Dragon Quest VII



The first Dragon Quest game on the PlayStation, Dragon Quest VII: Warriors of Eden tells the story of a simple fisherman's son. His two best friends are Prince Kiefer, a Rebel Prince who regularly flouts his father's restrictions, and Maribel, the spoiled Tsundere daughter of the richest merchant in town. Theirs is an idyllic lifestyle, with no monsters haunting the countryside, no threats to their kingdom...

...And no other countries or continents beyond their small stretch of land.

See, during the final showdown between Good and Evil, most of the world got sealed away by the Demon Lord... and God never got around to fixing things. Whoops. Of course, that's where our hero comes into play, as he and his friends stumble across a great secret hidden in their island's Ancient Ruins and have to Set Right What Once Went Wrong via Time Travel. Or something like that, anyway.

DQVII introduced the concept of 'Party Chat' to the series. By selecting 'Talk' whenever you weren't facing an NPC, your party members would comment on whatever just happened. This wasn't restricted to major plot events, either; Kiefer, Maribel and the others almost always had something to say about even the most minor NPC's 'Welcome to Corneria'. This feature made it into Dragon Quest VIII and several of the remakes of earlier games.

Dragon Quest VII provides examples of:

 * After the End: In a sense. Your little island is the only part of the world that wasn't sealed away, so...
 * For the curious, the game starts with one little island with two towns, a castle and a fishing village, and a ruins that everyone is forbidden to enter. . The rest of the story is nothing but
 * All of the Other Reindeer: Oh, Dragon Quest VII adores this one: there's Pamala in Engow, Zebbot and Eri in Falrish, Baloch in Litorud, Sieben and his pets in Loomin, Firia in Gorges, Lief in Labres...
 * Firia deserves special mention here, because
 * And I Must Scream: In one village, everyone was turned to stone by the Gray Rain...
 * Apologetic Attacker: The first world-sector boss is who refuses to fight. This becomes a cross between Tear Jerker and free exp...
 * Arbitrary Headcount Limit: Like usual, you can only have four heroes in your party. The game handles this by having party members leave for various reasons at certain points:  You do eventually get the chance to choose your team, but really, given that you've only got five heroes total... a fifth slot in battle would've saved a lot of headaches.
 * Anti-Grinding: Until you reach certain late-game areas or Disc 2, each area you visit has a Level Cap on how far you can take your class/skill grinding. You aren't really informed of this; battles simply stop counting towards your class mastery. Thankfully, it takes longer to level up in this game compared to nearly all other Dragon Quest games, except maybe 8.
 * Only for your class level. There is none for your characters battle level.
 * Badass Bookworm: Quite a few NPC allies and helpers qualify, but none as much Saide. He filled a house with books on other cities and traveling and is one damn good brawler.
 * Badass Grandpa: Melvin.
 * Badass Normal: Kiefer, as he never learns any spells, although he does gain a flaming sword technique. Some of your NPC allies also qualify.
 * Big Badass Wolf: The White Wolves of Orph.
 * Big Beautiful Woman: Mollie, the hero's mother. In addition to being a Supreme Chef, she's noted to have aged quite gracefully by some NPCs.
 * Big Damn Heroes: Most of the time, your heroes arrive just in time to save various towns and lands from destruction and despair. Most of the time.
 * Blessed with Suck: In the Deja tribe, two special bloodlines are maintained as according to prophecy, descendants of both bloodlines will eventually be called upon to perform a special ceremony. ...A ceremony that will only work once. And nobody's sure just when that duty will need to be performed.
 * Then there's Coastal, where
 * Boisterous Bruiser: Kiefer, through and through.
 * Bonus Boss: God. Literally.
 * And his four sidekicks, who can be almost as hard or harder, depending on your skills.
 * Book Ends: The game begins in Fishbell during the Amitt Harvest when Mollie gives you a Fishsub to deliver to your father Borkano but he sails off before you have a chance to give it to him. You also discover Maribel stowing away on his ship and she promptly gets kicked off. Later  you are given another Fishsub by Mollie to deliver to Borkano but this time it actually gets delivered. Then   the annual Amitt Harvest begins again and once again you are given another Fishsub to deliver to your father but this time she makes one for you to bring with you on your first fishing voyage with your father. Once again you find Maribel stowing away on the ship but before she gets kicked off, Borkano allows her to stay on just this once.
