7th Dragon DS First Impression

7th dragon is an RPG Game for the Nintendo DS where the world of Eden is inhabited by humans and dragons. However, Dragons are majority in number and your quest is to eliminate them all.

Seventh Dragon features a classic style RPG combat system where only images of the monster you're fighting is displayed on the screen in first person view.  To make up for modern times, 7th Dragon adds some more flavors on battle animations and shows the characters attacking.

You will be prompted to choose from 7 different character class of which you can choose and they are Fighter, Rogue, Samurai, Knight, Mage, Healer and Princess. For each character, you can then choose either male or female and there are 2 alternative looks for each gender. You can create up to 16 characters.

As usual for almost any kind of RPG is the equipment system which is your typical swords and armor screen. There's a point distribution system to enhance your skills by using skill points or SP which you get by leveling up. There are also this thing called EX Skills which are special skills you can use other than regular skills.

The 2D graphics is very refined and the anime styled characters looked very good. It's just a 2D game but if you're not the type who expects too much on graphics this you'll really appreciate this game. You explore towns, explore dungeons, travel the overworld map and you receive quests by talking to some people.

The music was was just terrific. I think even just the soundtrack of this game is already a good buy (assuming you know Japanese). The music was composed by Yuzo Koshiro whom also contributed in prominent game titles such as Ys I, Ys II, Revenge of the Shinobi, Streets of Rage series and many more.

7th Dragon was developed by Image Epoch and released by SEGA in Japan on March 5, 2009. The game was produced by Reiko Kodama who also worked on titles such as Skies of Arcadia and Sonic the Hedgehog, and Phantasy Star. There is no news so far for an English version of this game... If it's gonna be localized at all.