Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King

"Only the true RPG fans should get a taste of DQ8"

----------Finally the United States gets to experience this gem of a series. Before November of 2005, only Japan was able to play the Dragon Quest (Dragon Warrior) games. Because of such great fan support, Square Enix and Level 5 (creators of the marvelous Dark Cloud games) decided to release Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King here in the Americas, but how would Americans react to this change? Would they truly appreciate this fantastic game, or would they send it off as another Final Fantasy clone?

First of all, Dragon Quest 8 is anything but a Final Fantasy clone. I have heard so many people talk smack about it, saying that the gameplay is weird and doesn't match up with RPGs like FF. If anything, Final Fantasy would be considered a clone, since Dragon Quest was the real game that boosted the Role-Playing genre. I'm not saying FF is a clone (the series, in its own way, is excellent)…..they are both completely different games, but I can't stand it when the so-called “gamers” compare this to FF just because a Square Enix logo is slapped on the cover! Sorry, I had to get that off my chest.

As you play Dragon Quest 8, you will find a colorful cast of four, count em, FOUR characters to use, but the great thing is, they will all tie into the story later on. You play as the Hero (name him whatever you want….doodi, buttface, turd…it's really fun creating a character name) who travels with his King, who is turned into a troll, and the princess, a white horse, to search for the jester who destroyed their kingdom and turned the king and princess into the horrible creatures they are. Over the course of the game, the Hero will form ties with friends, make enemies with foes, and discover horrible secrets about the world and its future. Sounds very exciting doesn't it? I thought the story was fresh and excelled past most RPG stories. Sure the concept is the same: A hero finds friends, they experience horrible events, and they have to save the world…but a few exciting plot twists really surprised me and gave the game a nice change of pace.

Graphics are vibrant and are full of colors. Level 5 created a beautiful 3-D, cel-shaded world full of towns and dungeons to explore. Well, I wouldn't say all of Level 5…Akira Toriyama did create the character designs. You may know his most successful work to be Drazonball Z. Even though the cel-shaded graphics may not seem realistic, they are perfect for Dragon Quest 8. The cel-shadedness creates a fantasy like environment without making the world too cartoonish. Character models are amazingly detailed form head to toe. They even change their equipment when the players equip different weapons on them. And I like how the characters have facial expressions! With so much detail put into every person, I wondered how Level 5 had the time to add them all. Not only are the chracters full of life, the enemies you fight are also nicely done. From Candy Cats, to Jargons, to Dark Devildogs, Dragon Quest 8 contains some of the most bizarre enemies ever to grace an RPG. Everything in the graphics department is truly flawless. Sadly, Dragon Quest 8 does not contain any FMVs or whatnot…..but with designs this great, who needs flashy cinamatics?

With such amazing graphics, you would expect DQ8 to have superior gameplay, right? Well, the turn-based system of Dragon Quest seems a bit…flawed. When you start a battle, there are four choices to choose from: Fight, Flee, Intimidate, and Tactics. Fight and flee are self-explanatory, intimidate is to scare away and reduce the number of monsters, and tactics give your characters commands, which let the AI do the work. For almost everyone, they will obviously pick fight. You can choose to attack, use a skill you learn over time (depending on the weapon you equip), use spells, items, defend, and a command I've never seen before: Psyche up. Basically, Psyche up spends your character's turn to raise their attack for one turn. If you use psyche up, it would be wise to use it at least twice since it will increase from 5 to, 20, to 50, to 100. Confused?

Example: A character's base attack is 30 damage. If you psyche up once, it will do 70 damage, twice will raise it to 150, three times will raise it to 300 damage, and four times will increase the damage to 550.

Well, something like that. However, sometimes the fourth psyche up will not increase, and you might just waste your time recycling psyche up over and over when you could have spent those turns doing some heavy damage. At some point in the game, you will acquire a monster team, which is like a summon. It's a pretty interesting idea since you can choose which monsters you put in the team…if you can find them on the world map.

The main reason the turn-based system is flawed is because it is so slow! Slow like molasses. It may not seem like it is slow in the beginning, but once you pass 15-20 hours, the fights start to become boring. Battles can last up to 3 to 4 minutes and can get really repetitive, and the frequent random battles do not help. A battle can have as many as 7 or 8 (even more) enemies on screen and some enemies can call their friends out to play, so it will take a few strong magic attacks to plow the fields.

The difficulty also takes quite a curve at times. One time, players will be gliding easily past the enemies, and the next minute, they will meet a boss that will wallop them silly. Luckily, players will receive an alchemy pot to mix items that will help reduce your chances of dying. Mixing is interesting, and the formula works. The concept is to mix two items to create stronger, more effective items, like new weapon and armor. In case you still die, you can revive characters, but reviving is pretty difficult to accomplish. Characters will only learn resurrection moves at around the 30% mark, so the first one-third of the game, if one character is knocked out, players will have to return to a city to revive them at the church. It's the only way. . And it is even worse if all your characters are wiped out. You lose half the gold in your pocket! Ouch.

Churches are also the only places that provide save points which follows the traditional DQ style, but newer RPG gamers will be turned-off by this. Imagine passing through a one hour dungeon, only to fight an insanely hard boss at the end…at getting your butt whooped. Good thing is you do not get game over….the bad thing is you end up at the last church you visited, lose half your gold, and have to tread through the dungeon again to replay the boss. Tedious work here.

Dragon Quest 8 has quite a few nice songs. The five or six town songs are wonderfully composed and I absolutely love the opening song…I wish I could say the same for the music played during a battle. It sounds so crappy…reminds me of a James Bond song. Voice acting is also excellent. The British voice actors fit the characters really well, and the voices are almost as great as the VA from Grandia 3 (I think Grandia has better VA, IMO). The Hero of the story has no voice actor though….he doesn't talk. He sort of reminds me of the silent hero type….like Link.

THIS GAME IS LONG. The world map is hugeeeeeeee and has tons of nooks and crannies to explore! Just when you think you've reached the end, another event happens and you are back to saving the world again. Finishing Dragon Quest will sap up about 60 hours of your life, and with great replay value, players will usually clock in 90 hours or so. Even I stopped playing once I passed the one hundred hour mark. There are those who like to reach level 99 with all characters, but leveling is so extremely time-consuming, only the hardcore gamers attempt it. I guess it takes 150 hours or so to get to level 99. Tons of mini-quests are added in: Players can gamble, collect medals for items, and even participate in a monster arena (where you find monsters in the world to battle other teams of monsters). This is also the place where you obtain your summons. Yippie! What is the best reward for finishing Dragon Quest? A bonus dungeon that contains the most difficult monsters in the game! Just what I love!

Dragon Quest does have its ups and downs, and it may not be for everyone, but you gotta thank Level 5 and Square for creating it and sending it to the United States. Hopefully, Dragon Quest 8 sells well enough so we receive DQ9, but that won't be happening soon. For now, we have to be content with what we have, and that's good enough for me. DQ8 is one heck of an adventure, and any fan of old-school RPGs would not want to miss out on this grand adventure.

Evil Jesters
+You can name the Hero (yay)
+Fun story
+Vibrant cel-shaded graphics
+Awesome enemies and character models
+Alchemy pot is a great concept that works well
+A few good songs and a great opening song
+Best cast of British VA ever
+Fun sidequests
+Bonus dungeon

Clowns
-Only four characters
-Turn-based action is slow
-Difficulty curves a little
-Save points are only at churches
-Cruddy battle music
-Definitely not for everyone

8/10

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 03/01/06