When publisher Enix took the Dragon Quest role-playing game series from Nintendo platforms to the original PlayStation some 25 years ago, it did so in a big way. Perhaps too big. Dragon Quest 7, released in 2000, is infamous for its gargantuan length and plodding story. Across two discs of content, it can easily take players 100 hours or more to complete the main quest.
Even Takeshi Ichikawa, the producer on next year’s Dragon Quest 7 Reimagined, recognizes that issue. His team at Square Enix is streamlining that game with the Reimagined remaster, which will make some big cuts and alternative pacing choices. It’s an important and personal choice; Ichikawa himself gave up on the original Dragon Quest 7, thanks to its laborious first act.
“Back when I played the OG release on PlayStation, I was in elementary school,” Ichikawa told viraltrendingcontent in an interview at a hands-on event for Dragon Quest 7 Reimagined, “I remember that it took a very long time to get to the very first battle in the game, and to be honest with you, I kind of gave up. Because of that, for this remastered release, I wanted to be very mindful about this. I didn’t want people like me, when I was a young kid, to give up very early into the game. The beginning parts of the game were some of the areas that we were really especially careful with and terms of re-imagining and streamlining the experience.”
Explained Ichikawa, “Even with the 3DS version of [Dragon Quest 7], the story was still quite long. So we came to a decision that we wanted to streamline the story, [and] make this experience for modern audiences.”
Ichikawa said that narrative moments that “had little or no direct correlation or direct impact to the main scenario of the story” will be cut, or presented as optional side stories in Dragon Quest 7 Reimagined with that streamlining in mind.
Dragon Quest 7 Reimagined is being designed to refresh more than just the game’s story, its battles and its visuals will also be substantially updated, Ichikawa said.
Graphically, developers are taking inspiration from across the Dragon Quest franchise. The game’s cast of main characters are rendered in a doll-like style that hews closely to artist Akira Toriyama’s original designs. Developers even made real physical versions of those characters in doll form, and 3D scanned them to create new in-game models. The game’s environments look like dioramas, drawing some inspiration from the HD-2D look of other Square Enix RPGs.
Having played the PlayStation 5 version of Dragon Quest 7 Reimagined myself for a short spell, I love the look of the new take on the classic. The main cast of heroes all have a tangible, toylike appearance to them, and monsters and spells are spectacularly rendered. It’s easily the best- looking Dragon Quest game to date.
Gameplay and battles have been thoroughly streamlined, just like Dragon Quest 7’s story. In terms of new additions, heroes can now have two vocations — a core vocation and a Moonlighting vocation — to add some variety. And some vocations (like Pirate), are getting extra attention in Reimagined.
“When we were working on the development of the Reimagined version, I did have some personal wishes that I wanted to make to the development team, specifically in regard to the Pirate vocation,” Ichikawa said. “Back in the original release and 3DS version, it was kind of a rather unfortunate vocation. I personally liked it, but it was a bit different from the other vocations where [you can rank up]. If you master specific vocations — for example, the Gladiator or the Paladin — it eventually leads you on to a higher rank of vocation. But Pirate, mastering that one didn’t specifically give you anything, so a lot of players ended up skipping over it.
“But given the overall storyline, the scenario, and the worldview of Dragon Quest 7, it does make you feel like you want to be a Pirate because you travel all around the world on ships. But again, the original releases and the 3DS version didn’t really make the Pirate rewarding. So that’s the one part I requested that the team work on to make it more rewarding for the players so that they feel like they want to become a Pirate in the game.”
Another big change is the ability to quickly change one’s vocation in Dragon Quest 7 Reimagined. Rather than having to trek back to Alltrades Abbey, a major source of backtracking in previous iterations of the game, players can switch job roles with the press of a button to access the Career Sphere.
While battles against monsters in Reimagined still follow the turn-based structure of previous Dragon Quest games, the developer is working to streamline much of it. For one thing, some battles against lower-level monsters can be completed in the overworld, without having to engage in turn-based battles. Should you see a pathetic Slime bouncing around, and your team is capable of easily dispatching it, you can whack it while in exploration mode and quickly dispatch it. Heroes can also get “worked up” in battle and “Let Loose” powerful moves, both offensive and defensive, in a fashion similar to Final Fantasy’s Limit Breaks or Dragon Quest 11‘s Pep Powers.
Additionally, there are options to lightly program your teammates to behave to your instructions (sort of like Final Fantasy 12’s Gambit system) or go fully automatic, letting the AI control your team while turn-based battles play out. These computer-controlled battles move at lightning speed, and a big boss fight against the merman monster Gracos during my hands-on time went by in mere minutes while I watched. That may not be the ideal, most strategic way to play a Dragon Quest game, but sometimes you’ve just had enough.
While I only got to spend a short amount of time with Dragon Quest 7 Reimagined myself, I’m looking forward to its release next year — even more so than the recent HD-2D remakes of the Erdrick Trilogy, and maybe even enough to sink a hundred hours into the remastered and reimagined RPG, for the right reasons this time.
Dragon Quest 7 Reimagined will be released on Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X on Feb. 5, 2026.