 * Bragging Rights Reward: Your reward for beating the bonus bosses? God moves to your immigrant town.
 * Brainwashed and Crazy:
 * Broken Bridge: Will be fixed tomorrow.
 * Calling the Old Man Out: An interesting variation in Gorges:
 * Can't Catch Up: For a many a player, Maribel can become this. Some try to get her out of this, others  purposefully ditch her. Regardless, all of her stats end up lower than anyone's save MP, Intelligence, and Style.
 * Changeling Fantasy: An odd twist. He was conceived and gestated for seven months centuries ago, and was then transported to the womb of the woman who gave birth to him when his genetic mother turned into a mermaid. His real father, of course, is a Pirate.
 * Childhood Friend Romance: See the Love Dodecahedron below, despite the participants being older than children. Also,
 * Chivalrous Pervert: Kiefer flirts shamelessly, but won't go any further.
 * Collection Sidequest: One Sidequest sees you founding and expanding your own town. To do so, you travel around Present Time searching for Immigrants, who randomly appear in various 'hot spots' in different villages. Oh, and collect enough of different types of Immigrants, and your town will turn out extra-special...
 * The Monster Park Sidequest, meanwhile, has you recruiting monsters. Not for battle partners like in other installments, mind; just for the park. Oh, and you need to find Blueprints for the various parts of the park, first. And if you manage to recruit every monster available?
 * Conspicuous CG: With the sprites rendered in classic Toriyama-style 2D looking very much like upgraded Dragon Quest VI sprites as well as 3D backgrounds and attacks...it can look a bit..style-breaking.
 * Continuity Nod: Numerous to earlier games, as usual, including some of the names of minor characters. Most notable is the return of the town-building sidequest from Dragon Quest III.
 * Cool Boat: The Marle de Dragonne, which is more of a floating castle than anything else.
 * It is, more or less two boats, glued together by the castle in the middle.
 * It even has its own Awesome Music. Now that's one Nice Boat.
 * Crazy Prepared: SAIDE. The guy is implied to have never been outside of the desert, but is strong as heck for an NPC, has some mad skills, and hasn't even started on his first real adventure until the end of the game. Sure, he's Hadeed's descendant, but Hadeed was never as strong as Saide despite having more fighting experience than Saide!
 * Cut and Paste Environments: The bonus dungeons. Both of them.
 * Darker and Edgier: This may just be the darkest Dragon Quest ever. While previous and future entries often dealt with some rather dark materiel, DQ7 dives headlong into stuff like racism, slavery, multiple acts of genocide, horrific natural disasters and more.
 * Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: God was defeated!
 * Dojikko: Aimy of Litorud looks like this at first, falling down the stairs every morning...
 * Doom Magnet: Loomin's an entire town suffering from this. And no, it's not a Doomed Hometown, either.
 * Dying Like Animals: The Hero and his party are the only people in the world capable of fighting monsters and winning. Eventually, this starts to get annoying.
 * Everything Trying to Kill You: Up to and including wine bottles, books, pots, wells, and columns.
 * A Fete Worse Than Death: The Festival of Engow, which involves
 * Fiery Redhead: Maribel.
 * Fluffy Fashion Feathers: The Angel leotard has a bunch of feathers arranged like a Showgirl Skirt. But this is just in the artwork, not the game itself.
 * Fortune Teller: Pamala of Engow. She's stuck playing The Cassandra when you first meet, warning of disaster that you have to avert.
 * Free Rotating Camera
 * Getting Crap Past the Radar: Talking to everyone, both the various NPCs and your own party via Party Chat, results in a lot of questionable scenes. In one instance, you can talk to two kids trying unsuccessfully to milk a cow. Your party observes among themselves that said cow is male, and Melvin comments that he milked many a teat in his day.
 * God Is Evil: Subverted, the God you first resurrect is actually.
 * The Gods Must Be Lazy:
 * Gotta Catch Em All: The map pieces, which you need to unlock new areas.
 * Groundhog Day Loop: One region is stuck in this, prompting further Timey-Wimey Ball antics trying to hunt down the cause.
 * Guide Dang It: Many map pieces, which are needed to advance the plot, are hidden in out-of-the-way places.
 * Want the best monster class-forms or the town-type of your choice? You're gonna need a guide.
 * Hello, Insert Name Here: Once again, your hero.
