Remember back in the 90s there were all kinds of Japanese games, RPG or otherwise that we gaming fans were denied from enjoying? Yeah, I had thought those days were mostly behind us. I mean we got freaking Dragon Quest ROCKET SLIME of all games, and most the Japanese games we've been missing out on haven't exactly been amazing, or in some cases its clear there is no market for them in the U.S. Shining Force Feather looks neat for example, but is anyone really losing sleep over missing out on that game?
Well, all this was the case until some evil person (more likely persons) decided 7th Dragon didn't deserve a release outside of Japan.
What the heck is 7th Dragon?
7th Dragon was created by what some would call a "dream team" of Phantasy Star creator Rieko Kodama and Etrian Odyssey creator Kazuya Niinou. Published by Sega, the easiest way I can describe this amazing RPG is as Etrian Odyssey meets Dragon Quest. You make a party of 4 pooling from classes such as Knight, Medic, and Princess, and you keep a guild of characters, from which you can make several different parties or just swap in a character or 2 as needed (or just make 4 characters and stick with them the whole time). You gain skill points as your characters level and decide how you want to spend them on gaining or improving skills. Its a fantastic party building system, and there a ton of different options on building parties that can make the experience much different.
As far as actual game progression, picture just about any Dragon Quest game and you'll have a general idea. Combat is the typical Dragon Quest style, selecting your attacks and then everything plays out based on character/monster speeds.There's some nice flashy animations and having your super cute character sprites attack, cast spells, etc. looks very cool. There's a lot strategy in combat and it is a blast. Progression through the story (its lighter on story) progresses in a somewhat linear manor. There's always kind of a next area you need to head to, but there's usually a ton of optional stuff you can do along the way, and there's always a great feeling of exploration in the game. Absolutely the coolest feature however is the Dragon meter though. The story involves the world being overrun by Dragons, so this meter is basically how many Dragons are left in the world. Though as far as I know you don't have to kill all of the well over 600 Dragons (all of which are basically bosses) but it really gives you a great feeling of progress, and when that thing gets to 0 it must be the best feeling ever. Simply put, this game is an absolutely fantastic RPG, easily as good and probably better than the Etrian Odyssey games, and I could definitely see this becoming a cool series.
So if its so great, why is it stuck in Japan?
There's lots of potential reasons why no one has localized this game, the problem being that I think the majority of reasons to not bring it over are misguided. The game is hard, and I've heard that's a reason why some publishers weren't interested in it, but the game is definitely easier than many recent RPG releases (hi Demon's Souls), so I don't get this reason. Plus, its kind of the perfect time to be releasing a difficult RPG. Demon's Souls was a huge hit, the Persona games have been quite successful, and in general one of the big complaints I see about RPGs from RPG fans is games being too easy. Clearly there is a market for difficult games.
Could the super-cute character designer be turning publishers off? I don't know. Dragon Quest does decent enough here in the US with its cutesy monster designs, and its really only the character designs in combat, as the rest of the game, especially the monster design are less so. There's always the possibility that Sega itself was turned off by sales of their RPGs in the past few years, but then they still brought Sands of Destruction, Resonance of Fate, Infinite Space, and Yakuza 3 to the west, so that hardly seems like a good reason. It seems to me that if you take a really good rpg, slap on it "from the creator of the Phantasy Star series" on it, and give it a decent marketing push, SOMEONE should be able to make a profit from the damn thing.
I mean its not without risk certainly, as its not a guaranteed hit with an existing fan base like a Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest game, but this game being published by say Atlus, or even NIS America would bring the game up on a lot of gamer's radars just because its a game from a popular niche publisher. This game is dying to be localized by SOMEONE. Until then, which is seeming less and less likely, 7th Dragon will just be another Seiken Densetsu 3, a fantastic Japanese game that we just never get a release for, and spend hours discussing what could have been, and frankly, I think 7th Dragon could have been a huge hit for someone.
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