Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King

"It's fun, guv."

After being disappointed with Dragon Warrior 7, I was reluctant to purchase Dragon Quest 8 when it originally came out and a Final Fantasy 12 demo sure wasn't what I was looking for to convince me. However, after spending a good four hours playing around on the demo I knew that the already heavy line-up of games I wanted had just tipped the scales that much more. Dragon Quest 8 doesn't stray very far from the formula that has made it such a titan in Japan, and that's the same reason why it hasn't had the success Final Fantasy has enjoyed stateside. However, this time the series was able to break away from a few things, namely the dated control set-up which made Dragon Warrior 7 almost unplayable for me, and the game flourishes because of it.

In Dragon Quest 8 you play as the nameless hero who's traveling around with a rotund thief and a strange looking monster. Don't be fooled though, because that monster is none other than Trode, King of Trodain, and he and his daughter have been placed under a curse by the evil jester Dhoulmagus who managed to steal the royal treasure. The princess? Oh, she's the horse. Naturally, you follow Dhoulmagus around from city to city and, naturally, he's always a step ahead of you. Along the way, you'll pick up chesty Jessica and chest-admiring Angelo, both of whom are also after Dhoulmagus for their own reasons. There's no really surprising plot twists during the main quest, and the entire story drops off the face of the map for a while when you first get to travel by boat, but that's all right because it's a pretty lackluster story to begin with. You can press Start at any time to open up a screen to talk to the rest of your party, but this mainly serves as a tool to use when you've forgotten where you're supposed to be heading to.

As you follow around the one-man circus, you'll encounter all kinds of enemies in turn-based combat. Each turn you choose an action for each character to take and then the enemies and your party randomly take those actions. Now, agility plays a small role, as Yangus is likely to go last and Jessica is likely to go first, and this gets more prominent as the game progresses, but it's not an unbreakable rule because Yangus may just decide to make the first move occasionally.

Outside of the basic attack and magic spells you get in rpgs, Dragon Quest 8 also has a skill system. After you reach level five or so you'll start gaining skill points to put towards one of five skills, depending on which character leveled up. Yangus has more offensive categories like Axes and Clubs whereas Jessica gets skills such as Staves and Sex Appeal. Each skill, upon reaching a specific point, will teach you a new ability to use in battle. Some of these abilities may be upgrades to one's you've previously learned and quite a few will be completely useless for 99% of the game, but it adds some much needed variety to an otherwise bland battle system. Don't worry though, because no matter what skills you decide to invest your points into the game is pretty easy after the first few areas and you can finish it no matter which route you take. Some may be harder than others, but none so hard that you'll have to start over so you can better invest your points.

Outside of random battles, you'll also come across the occasional visible monster. These guys have their own names and are usually stronger versions of their random counterparts. Defeating them early on will net you a monster coin the first time, which is good for nothing other than some quick cash, but later on you'll be able to recruit them into your monster team. You can then pick and choose whichever monsters you want and try to climb the ranks at the monster arena. You don't get to actually control what moves they take in battle, so pick wisely. You don't want one of your monsters wasting a turn by licking themselves.

Another feature that will open up rather early in the game is the Alchemy Pot. This allows you to take otherwise useless items and mix them together to make something you may actually want. Of course, you can also mix useful items to make even better items. Later in the game the option to combine three items instead of two presents itself, and some of the best equipment available in the game can only be acquired through alchemy.

Visually, the game looks amazing. Akira Toriyama is well known to most as the artist behind Chrono Trigger and the Dragonball world, and you'll notice quite a bit of similarities between this and his previous work, especially in the character art. In battle, characters and enemies have complete animations devoted to their attacks and even the attacks of the very basic of enemies are done well. And the world map. Gorgeous. With games these days being so graphic intensive a lot of rpgs have decided to go the way of Final Fantasy 10, or whichever obscure rpg did it first, and completely forego the world map entirely. Not so here. Not only is there a world map, but it's built to size. The towns aren't the same size as your character until you enter them like a lot of games. They're visible from far away and are exactly the same size on the map as they are when you enter them. The world is huge and you'll spend a lot of time just exploring from one corner to the next.

And that's also the game's biggest flaw. While at the start I loved wandering around, seeing the sights and admiring the graphics, a majority of the world looks entirely the same. Long fields of grass and trees. And because of the sheer size of the map and the fact that treasures are often hidden in the far reaches of it, you'll find yourself traveling around and looking at all the grass for longer periods of time than you spend in dungeons and towns. It wouldn't surprise me one bit if I spent thirty hours just walking around the world, looking for those red and gold boxes.

One more aspect of the game that starts out strong but drags the more you play through the game is the voice acting. Just like the graphics, it's amazing. However, pretty much everything in the game has some sort of European accent, and I found myself sick and tired of hearing Yangus. After hearing him say "guv" for the hundredth time, and I understand that's the price one pays for having a main character with no set name, it got to the point where I skipped his dialogue completely. Most of what he says isn't important to the story and tends to just be him agreeing with and/or repeating whomever in the story just said something important. Another of his favorite phrases, though used quite a bit less, is "COR BLIMEY!" I'm not even sure exactly what it means, though I get the gist of it.

Thankfully, they decided to move on from the dated menu system for the controls. While it was fine back on the Nes when you only had the A and B buttons, it was a huge deterrent to me playing Dragon Warrior 7 and before I bought the game it was the single most alluring aspect about Dragon Quest 8. Finally, no more going into the menu screen to go up stairs! While the loading times in the game aren't really that bad, a lot of the time you'll find yourself opening the menu screen or the map right upon entering or leaving a town. For the most part the game will have people or animals to load, and I found myself waiting five or six seconds sometimes just to hear those familiar sound effects.

Unlike most games, Dragon Quest 8 becomes notably easier as you progress through the game. The first two bosses are arguably the hardest two bosses you'll face in the main quest, and once you defeat them you won't really have a challenge until the very end of the game. Because of the skills you can achieve, you can pretty much level for any amount of time you want without ever needing to make a trip back to the inn, but with all the exploring you're going to be doing anyhow you're never going to need to go level.

If you like Dragon Quest 8, there's enough there to keep you occupied. Acquiring a complete monster list nets you a one-of-a-kind item, and to finish the monster list you'll need to tackle the optional area unlocked once you beat the game. You'll find the strongest bosses in the game there, and you'll either need to be really good and really lucky, use tension to its fullest potential or be at dynamically high levels to stand a chance against them. Finishing this up also unlocks some new background story for your main character as well as a different ending. You're probably not going to play through Dragon Quest 8 again unless you fall in love with it, because the game is by no means short and there's not a whole lot you can do the second time through that you couldn't do the first time outside of making different choices in the skills you choose, so make the most of it. There's a lot to make the most of, and while the game does nothing groundbreaking, it's a solid game with a lot of polish.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 06/12/06