Preparing For A Trip Through Time: A Look at the 7th Dragon III Code: VFD 3DS Demo

I love stories involving time travel. One of my all-time favorite games is Chrono Trigger. So when I heard about 7th Dragon III Code: VFD for 3DS, a game where a group of hunters go back in time to find some dragons, I was definitly interested in it. The videos looked good. Though, as always, I prefer to get hands-on with a game through a demo rather than just looking at online footage. And just as I was thinking about the game on Tuesday, Sega released a playable demo for it! I completed the demo and here are my thoughts on what I played.

There is no time travel in the 7th Dragon demo. In fact, the demo is just set up for the larger 7th Dragon game. You get to play in a small dungeon, fight some dragons, and go through a lot of tutorial. I suppose this is what demos should do, but I was hoping that the demo would be a bit longer and show at least one time travel area. Even so, I really liked what I saw.

7th Dragon is a turn-based role playing game. Thats my favorite type of rpg! The game also has random battles, a job system, a leveling up skill system, and very good three dimensional graphics. The job system isn’t on display in the demo, but I did get to try my hand at leveling up my characters skills. Its pretty easy, especially for someone who is not an rpg newbie! I would say that the entire demo was pretty easy too, although I was playing the demo on casual. I wanted to get a quick look at the game and not have to worry about any of the battles being too hard. I also found what little of the story I saw interesting.

The game takes place in Tokyo, so there’s a very Japanese feel to this rpg. Even the voice acting during battles wasn’t translated into English. There isn’t much voice acting in this game though and I thought that was fine. The dialogue is easy to read and there seemed to be a bit of humor to the game. I like the setup of the newbie hunters going back in time to fight dragons and save the world. I wish we had seen more of that in the demo. But the demo does set you up nicely for the game and you even get to save your progress and will be rewarded if you buy the full game (with in-game items).

I thought the 7th Dragon demo was pretty fun, especially the first dungeon I played in. The battle system works well, the random battles are not too annoying, and the while there is a lot of setup in the demo, it all really sold me on this game! Sure, overall, the 7th Dragon isn’t anything new. We’ve seen this type of role playing game before. Though, I think the game has enough charm and cool rpg elements that fans of genre will definitly want to pick this one up when it comes out!

The 7th Dragon demo is available now on the 3DS eshop. The full game comes out July 12th in North America.

Have you played the demo? Are you interested in 7th Dragon? Let us know in the comments!