiny fraction of the expense of a brand-new AAA game, so rereleases aren't stopping modern games from being made. And they target two very different audiences that often don't overlap. In the case of Dragon Quest specifically, the main thing delaying 12 is the fact that both the composer and the artist have passed away, not because they're doing remakes. Furthermore, a lot of Square Enix's rereleases of older games are farmed out to various different developers, so it's not even like those same people would be working on Square Enix's brand-new games.

I don't at all agree with avoiding making games multi-platform either. I still use my Vita tons. The most recent game I was playing on it is exclusive to it in English. Even if a game isn't, who cares? I'll play the game on the system I bought it for. I'm not going to buy a game a second time over just because it gets ported. And sometimes other versions are digital-only, so I'll go with the version I can own physically.

It really is sickening how much gatekeeping there is in this hobby these days. This is not at all what this forum's user base was like in the past. I remember when people would excitedly post about reprints, like for Persona 2 and Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure, and how everybody would be thankful for the second chance to get a game affordably. And I don't remember anybody who already had the games chiming in with their sour grapes.

[SparTonberry]

I agree. Unless you're buying games with the interest to resell, there's no reason to get upset about old versions "becoming cheaper".

[kupomogli]

It really is sickening how much gatekeeping there is in this hobby these days. This is not at all what this forum's user base was like in the past. I remember when people would excitedly post about reprints, like for Persona 2 and Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure, and how everybody would be thankful for the second chance to get a game affordably. And I don't remember anybody who already had the games chiming in with their sour grapes.

I remember these reprints also, they were reprinted during the sixth generation and I did buy Persona 2 Eternal Punishment during that time, but it was also a PS1 game, it wasn't a remaster of the game on newer consoles cutting away at the PS1s identity.

And while I don't "plan" to sell my favorite games or even any of my collection, I'd like to have the option. I mean I did purchase these games more than 20 years ago, I did keep them in perfect condition this entire time. I paid good money for these games, I'd like for them to atleast keep or increase in value since I put so much care into maintaining them for more than 20 years now going back to the PS2 and prior. Dragon Warrior 7 for instance, disc is in perfect condition, manual is in perfect condition, insert is in perfect condition, the box may be a little dusty, but the contents are immaculate.

It's a bit ridiculous how little people regard video game collecting value, where stamps, books(just literature,) and coins can go into the millions. Something like a video game to me is more meaningful meaningful of an experience, especially more meaningful than a fu**ing coin or stamp.

*edit*

And speaking of the instruction manuals. Many RPGs were in these double jewel cases with these big ass full color instruction manuals. But stamps are worth more, nice.