I will never get tired of Sega's "We're making RPG now," announcement of 7th Dragon. It certainly helped the title remain planted within my mind, so I was more than happy to try it out at the Tokyo Game Show, despite the language barrier.

Well, the main reason I checked it out was because Sega's DS rooms all had seats, and I was a very tired person. That was reason enough to pretend I know Japanese and attempt to play an RPG.

Despite not being able to read a bloody thing, I actually learned quite a bit about 7th Dragon, taking in its battle system and the unique approach to not-so-random encounters. By all means, hit the jump for more.

It would be impossible for this ignorant roundeye to comment on the story, since it exists to me merely as symbols and squiggles. What I can tell you is that you begin the game choosing your class, and you can pick the role of either a Rogue, Mage, Princess, Knight, Fighter, Samurai and Healer.

Each class has a selection of different models to choose from, and all save the Princess class represent both genres. While I could only play single player, the game will allow for up to four player co-op. In a single player mode, all four characters will be controlled by one person. 

Once you've made the preliminary preparations, the game puts you in an overworld with the objective being a small town. You'll find that your character is surrounded by what appear to be red and yellow lilies. These flowers are the key to the game's encounter system. 

Walking over these lilies damages them, and if you walk over them twice, get destroyed. At the top right corner of the screen is an image of a flower, and its petals fill with color as you clear away the lilies. Once the petals are all lit up, a battle begins. 

It's a very interesting system that alleviates the frustration of random encounters while ensuring that at times, combat is not completely avoidable. There are some safe routes that let you walk without treading on flowers, but the game has the power to make things harder or easier by placing them around the player. It caught my eye and and worked out very well.

Significantly less eye catching is the way the game looks. Using simplistic sprites with washed out colors, 7th Dragon looks incredibly bland next to some of the beautiful sprite-based work already seen on the DS. Battles are set up very much like Dragon Quest, with the monsters aligned on screen with a "first person" view of them. However, unlike the recent Dragon Quest: Chronicles of the Chosen, the static images onscreen, with zero animation to their name, are dull and lifeless.

The game plays like your standard turn-based RPG with attacks, item usage and special abilities all selectable from a wheel-like menu. Once you input your commands, the round plays out in a simple, rather lifeless fashion. Touch screen controls seem highly limited, and non-essential. Not a bad point by any means, but anybody who feels that DS games require a stylus to be worth noticing will want to keep away.

It may look unimpressive, but the music is at least enjoyable, with some nice tunes that you'd expect to hear in an old school RPG. It's just a shame that the visual quality it decidedly too far on the side of nostalgic. I'm all for a retro RPG experience, but the DS is capable of much more than this. We've moved on from static imagery and the barest minimum of animation. Next to other recent RPG efforts, 7th Dragon looks like a huge step backwards, and not in a rose-tinted, retro-friendly kind of way.

A robust battle system and an excellent story go a long way with RPGs, so hopefully there is a lot more to 7th Dragon. However, these kind of boring visuals will fail to hold one's attention for very long. A disappointment.