Dragon Quest 7 Reimagined is finally here, and I have some sage wisdom for newcomers that I was reminded of thanks to recent comments from producer Takeshi Ichikawa.
In a recent Reddit AMA, Ichikawa was asked what his favorite job is from the newly overhauled vocation system, which lets any party member “moonlight” as two vocations at once, and he fell back on a tried-and-true essential: the cleric, or priest as it’s more commonly localized these days.
“I’m not particularly skilled at RPGs, so I often put a Cleric in my party,” he said. “With their job traits, they can heal the whole team, so they really help support the party in tough moments.”
I think what’s happening here is that Ichikawa is very humbly offering new players some extremely useful advice: magic healers are always good to have on hand in any RPG, really, but in Dragon Quest it’s your fastest track to learning Zing, a crucial revival spell that’ll save you from having to waste rare Yggdrasil leaves or spend time finding a church to revive party members. And that’s not even mentioning their healing spells, which indeed, can heal entire parties at once and can really come in handy in the early-to-mid game grind.
As for director Masato Yagi, his preferred vocation is martial artist. “Their defense isn’t very high, but landing a single decisive blow to turn the tables. Maybe that kind of fighting style just appeals to me,” said Yagi.
Dragon Quest creator Yuji Horii says Final Fantasy protagonists “speak a lot,” forming a “key difference” between the two iconic JRPG series: “You’re not necessarily becoming the protagonist.”
