Nostalgia is a trap, and more often than not used to sell people the things they already had. It says that things were better the way they used to be, when so often that's simply not true. Were the arcades of the 80s a special place? Sure, but modern-arcade games are better thanks to not needing to be designed to wrench $0.50 out of the player every couple of minutes. RPGs, granted, hit a sweet spot in the 90s, with Squaresoft's Final Fantasy and Enix's Dragon Quest fighting for top spot while Studio Alex kicked out two Lunars and a Grandia. As long ago as that was, however, RPGs had been kicking around and evolving long enough for nostalgia to already be a thing, and Dragon Quest VII was designed to milk it for all it was worth.
More Layers of Throwback Gaming than Chop Chop Master Onion
Dragon Quest VII came out four years after Squaresoft's Final Fantasy VII, and almost looked like it could have been a SNES game rather than a post-PS2 release on the original PlayStation. The US reception was fairly muted despite it being a major hit in Japan, but even so...
