Dragon Quest 7 Reimagined: After about 10 hours

I regret to inform the gaming world that after 10 hours of playing my latest attempt at replacing Octopath Traveler 2 as something I love in the RPG world, I would say that I am mostly failing with DQ7RE.

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The graphics are great, the music is friggin outstanding, and the voice acting is extremely well-done in both Japanese (don't know what they are saying, but it sounds intense) and English. They don't go over the top with accents but it is quite British for the most part. All of that I am fine with and I am even ok with the excessive cutscenes which was completely expected because this is a Dragon Quest game and it is a Square-Enix game and this is just what they do. At least they are skippable although I wish you had the option to just skip line-by-line instead of only having the option of blasting through the entire sequence. Multiple times I was tired and I held down the skip button only to emerge into an area with no idea where I am. Lucky the map button lets you warp almost all of the time.

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Now let's get to what is seriously irritating me and if it continues, will likely be the reason why I depart this game before finishing it.

It's boring

That's right, I said it. This game is boring. The story is fine I guess but it is very repetitive. You find these shards that open up new islands that have disappeared in the past for one reason or another and after you kill a boss it now becomes part of the present world and you can wander around without enemies bothering you for the most part. It was pretty cool the first time I arrived at a town whose residents had all been turned to stone, or swapped places with animals, or were plagued by forest creatures but every other town you arrive at is just some adaptation or "reimagining" of a situation you have already been through several times.

Plus I am 11 hours of gameplay into the game and other than 3 occasions, I have NEVER done combat other than simply hitting the basic attack button and win every single encounter very easily. I could sort this by changing the game's difficulty from "normal" to "hard" but from what I have read this merely gives great HP pool to enemies and that isn't the issue here.

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There just aren't any situations or fights that I have found remotely challenging and this includes all but 1 of the bosses I have encountered and the only reason why THAT happened was because I went to this boss too early because I didn't watch the cutscene.

Paste Magazine goes further, calling the experience "a bottomless cauldron" of time-sink, criticizing the pointless combat and lack of meaningful choices, stating it feels like "dying—except not as fun."

I don't know what Paste Magazine is but I can't really say that I disagree with it. The combat is pointless and I'm at the point now where I avoid all combat that I possibly and at least this is an option. The only time that it isn't a choice is when you have some proper old school random encounters which take place anytime you are sailing in your boat.

The usual suspect critics like IGN all say this game is amazing but in case you didn't know, they are somewhat obligated to say nice things about anything that Square-Enix creates, lest they lose their funding or something. Even though IGN was being as nice as they can, they still only gave it 7/10

Recently I found myself in a town where all the people had been turned to stone and it was actually quite touching.

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Other than that though, I have to say that the story is kind of whimsically stupid. You are just going from place to place and seeking out more and more puzzle pieces in order to open new places where you repeat the same process.

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_{this very early fight is the only time I have died in 11 hours of gameplay}

I looked at a progress website and they had 27 chapters for the walkthru. I didn't read them but I did find out that I am currently in chapter 7 of this and man oh man, I really don't know if I have it in me to put an additional 40-50 hours into something that is failing to keep me entertained.

Maybe revisiting old games with graphical renovations is not the right thing to do. I am going to take a break and move on to something else for now, but am not going to delete it from the SD card.

I would feel seriously duped if I had paid $70 for this but then again, this is a remake, so I wouldn't have anyone to blame but me in that case.