 * Heroic Mime: Lampshaded by the Party Talk feature; your allies frequently prompt you to respond, or react as if you had actually said something to them... or just given them a Meaningful Look or two.
 * Hot Dad: Borkano, arguably (well, his Japanese name is pronounced Volcano!). He's no spring chicken, but he's extremely charismatic (Even the King turns to him for help first!), and quite a few women still wish they could have been married to him.
 * Amusingly played with when comparing his son to him. People wonder why he doesn't look much like him.
 * I'm a Humanitarian: Monsters boast about eating people alive.
 * Jack of All Stats: Your hero, naturally. Dharma lets him become The Ace easier than other characters.
 * Jerkass: HONDARA. Also, that warrior in the pink armor. After having his abilities stripped of him, he takes the demons up on their offer to use the Soulshatter Sword to shatter five souls, with his justification being that he deserves better than everyone else in the Penal Town. The last soul shattered ends up being Neris' kid brother Zaji. You meet up with him again later, and not only is he not the least bit repentant for what he's done, he actually mocks Neris for wanting revenge.
 * The present day Mayor of Labres is this, Crazy Prepared, and Ax Crazy. He feared someone was going to find the tablet eventually, and had a giant axe ready so smash it to bits when they did. Why he did has no real justification either.
 * Jerk with a Heart of Gold:
 * Jumped At the Call: Kiefer. He's so excited by the prospect of adventure, that after your first actual fight (against mere slimes, no less), he goes into a hysterical laughing fit from the adrenaline rush.
 * After Dragon Quest Monsters: Caravan Heart, we know the reasons behind all this:
 * Killer Robot: The Mechsoldiers assaulting Falrish.
 * Knight Templar Parent: The King of Estard, who forbids Kiefer from helping to restore the world. Not that it stops him.
 * Love Dodecahedron: Hoo boy.
 * And It Got Worse, folks.
 * Love At First Sight: Michaela has elements of this with the hero. What really hits it off for her are his age similarity to her (a breath of fresh air when your castle if full of older people) and kind-nature. Though it's never really explored much, the Hero is noted by allies to get a bit shy around her when Party Chatting, and is said to be rather happy to be kissed by her in the epilogue. This is all to Maribel's chagrin, of course.
 * Metamorphosis:  got hit by this.
 * Magic Knight: Melvin, who is more magic-centric. Aira, is more combat centric.
 * Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Make the wrong choices in certain cases, and...
 * One Man Party: Amazingly, it's not the hero.
 * Only Sane Man: In Krage,
 * Our Souls Are Different: They can be sucked out by a magical sword.
 * Papa Wolf: Borkano. The remaining sea-monsters in the world are why he's so against you and Maribel traveling with him.
 * Parental Obliviousness: Subverted; the heroes' parents find out what they're doing early on and cope with it... to varying degrees.
 * Pet Baby Wild Animal: Sieble does this twice, with Rocky the Bombcrag and Chibi the larval Hellworm. Um... yeah. Guy has exotic tastes.
 * Plot Hole: After your first fight (against Slimes, of course), Kiefer's reaction suggests this is the first time he's ever encountered monsters, let alone fought some. Then Caravan Heart came out...
 * Fridge Brilliance: He didn't fight in Caravan Heart, his monsters did.
 * Power Fist: Gabo's Weapon of Choice.
 * The icons look like fists, but they're claws in the artwork and attack animation. His high strength still lets him give a good haymaker though!
 * Precision F-Strike: Averted. A lot of other "bad words" are used though. Even by Gabo. Pretty jarring considering the NES and GBC entries...
 * Prolonged Prologue: You need to spend at least two hours of gameplay to get into a first dungeon and first battle with a slime.
 * The Quisling: In Dune, Hadeed insists that Queen Ferid has become this.
 * Raised by Natives: Firia, a sweet little girl adopted by Pendragon, the leader of the winged Lefa tribe. She faces constant bullying by her peers and step-sister, and copes as best she can...
 * Raised by Wolves: Gabo, with good reason:
 * Real Men Wear Pink: Played with; the party meets a warrior in pink armor who's headed to the Shrine of Dharma to change classes.
 * Perhaps this was a Shout-Out to Ragnar in DQIV?
 * The outfit, yes, but the personality? Never. Ragnar's a hero who saves children, marriages, and befriends monsters, for crying out loud.
