Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King

"Hard to believe after the hype, but this game is not worth anyone's time."

Dragon Warrior/Quest games have had a long history. It was groundbreaking in the old days, and it provided some good back to basic games that were a good refresher in the proper way to play an RPG in consoles such as Game Boy Color or Playstation 1. However, this particular DQ does not have anything worth mentioning as brilliant, especially for a modern day console. Rather than starting at a 10/10 in every category and taking points off for flaws, I decided to start at a 0/10 and award points for excellence (or lack thereof) in a category. This being said, nothing in DQVIII took my breath away, except maybe how little effort the game's game play and storyline designers put into it. Read on for details.

Graphics - 8/10
We might as well begin with some good news. If you're familiar with level 5's work (such as the fantastic dark cloud games), you know what to expect with the graphics: animated brilliance. Lush backgrounds and great character designs strengthen this game to the most, with very detailed pictures for every piece of equipment, character, and monster. The world map is also detailed and it is fun to just look at the scenery as you continue on your journey to the next town or dungeon. However, a disappointing part is the lack of cut scenes that are intended to have better graphics. with my eyes being accustomed to fantastic cut scenes in star ocean 3 + kingdom hearts, it seems like they didn't put an effort into creating those awesome moments we have all come to love in modern games. The cut scene aspect ignored, the main point of a game is to have comfortable-to-the-eye graphics, even if it's not the most 3D you've ever seen, so DQVIII is a winner here.

Sound - 5/10
Once again with my rating system, there are not many bad things to be said about the sound in this game, but to deserve an 8-10, it has to be pleasing to the ear and original, two qualities that are a far cry from DQVIII. The battle theme is the same everywhere and not worthy of note. The town music is okay at first (such as in the first town, Farebury), yet quickly becomes stale. The voice acting is pretty nice, but I disagree with leaving a voice out for the hero. The lack of his voice actually contributes to him being sort of a shy wimp (not that he is one, but this aspect makes him delve closer than ever to becoming one). Also, there is always minimum one song in a game that calls out to me and makes me beg to have it on CD or something. Sadly enough, there are none whatsoever in this game. Still, this can all be overlooked compared to what comes next...

Story - 3/10
HERE WE GO! The second most reason not to buy this game. Regardless of what kind of gamer you are a storyline that is a little bit more than simple with a few surprises and satisfactions here and there is always necessary in an RPG. This game is horrible. The story is about an evil wizard wanting to conquer everything with a magical item. Ok, so what? I've seen worse storyline than this, and I've played great games like the first legend of Zelda on NES that hardly have a storyline but are still legendary to this day. Unfortunately, this is only the beginning. combined with the terrible game play (which I'll get to later) the storyline is needlessly long (easily spanning 60+ hours, which is a blessing for a good game, but not for this), you undertake useless adventures from time to time (example: you have to make a king happy???) and have to travel backwards from town to town trying to complete missions that I'm sure if the hero had a voice, he would say "hello? Evil wizard taking over the world, we got to stop him, not make wimpy kings happy". No surprises, no twists, not even the characters are implemented into the story well. When u meets each of them, you are pleased with their varying emotions and qualities, but afterwards, they rarely display it ever again. A key example about the pointlessness of much of the storyline is that at one point, the wizard moves to wreak havoc on another continent. A ship is needed to follow him. To obtain this ship, 5,000,000 obstacles stand in your way just to reach this new continent. Don't you think he should have moved by then once you actually obtain the ship? Disappointing... very disappointing...

Game play - 3/10
And now we enter the climax, the absolutely REVOLTING game play! First of all, in this modern age of memory cards, what is with the save points only in churches in towns? There are no outside save points at all in this game, and to add to your frustration, you have to get someone revived at a church if they die (that is, until 20 hours into the game where a character learns a reviving spell with a 50% success rate). Personally, I like to keep my characters on the same level, so it annoys me to death when a character dies and I can't revive them with a boss coming up, leaving the character to be left out of the experience being rewarded. if I want to reset, I have to start all the way back in town, or I have the option of dying with my levels kept, half my hard earned money given up (and believe me, money is HARD to get), and starting out once more at the last church I saved at. And now to introduce you to DQVIII's *sarcasm* "spectacular" *sarcasm* game play. First of all, I love back to basics games involving buying stronger weapons, armor, etc. I really do. But there has to be a twist involved somewhere. This aspect is usually implemented through a customization system to give your weapons a very personal feel (which I absolutely ADORE in Star Ocean 3, final fantasy X, and a brilliant level 5 game like DQVIII called dark cloud II).

Customization? Please!! Don't try and make a fool out of us, DQVIII, we know what we like! The customizing in this game is simply pathetic, distributing points to different types of weapons while all you can do is buy weapons that are strong. The alchemy in this game to make your very own custom weapons is also pathetic. They always have pre-set qualities, and most of the time none at all, it's usually just an increase in attack. Secondly, the money in this game is hard to get through enemies, so to obtain high attack weapons, you have to battle for quite a long time with little reward in the experience department. Think you can level up and money build at the same time? Another disappointment. The difficulty of enemies just never seems to match up to the exp and gold that u expect out of them.

The irony in all this? Level building is great fun! It's always been a favorite to own enemies in big numbers with big attacks, leaving you with good rewards for hard work. But why does it turn out this way? It's because of a good storyline. Unfortunately, as I alluded to earlier, the bad storyline and game play are fused into one enormous part of this game's worth (or lack thereof) to leave you with no incentive to level up besides beating a tough boss (don't forget, make sure your members are alive, otherwise back to town for you).

Overall - 4/10 (Not an Average)
Honestly, I am shocked that this game has received such critical acclaim around the gaming world. I can understand that there is a mass audience begging to be taken back into the glory days of simplified game play - sometimes I crave it too - but this is simply not the way to go about accomplishing it. Some games live off a simple storyline and fantastic game play, while others live the other way around. However, when both are severely flawed such as in this game, the two aspects join together and complement each other's poorness. I can't understand in any logical manner how a person can like this game, so I can't really say that it appeals to any particular kind of gamer, which most games are capable of doing. That's all, I hope you understand the point I was trying to get across in this review and make a well informed decision based on it.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 06/30/06