Dragon Quest VII Reimagined was one of the vital stunning bulletins to return out of final week’s Nintendo Direct. It’s one more remake for the usually missed PS1-era Japanese RPG, and it’ll arrive amid a current inflow of different Dragon Quest remasters. This one has my full consideration, although, and never simply because the unique recreation is a sprawling journey I’ve at all times wished to return to and correctly end. It’s additionally the artwork model, which strikes previous the current obsession with HD-2D pixel artwork glow-ups and presents a blueprint for methods to revive tons of different beloved JRPG classics.
The brand new “hand-crafted” aesthetic is extra akin to the toys-and-dioramas-style visuals of Yoshi’s Woolly World or the Legend of Zelda: Hyperlink’s Awakening remake than what we’re used to getting from Sq. Enix. Dragon Quest VII Reimagined sits someplace between the HD-2D retro sensibility of final yr’s glorious Dragon Quest III remake and the hyper-realistic, Unreal Engine visuals of the Closing Fantasy VII remake trilogy, with detailed graphics that exaggerate the storybook whimsy of Akira Toriyama’s authentic designs slightly than operating away from them.
The massive secret to this new look? Scanning precise dolls. Hello-res captures of IRL toys for characters like Hero, Kiefer, and Maribel helped floor the brand new artwork model whereas retaining all the whimsy. “For this game, we scanned figurines, like this one here, to create the in-game models,” the remake’s producer stated in a short overview with collection creator Yuji Horii. “They’re very well done. Using a graphical aesthetic we call the ‘diorama style,’ we’ve depicted the stories and the characters’ emotions in an entirely new way.”
The sport isn’t distant both. It involves PlayStation 5, Xbox Sequence X/S, PC, Swap 1, and Swap 2 on February 5, 2026 (one small bummer is that the Swap 2 bodily model is a recreation key card solely and progress doesn’t transfer between the 2 console generations).
Alongside exploring dungeons, participating in acquainted turn-based battles, and tinkering with a meaty job system, Dragon Quest VII revolves round an island-hopping journey that sees its heroes time-traveling between the previous and current as they confront the Demon Lord Orgodemir. It’s a really, very lengthy recreation, clocking in at as much as 100 hours only for the principle story. Regardless of the heft, it was principally missed when it first got here to PlayStation due partly to its dated-looking graphics. It didn’t get localized within the West till 2001 after the PS2 was already out and only a month earlier than the arrival of Closing Fantasy X.
Dragon Quest VII obtained a re-evaluation when it was remade for the 3DS in 2013 as Dragon Quest VII: Fragments of the Forgotten Previous. It utterly overhauled the graphics into 3D polygons and abridged a lot of the story to shave dozens of hours off the typical runtime. Reimagined will make additional enhancements, together with an much more streamlined story and new quality-of-life options like a redesigned UI to make the sport simpler to navigate. However essentially the most pivotal change will in all probability be the brand new “Moonlighting” mechanic that lets characters use talents from two totally different jobs concurrently.
new screenshots of Dragon Quest 7: Reimagined, it actually appears nice. I want they’d use this to make new video games.
It appears virtually like a diorama. They may push it additional and have claymation-like model sooner or later pic.twitter.com/bMMzU2rhyn
— Dream’s Longest Day (@Dreamboum) September 15, 2025
We’ve seen Sq. Enix take all kinds of various approaches to reviving its again catalog in recent times. Whereas FFVII obtained the complete remake therapy, different PS1 video games like Chrono Cross and Legend of Mana have merely obtained HD decision boosts and extra options that may be thought-about barebones even by the requirements of a third-party emulator. Then there’s stuff within the center like Dragon Quest III and Closing Fantasy Ways that are ground-up overhauls that also attempt to stay as trustworthy the originals as attainable.
Dragon Quest VII Reimagined presents a fourth different that may be good for different video games like the unique Chrono Set off, which Toriyama additionally designed the characters for. It even appears good for seemingly impossible-to-remake RPGs from different publishers like Earthbound. Gamers have been sharing fan artwork of that SNES basic within the model of Reimagined for many years now. We even not too long ago got new clay models of the principle solid which are good for scanning. I hope the Dragon Quest VII Reimagined mannequin proves to be viable for initiatives past Sq. Enix, although I might actually see it working for one thing just like the long-rumored Closing Fantasy IX remake as effectively.
