7th Dragon III Code: VFD
I really like the visual direction this game took. It’s certainly not beautiful in the same way as something like Bravely Default and Bravely Second, but that’s to expected since this all the environments are 3D in this game. What I really liked about the visuals, and the world in this game in general, was the attention to detail. One example of this is your party’s home base, Nodens, which is originally meant to be the building of a wealthy corporation. There are a lot of nice touches that make it feel like what you’d imagine a building like this to feel like; cafes and cafeterias on some floors, vending machines and benches on others, sunlight pouring in through the windows on the higher floors, a city skyline seen through a window in the Skylounge. There are a lot of NPCs scattered throughout the building as well and, with some fantastic music also present, it ends up feeling like an endearing place. The same attention to detail is extended to the other overworld locations, dungeons, and battle backgrounds as well. The first place you travel to outside of Tokyo in particular looks great.
Taking the story for what it is, it’s executed well and I enjoyed it. It’s fantastical and ridiculous, but that’s par for the course. I appreciate the fact that there was barely an attempt at trying to adequately explain a lot of the things that most games try (and fail) to explain; instead, the narrative just kept getting pushed forward and it kept the story interesting for me. I did feel like I was missing a lot of references, especially towards the end, since I haven’t played the previous games in the series, but the story is self-contained enough that I was satisfied with it in the end. I would like to see this series, or another series that is born from it, continue, as I think the overarching theme of hunting dragons across a futuristic Tokyo (and going back to the past to hunt them in Atlantis and to the future to hunt them in Eden) was really cool. I do wish they did more to expand the story and the background regarding the latter location I mentioned though. As for the characters, there are a lot of typical archetypes you’ll see in anime and JRPGs, but for the most part all the characters are likable (even the ones that you know will inevitably betray you to some extent) and I wanted to see them succeed or redeem themselves in the end.
Overall, the gameplay is great. It doesn’t do anything drastically different, but the team mechanic adds an interesting layer to the combat. Timed correctly, enemies can be debuffed in several ways, your team can be buffed in several ways, and fallen allies can be revived with team supports in the same turn, all without sacrificing any of your primary team’s actions. Buffs/debuffs do make a difference in this game and you’re limited to three primary party members in combat (as opposed to the standard four), so it’s a nice way to speed up the combat and a layer of strategy at the same time.
The dungeon crawling in this game is also very satisfying. There are random encounters, but the real fun of the game comes from hunting dragons, which can be seen roaming in the dungeons. The number of dragons (around 250, though I don’t remember exactly) seems daunting at first, especially since you don’t have a lot of fights against dragons under your belt when you first see it. However, once my team become stronger and I started to form strategies for beating dragons efficiently, it made it all the more satisfying to enter a dungeon and see that I’d knocked the number down by 30 or 40 a few hours later after clearing it.
There are some gameplay elements that I wasn’t as much a fan of. Instant kill moves are present in some boss battles and those are easily in the top five of things I dislike most when I come across them in JRPGs. The game also does a poor job telling the player what kind of other status ailments to expect when heading into a boss fight. Many JRPGs can get away with this, to some extent, but there’s really no reason for it in this game. There are no “surprise” boss battles; it’s blatantly obvious every time a boss battle is about to occur. Your team also has a navigator who is providing analysis and support from your base of operations on every mission, so there’s an obvious explanation in the story that could have been used to give the player a hint of what to expect (in fact this does happen in two or three of the boss fights, which makes it even more puzzling why it doesn’t happen for all of them). It may seem a little unfair to hold these things against this game specifically since they’re so rampant in the genre, but a poor decision is a poor decision no matter how often it happens. However, these are ultimately minor nitpicks.
The sections of the game where the party is split up into separate teams is probably going to be hit or miss for people, but I’m glad these parts of the game exist. As someone who grows irrationally attached to party members in JRPGs, I would have rolled with the same three party members I started the game with all the way to the end had it not been for these sections. It was fun to learn and use classes that I otherwise would have not used, and it was a nice change of pace from the classes my first team was comprised of. Because the second and third team party members also receive the same amount of experience and skill points as the first team in every battle while all your teams are together (which is for the overwhelming majority of the game), it’s also amusing to see how broken some classes become in between these sections. My third team struggled a bit when I first had to use them as my primary team, but when another one of these sections rolled around towards the end of the game, I was able to level up two of the party members’ skills so much that they were able to one-shot dragons by themselves with certain moves. Given that every class feels distinct and has its own style, it also greatly changes up the gameplay. What works for the first team will be different from what works with the second and third teams if they’re a mix of different classes, so the approach to combat has to vary from team to team in these sections depending on the team’s collective set of skills.
All of that is made true largely by the level of depth and versatility to the classes in this game. For example, during boss battles, one class (Duelist) can spend most of the fight setting up traps that don’t do a lot of damage, but can inflict useful status ailments. If you manage to set up all three traps within four turns, then a powerful attack is triggered at the end of that turn which deals a huge amount of damage. Given that the preparation required to create this scenario can take a lot of turns, you’re taking this class from playing a minor support role for most of the fight to being your hardest hitter. This is probably the most extreme example of it, but every class in the game has a varied enough set of skills that they can switch between playing of offense, defense, or support and remain useful in some manner.
I've played a lot of JRPGs on the 3DS this year and while this may not take the top spot among them, it doesn't feel out of place mentioning it alongside the likes of the Fire Emblem Fates games and Bravely Second. Overall, for me, 7th Dragon III Code: VFD is a great game.
Topic: What is the last game you beat? Thoughts/impressions? (Read 587053 times)
