Dragon Quest VII/YMMV

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• Arc Fatigue: This game is long. 100+ hours is not unheard of for the main story in the Playstation version (the 3DS version will still take around 45-60). A large part of that is spent walking back and forth through the same thirteen screens over, and over, and over again, which gets tiring even if you have no problems with an RPG being that long.
  • It takes around two hours to get to your first battle.
  • With no detours, it takes around fifteen hours to unlock the job system.
  • The remake is better about this, though the game is still technically quite long (especially if you take an interest in the side quests, whether it's for fun or whether you want to get gear or level up to prepare you if you're finding enemies or bosses tough), it also does things such as making the temple in the prologue shorter so that you don't have to spend as much time trying to unlock the first island in the present as well as making it possible to potentially avoid enemy encounters, though since the combat is enjoyable the player may still choose to engage many enemies in battle anyway.
• Breather Level:
  • Regenstein. The scenario does not have any dungeon-crawling or boss fights, it's over pretty quickly. It's a sad scenario, though it can be a bit confusing to figure out what to do.
  • Greenthumb Gardens is another breather - The boss of it is fought very early, and pretty much the entirety of the scenario takes place in town and ends somewhat abruptly.
    • It actually is an unusual example wherein it plays the role twice: after you finally repair the Broken Bridge, the party decides to investigate what's on the other side to find that it's Greenthumb Gardens a couple of decades after they had been saved. The whole objective is to connect the dots as to what happened to some of the villagers and how Wilted Heart came to be.
  • The first time you reach the Roamers. Unfortunately, this is when Kiefer leaves...
• Complete Monster: Orgodemir, of course. Cardinal Sin and Togrus Maximus also qualify.
• Demonic Spiders: Birds Of Terrordise are capable of doing lots of damage to the party by using Inferno. Of course, they are located in the final dungeon.
• Ensemble Darkhorse: The tiny little Pod/Foo (later: Pip/Conk) families of monsters, who are critter versions of the default heroes of Dragon Quest III.
• Evil Is Sexy: Orgodemir's humanoid form. At least, he thinks it is. The final battle even lampshades it with one of his taunts, asking you if you can "bring yourself to strike such beauty". But then he ends up getting stuck between his two forms and ultimately having his flesh MELT RIGHT OFF HIS BONES.
  • Melvin apparently thinks so, at least in the PS1 version....
• Game Breaker: For a lot of people, Sword Dance is this. It's required if you want to beat the game in a decent time (and a "decent" time for this game is 100 hours!). Luckily, it doesn't take too long to get after you free Dharma. Sadly, there's several people who don't know about it or any "hybrid skills".
  • Lucky Panel in the 3DS version. Since all the pairs are actual items now, winning this game constantly will give you items and equipment which can be considered a Disc-One Nuke, especially if you win the Zombiesbane in the Present Casino near Alltrades, which will last you until after Buccanham.
  • When farming against Metal Slimes, Blade of Ultimate Power becomes this, though only in the 3DS version. The change to flat damage allows for bypassing their massive defense stat, making the move practically a One Hit Kill on them.
  • In the 3DS version, the traveler's tablets. If you managed to keep your characters under level 20 by the time you finish Alltrades Abbey, you can grind in the Slime Forest, where you can get the battles needed to level up your classes just by fighting Slime so you hardly get any experience points. You can literally level all your characters up to the advance classes only hours after unlocking the class system, making most of the game a joke. By the time Aishe joins, you can create your own tablets and basically make your own Slime Forest with no level cap. Meaning you can grind for classes indefinitely without raising your level.
• Goddamned Bats: Vile Vials can dazzle your party with sand as well as make them fall asleep. Thankfully, it's not hard to cure it if you level up specific classes at Alltrades Abbey.
• Iron Woobie:
  • Neris refuses to angst over her situation, instead quietly focusing on doing whatever she can to help others.
  • Firia.
• It Gets Better: We hope you like exposition... you're going to be seeing a lot of it in the beginning.
• Magnificent Bastard: Arguably Orgodemir. He doesn't act much like this at first. But then you get to Disc 2 and find out that he's been impersonating God.
• Moral Event Horizon: The captain of the Ruckers army crosses the line when he tosses Lucia off a cliff, despite her being only eight years old. Though Hybris goes a step too far in getting revenge, it's understandable that he would hate the Ruckers after that.
• Narm Charm/Funny Moments: Done all over the place when Probina gets attacked. Some are less goofy than others (Those poor animals), and others easily qualify as the funniest in the game such as a man who notes the limitations of his sprite animations as he's fighting a monster.
  • The winner here is a man who gets his soul switched, WITH HIS COW; the cow in human form somehow manages to get married and have children, and each successive generation is able to talk to cows.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Maribel became much more likable amongst the western fanbase after her Character Development, and even moreso after the 3DS version which made Maribel more amusing and a better party member than before gameplay-wise.
• The Scrappy: Maribel is this to many players before her dad gets sick. Afterward, she's not too bad. Most of the time. Hondara on the other hand, is always this, even in-game! And no, he doesn't get better either.
• Seinfeld Is Unfunny: It can be hard to get into this game after the recent ones or even some of the remakes, and some of the criticisms of this game was that it looked dated for the time it was released, with Conspicuous CG breaking up the game's visual style. Keep in mind the game's development begun for the 64DD in 1996, and development switched to the PlayStation in 1997 and remained in Development Hell for about three years. By the time it was released in America, it was 2001 and the Playstation2 and Xbox had been around for awhile, and the Gamecube was just two weeks ahead. Of course, the 3DS remake gave the game a face lift.
