Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King

"If this is tradition, take me back to 2006."

I first sat down and played Dragon Quest the day I bought it, but gave up after about half an hour. My first impressions weren't great. A month goes by and once again, with more dedication than last time, I take up the challenge of having to start a role-playing game. RPGs are a pain to initiate; it often takes hours for the story to pick up, your levels are weak and your duo-membered party means that defeating a group of eight weak monsters still takes four rounds to accomplish. Lately there have been exceptions, thanks largely to more creative production and technology, but, despite its popularity, Dragon Quest has been left behind in the olden days of earlier generations.

Firstly, the hero, whom you are obligated to name yourself (which I hate), is a mute. He's not a mute in the world of Dragon Quest; he explains certain aspects of his previous adventures to other characters in the game, but you never actually hear him talking. Whenever someone talks to the hero, it's always a lame "Yes or no" question, to which the answer rarely bares any significance. If the conversation has any depth, then one of the hero's three fellow party members will speak for him. My affection for a fictional person, cel-shaded or not, is gauged on how much of himself he gives away -- the more I know about him, the more I have to judge him on. I may despise a certain antagonist, but hey, at least that's something. Dragon Quest's hero gave me nothing. If you don't talk, if you don't show any emotion, if you lack the depth of Paris Hilton (!), then it's kinda hard for me to like you, let alone be entertained for the hundred-odd hours Dragon Quest took me through.

Maybe it was standard procedure in 1986 to not have a talking hero, but after twenty years we've come a long way. I don't know why they made that decision. Does anyone? I'd really like to know. DQ is a traditional RPG, sure, but why is that an excuse to be boring? It's a cop-out. I've played Super Nintendo and Playstation One role-playing games with more substance, and sure, I've played ones with less... but the ones with less, I don't want to know about. Let's take RPGs forward, not backwards.

In the world of DQ, the Kingdom of Trodain has been cursed by the evil jester, Dhoulmagus. By stealing the sceptre that lay hidden in Trodain, he unearths great power, turning Trodain's people to stone and surrounding the castle in vines. The king of Trodain, Trode, is morphed into a troll-like creature and his daughter, Medea, into a horse. The hero is a member of Trodain who somehow defies the spell, and his first battle-active party member is Yangus, a gruff-talking thief. As you journey, and journey, and journey through attractive-yet-repetitive grassland, you meet Jessica, the standard sexy female party member, and Angelo, the more-recently-now-standard handsome womaniser. Your quest is to undo the curse that has been put on the kingdom and return Trode and Medea to their natural states.

All but few of the people's voices are English - by that I mean from England - which is a welcome change to the usual American accents that can annoy the hell out of me (Tidus in FFX), and the tapestry of DQ; castles, knights, medieval villages and beautiful grassland, is far more fitting to England's history and geography than America's. The acting is on par -- the voices themselves, however, became quite tiresome. I took advantage of the option to mute the characters early in my play through.

Even with your party complete, the adventure never really takes off. The story is uninteresting enough, but the lack of cutscenes further damaged my interest by leaving the tale high and dry. I would play for hours on end before the next key part was revealed to me. Caves, dungeons - whatever you want to call them - are rare; a lot of my time was spent merely walking from one town to the next on the huge and confusing world map, getting into a fight, becoming more confused, looking for treasure chests and carrying over items that a certain villager requires. There is a lot of backtracking to be done. I'd have been happier if they removed the overworld altogether and designed a map to instantly travel from place to place. A lot of the roaming is pointless anyway -- so you miss out on that chest in the far-western corner that contains an herb that heals your party the same amount as casting "heal". Big deal. I was often forced to partake in quests that bared no significance to the means of my journey; collecting items here, looking for this there. What's the point? In other titles, these would've been sidequests, but here, I'm forced to accept petty jobs that aren't going to help me retrieve the magic sceptre.

With all that travelling back and forth, being pleasant to watch is all that more important. Terrain is gorgeous, but repetitive. Lush green forests surround the adventurers for most of the game, with the obligatory snow fields, deserts and wastelands thrown in for variety. But these changes in climatic conditions, however stock-standard, is something I always welcome. The mixture of cel-shaded characters and monsters with the... non-cel-shaded world is a superb combination. If little else, DQ sure looks good.

Monster battles are well enough to begin with, but the simplistic system becomes a chore to use after a length of time. It's pretty much just level up, grow stronger, learn new spells. Aside from experience, skill points are obtained and allocated to the weapon category of your choice, making that certain weapon stronger, should you be wielding one. The problem with this is that I ended up obligated to a certain weapon since its respective category was powered up more so than the others.

The strongest aspect of fighting is one to do with the Monster Arena -- in recent years a somewhat common addition to RPGs. The twist that DQ's Monster Arena has is that you can recruit certain monsters found on the overworld and have them join one of two teams, which you can call into battle. It certainly eased the pain of fighting one random challenge after another, but I still had my X button on turbo while fighting the majority of encounters. It's not great when the player would rather hold down X and change the channel than actually watch the fight. I know it's difficult to figure out a way to make fighting monsters - all the way through - exciting, but if the guys behind Shadow Hearts can do it, then so should a wealthier, more highly reputable company like SquareEnix. The monsters are great to watch with their smooth, detailed animation, but their designs are pretty weak. Yes, it's Dragon Quest, but they didn't have to be so wimpy. I guess coming from gothic-style murderers and blood-soaked dogs (Shadow Hearts) to pansy little cats that roll over and licks themselves was a major transition. Even the final boss looks like one of those cuddly animals you can win from skill tester machines. Death was seldom a threat when faced with standard goons, but was a definite possibility against some of the major bosses, and I thoroughly enjoyed the challenges that were taken to me.

None of the party is particularly interesting. If anything, I became fed up with them after being so soft. There are occasions where certain rivals and obnoxious brats walk all over the party. One task has a thief, named Red, attempting to beat you through a cave to reach the end for some treasure. Whenever she gets stuck and can't go further, it's up to you to catch up to her and solve the room's puzzle, thus allowing her to mock you and move ahead. Who does that? Another episode involves a fat, ugly, spoilt prince who lies and cheats his way to becoming a "worthy" husband for the beautiful Medea, all with the help of the party. During this task, my party is abused and looked down upon by the cowardly, snobby prince and yet, even though they're the ones doing all the fighting, all the work, they say nothing to defend themselves. I worked my butt off to get that Argon heart, and Prince Charmles has the nerve to simply buy a bigger one, claiming that he killed the giant Argon Lizard and captured the heart all by himself. He dishonours my party, his family and lies to his father, and all the king does is yell at him. Whoopee do. That just doesn't cut it with me.

A game doesn't have to be terrible for me not to finish it. I can be halfway through a fifty-hour game and still say "Bugger it." So DQ obviously has certain redeeming elements that kept me going until the bitter end. On the other hand, when I reached a particular point, I switched my triangle button on turbo and skipped all dialogue thereafter. It just isn't a very interesting game. None of the personas were likable enough to harbour any sort of emotional attachment, so the fact that they might die (yeah right) meant nothing to me. I was happy to be done with the game. I've played enough RPGs, new and old, so don't talk to me about tradition. You can go on and on about Dragon Quest being traditional, but the truth is that the game lacks character, and fails to make up for it with anything else. It shan't be entering my Playstation 2 again.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 07/17/06