 * Rebellious Princess: Kiefer hits every part of this trope's description save gender.
 * Later on there's Aira of the Deja tribe, who's just as rebellious.
 * There's a reason for that.
 * Maribel is a Mayor's daughter. Pretty close.
 * Redundant Researcher: The desert scholar.
 * Replacement Goldfish:
 * Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: Possessed only by your party and the other people on your island.
 * Robot Maid: Eri. Not a Ridiculously-Human Robots.
 * Rule of Funny: WHEE!! I'm selling my old weapons to a CHICKEN!! Wait, he used to be a human? Oh well. How much for this Copper Sword? Cock-a-doodle-do!
 * Sadly Mythtaken: Happens in-universe; thanks to Time Travel, the heroes witness several events which are then twisted by the passage of time, leading to various effects. In at least one instance, the twisting is deliberate to guard the town's reputation.
 * Satan:
 * He's certainly cruel enough. Not to mention, extremely prideful.
 * Sealed Good in a Can: The hero Melvin was sealed away in case the Demon Lord happened to rise again.
 * Shoot the Dog: In Loomin, the townsfolk ask you do this
 * Shout-Out: The man who tasks you with building your own town? Sim City.
 * The Slacker: Hondara, the hero's worthless wannabe Con Man uncle. Your mother frequently worries that her son might turn out the same way.
 * So Long and Thanks For All the Gear: Averted;
 * Played straight with
 * Is that true? As far as I could tell, she returned any key items (but kept anything else).
 * Star-Crossed Lovers: Several.
 * Squishy Wizard: Maribel has elements of this, though the game's job system lets you compensate for this to some degree if you want.
 * Talking Is a Free Action: You can talk to your other party members at any time, even during battle! ...However, if you choose to talk three times in a single turn instead of selecting your actions for that round, the enemy gets a free round of attacks.
 * Time Skip: Aside from the obvious, you get to revisit a few 'past time' towns while working on other villages in the region. One case gives you an update on the Love Dodecahedron mentioned above:
 * Timey-Wimey Ball: Oh yeah.
 * Torches and Pitchforks: Shows up in
 * Town with a Dark Secret: A minor version, but still irritating:
 * Tragic Monster:
 * Translation Train Wreck: There are numerous typos in the English version, but given the sheer amount of text they had to translate...
 * Triang Relations:
 * Tsundere: Maribel, who's heavy on the tsun-tsun and not so much with the dere-dere for most of the game.
 * Two Guys and a Girl: Your hero, Kiefer and Maribel. Then, Hero, Maribel, and Gabo.
 * Video Game 3D Leap: The leap was very minor in this case, with Dragon Quest VIII seeing the full presentation upgrade.
 * Water Source Tampering: Krage's sole source of water is a single well in the middle of town. Then it gets spiked with a poison that everyone believe that they're the Demon Lord. Considerable amounts of Stupid Evil antics ensue until your merry band is able to do anything about it.
 * Wild Child: Gabo
 * Winged Humanoid: The Lefa Tribe of Gorges.
 * Xanatos Gambit: Played by  of all people. Blocked entirely for plot contents.
 * Your Princess Is in Another Castle: Great job, you resurrected God!
 * Congratulations! You've just destroyed the Demon King and finally brought peace to the world.
 * Translation Train Wreck: There are numerous typos in the English version, but given the sheer amount of text they had to translate...
 * Triang Relations:
 * Tsundere: Maribel, who's heavy on the tsun-tsun and not so much with the dere-dere for most of the game.
 * Two Guys and a Girl: Your hero, Kiefer and Maribel. Then, Hero, Maribel, and Gabo.
 * Video Game 3D Leap: The leap was very minor in this case, with Dragon Quest VIII seeing the full presentation upgrade.
 * Water Source Tampering: Krage's sole source of water is a single well in the middle of town. Then it gets spiked with a poison that everyone believe that they're the Demon Lord. Considerable amounts of Stupid Evil antics ensue until your merry band is able to do anything about it.
 * Wild Child: Gabo
 * Winged Humanoid: The Lefa Tribe of Gorges.
 * Xanatos Gambit: Played by  of all people. Blocked entirely for plot contents.
 * Your Princess Is in Another Castle: Great job, you resurrected God!
 * Congratulations! You've just destroyed the Demon King and finally brought peace to the world.