• That One Boss: Deathpal is this to some players. Then you reach Dharma and realize he was essentially a Warmup Boss for the entire chapter, which is easily a boss in itself. The four bandit goons, and later their boss, outside of Present-Day Dharma. The only way to have a chance against them is to level up your classes. Later on you fight a boss and his cronies who are a different kind of Time Limit Boss. There's no time limit, but they can turn back the fight to the start, at whim, which gets really old, really fast. After that, nobody really qualifies due to Dharma powering up your skills.
  • The first Orgodemir fight may, but that's technically a given.
  • Inopp and Gonz (or as the remake puts them, Rashers and Stripes). Not the hopeless boss fight, but afterwards. Oh, and if you don't beat them first try then you have to go into the rematch without the free heal you get the first time around. Inopp in particular has the ability to snort sand out of his nose in order to blind party members.
  • Following Rashers and Stripes are the four bandits who can cast various status ailments on you. They're easier in the remake where they don't do much damage overall (though they still use many status ailments regardless), and you don't have to worry about losing gold if you lose, despite them being...you know, bandits.
• That One Level: Dharma FUCKING Temple. Let's clarify, shall we? You enter a perfectly normal looking area, but get flushed down to a crappy prison area, with all of your few, but helpful, spells and skills drained until the 3/4 point of the chapter here. There is NO way back to the present until you beat the FINAL boss of the area (of MANY), the shops sell crappy gear and items, there's an extremely hard-to-find mapshard that's hidden in some obscure little hut that you may not even know you can enter unless you tilt the camera just right, the monsters and bosses are notably stronger than your last adventure, you only have three underwhelming characters (the NPCs are decent at best, but ditch you as the story demands, leaving without any help often), you cannot use return or outside spells to easily get to inns in order to rest -or- priests in order to revive or save (both of which you will likely need often, even if you buy tons of herbs), the dungeons are colossal and confusing (easily the largest and hardest in the game) with no checkpoints save for one crappy little town which is worse than the prison town you started at, you have to fight in a tournament of rather strong bosses, and to top that all off, you don't even get any freebies when class changing, and you will need to grind your classes to a decent level to even hope to stand a chance against the bandit goons back in the present. Yuji Horii has gone to admit in interviews that he likes to kick players when they're down, but this is just ridiculous. The entire chapter created a Broken Base between those who liked VII and those who hated it. Many Rage Quit at this point, and it's not hard to see why. And if you're willing to actually go through with it, you're going to say a lot more words than the one with the "f" above.
  • At least the game is kind enough to give you an item that replicates the Heal spell when used in battle and can be used indefinitely soon after you get here. You will be getting a lot of use out of it.
  • Dharma Temple. Some found it to be reasonably challenging but not too much so, and the storyline is a truly epic tale involving a missing high priest, an occupied temple, an ordinary man trying to protect his sister from a city of vice, a slightly creepy guard cast out of his position (who turns out to be okay in the end), and three heroes brought down to nothing who have to fight their way out of that city and make things right. It would almost make an excellent game in itself.
  • Any area that's 3D and requires you to navigate different sides and elevations simultaneously. Thankfully, there's only a few, but they can get pretty dang confusing, even with a guide.
• That One Puzzle: The statue puzzle that you need to complete in order to get two tablet fragments, You need to make the statues face each other... but they move three at a time, instead of simply one or two. Good luck.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Oh, the main story's pretty good, but the effect of abruptly introducing other lands to a world where your tiny kingdom was literally the only power left when your King isn't exactly the best at diplomacy is left largely unexplored.
    • Partially justified. He sends exploration parties, talks stuff over with them, then life goes on. When the world leaders are gathered, it is not like they don't know each other, they just don't really bother with one another. Though some remark on how the king couldn't possibly know their were other lands when "they've been there the whole time". This is mostly in part to the Timey-Wimey Ball, not so much his ignorance.
  • Speaking of abruptly introducing other lands, it's a shame given how much personality is put into each town that nothing of consequence happens to their abrupt re-introduction onto the world stage, and there's no interaction between the many nations. For example, Faraday has technology far more advanced than anybody else on the planet but nothing comes of it.
• Toy Ship: Gabo is heavily implied to have a major crush on Fosse.
• What an Idiot!: Pendragon.
• The Woobie: Eri. A Killer Robot who gets repurposed and reprogammed by Jerkass Zebbot, used to help destroy all her kind, and still gets All of the Other Reindeer treatment from the angry villagers. Zebbot also turns her into a Replacement Goldfish for his dead wife, giving her the same name and treating her as a Robot Maid. Back in the present, she's still slaving away in their little cottage, trying to feed soup to Zebbot's long-skeletonized remains. Oh, and the ambitious young king of the region hauls her off to study, hoping to create his own Killer Robot army, and his clumsy scientists waste no time in removing random parts to see how it affects her. Even when you stop this, she's just taken back home to spend the rest of her days in isolation, tending to her master's skeleton. Sure, she says she's happy, but... Luckily for her the rest of her days aren't that long; if you ever choose to visit the house again you'll find that she's broken down, finally joining Zebbot in death.
  • You kind of have to feel sorry for Sieble. The town he's living in is a complete Doom Magnet, both of his pets sacrifice themselves to save his life, and he may end up the only survivor of the Hellworm invasion if you killed Chibi rather than warned him about the villagers' plot.
  • Lucas.