Maybe both
As I spend the week demoing games that are entirely in Japanese, I accept that I’m not going to understand a lot of things. I know the kanji for “forest” and that’s the extent of my fluency with the language. Dialogue’s the first to go.Similarly, the likes of menus and items are mostly lost on me save for the times I can just sort of figure it out.
It can feel overwhelming when sitting down with an RPG. Given 25 minutes with 7th Dragon III Code: VFD, I had a slight fear that I wouldn’t get to any combat. There was a chance in my mind that I would just wander in and out of shops or something without really realizing it. I could feasibly waste the entire time progressing nothing and not being any the wiser.
That scenario would’ve been far more merciful than what played out. Chapter 0 kicked my ass up and down so hard that I have to wonder if I missed something crucial, this game is devilishly hard, or I just really suck at video games.
After finding some sort of Alien-esque space pod to transplant myself into a virtual world, I was randomly attacked by two low-level creatures. “This is the beginning of the game. It’s the first encounter. I got this.” Nope. Nope nope nope nope nope nope nope.
Those two little bastards repeatedly killed me. Like, ten times straight. Each of their attacks would take off a third of my health, leaving me forced to use a health potion. They attacked again and I was right back where I started. When I got a blow in, it wouldn’t defeat one of them (even my specials). Worse, because I didn’t spend that time healing, I’d usually die on their next turn.
I tasted victory once when it let me start the encounter with a preemptive attack. I think the game felt bad for me. With only a sliver of health left, I dealt the final strike and escaped the situation scathed but alive. Progress. Incredibly uncompromising and frustrating progress, but progress nonetheless.
Seconds later, I hit another random encounter against the same two enemies but now with the amount of health I had after the first fight. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.
I gave up.7th Dragon III Code: VFDwasn’t going to work out for me. I know when I’m bested, and I absolutely was. Maybe I was missing something important and it’s really not all that hard. Maybe it’s tough as nails. Whatever the case, it sent me packing with my tail between my legs, and it’s been a long time since a demo has been able to do that to me.