Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King

"Nothing more than mediocre..."

As the name would imply, Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King is the eighth game in the Dragon Quest series, a series formerly known under the name of Dragon Warrior in the United States. The series is insanely popular in Japan, but until Dragon Quest VIII was released in the United States, the series fell short of others that it outsold in Japan. Immediately after it was released, this game earned praise nearly across the board from all sorts of reviewers. This time, not only was it praised in Japan but also by critics everywhere. It seemed like everyone was loving this game. So, being curious, I decided to see for myself whether this game lived up to its acclaim. That, my friends, is one decision I regret to this day.

The story begins with a cliche: a princess and a king are cursed by a power-hungry wizard, and generic silent protagonist #897 is the only survivor. This Hero must travel with the cursed king to stop the wizard and reverse this curse. Very basic and very cliche. The story starts with a pattern, and this pattern continues throughout. There is nothing special about this game's story except that it manages to be an extremely predictable string of cliches. The aim was simplicity, but if the player cares about a game's plot, Dragon Quest VIII's story will not even come close to satisfying him. There is nothing thought-provoking about the story, and the nice presentation means nothing if the story itself isn't interesting.

The characters are more of the same. The protagonist, the aforementioned generic Hero, is a silent protagonist: he doesn't say a single word. Now, I know silent protagonists were common in the past, but why use one here? This hero has nothing. No personality, no thoughts or feelings, nothing with which the player can identify, nothing. As far as boring male leads go, this game's is at the top. Words and thoughts would have at least given him a persona, but apparently that would have been breaking tradition. His supporting cast speaks, but their character development is barely better than the Hero's. For example, Yangus, a companion of the Hero's, receives more development than the rest of the cast, and I wouldn't even consider him a well developed character. Basically, he used to be a bandit, but he changed his ways, and that's about it. He has opportunity for a lot more development, but it never happens. The other two characters, Jessica and Angelo, are mostly just there. They add nothing to the plot outside their presence; they are flat characters, and they receive next to no character development. Once again, it's a matter of missed opportunities and lack of personal motivations.

Okay, so there was no focus on story and characters. That must mean there's at least something special about the gameplay, right? Well, somewhat. First of all, the battle system is turn-based to every last detail and as simple as it gets. The player inputs actions for each of his characters (or lets the AI handle it), and after all commands are entered, the turn begins. The characters and the enemies do their attacks roughly based on "Agility”"stat (and I say roughly because, annoyingly enough, I have seen the characters go in the wrong order when I was counting on the Agility-based order way too many times), and, once every character and every enemy has had his action, the turn ends. This alone is nothing bad. In fact, at the beginning of the game, I enjoyed the fights, even though there were random battles. However, as the player progresses through the game, the fights become extremely repetitive; the same pattern is used to win every battle. The bosses also take a while to kill, and many attack in predictable patterns. The same boring tactic still defeats them, but it just takes longer for them to fall. Eventually, bosses gain the ability to attack twice per turn, but the novelty of that quickly wears off after fighting a few bosses can attack twice. Essentially, repetition of the same actions on every turn become the key to victory as long as levels are high enough (more on that later).

In battle, the characters can attack, use spells, use skills, use items, or raise their tension. The tension system is sort of like a gamble. The player cannot attack on the turn that he raises his tension, but his next action will be more effective. This sounds like it will add variety, but the problem is that for raising tension to be significantly more effective than just normally attacking, tension has to be raised multiple times. This leaves the characters vulnerable. Also, almost all bosses later in the game will have the ability to eliminate all positive statuses on the party with one move, and yes, that includes tension. There goes three or four turns. Hey, at least they tried to add depth to the battle system here.

Customization? Nothing noteworthy. Each character gains skill points as he levels up, and he can invest these skill points in one of five categories, each of which nets the character different bonuses, which can include different skills or spells. The problem is, however, that a lot of these bonuses are merely stat increases or completely worthless attacks. A lot of the skills or spells that are outside those two categories are situational at best. That leaves very few skills or spells for all-purpose use. Also, some of these skills require different weapons to be equipped, but the ability to switch weapons in the middle of a battle solves this problem. Overall, this game's customization is mediocre.

Dragon Quest VIII features an extremely large world map. This is both a blessing and a curse: there is plenty of room for exploration, but traveling between two places can be too time-consuming. Let's start with the positive. The previously mentioned world map features a great camera angle and no lags, making it very player-friendly. The day-and-night system adds variety to the types of monsters that can appear, and variety is always good. Also, there is a spell that can return the player to towns or places he has already visited instantly and another one to immediately escape dungeons to minimize backtracking. Speaking of the dungeons, they consist of wide-open areas and large paths for the players to explore. The dungeons usually only have a few areas, but each area is so large that the size of this game's dungeons is not small compared to that of the average role-playing game. Barring the annoying and unnecessary random battles, exploration in this game is great, especially in the dungeons.

However, there is a major problem with the size of the world map and the fact that this game uses random encounters. Now, let me be the first to tell you that the encounter rate isn't bad. In fact, Holy Waters, items that are easily accessible, can even lower the rates. This sounds great and all, but it is highly deceptive. The world is so large that the player will spend a lot of time traveling, which will lead to a lot of random battles regardless of the rate. The nature of the battles is downright frustrating more often than not. For example, it is way too common to encounter a group of five or more enemies in this game. When this happens, the player has three choices, none of which are too desirable. He can spend an eternity fighting to beat all of them, try to run and most likely fail, or try to intimidate the enemies (make the enemies run away in fear) and almost definitely fail (except when traveling through areas already visited). The first option, fighting, takes a lot of time. Random battles become tedious, lasting more than they should. Seriously, who wants to waste that much time on random battles? If the player feels like moving on in the game instead of spending unnecessary time in a random battle, he is left with the options of either running or intimidating. When the player tries to run, he will fail most of the time. Then, the enemies get a free round to unleash their attacks on the characters and cause heavy damage. Next turn, the player tries to run again, and the same thing happens. This happens one more time (luckily, it seems like the limit for failed attempts at escaping is three), and the player is left with two living characters in horrible condition. Now, he must run back to a town and find a church (which is, annoyingly, the only way to revive characters for quite a long time). I can not even count the number of times this has happened, and I can only wonder whether or not the developers were actually trying to frustrate the player. The last option is to try to intimidate the enemies. Unless the player is in an area with enemies that he originally fought a few towns ago, intimidating will almost always fail, leading to a possible free turn for the enemies to attack. This is also not fun for the player's characters.

The gameplay woes do not stop there. From the very beginning, the average player will have to gain many levels to even be prepared for the first dungeon. Now, don't get me wrong: I like challenge in a game. However, how challenging is it to simply gain a few levels? It's not. In fact, it's downright tedious and a total waste of time. Level grinding may have been traditional for past games, but there is no reason to force the player to level in the current generation. Force the player to use strategy instead of leveling up to earn the reward of monotonously long battles! The pattern doesn't just stop; it continues throughout the entire game. The tedious leveling adds nothing but meaningless hours and disruption of a lackluster plot. The "difficulty" of this game continues in this matter: it can be high at first, but it disappears after stats are raised.

There is very little that I liked about this game, so I'll say it and get it over with. The graphics in Dragon Quest VIII are great. cel-shading is excellent, and it makes both the characters and their environment vibrant and colorful. Walking on the world map is delightful because of the beautiful environments, and the dungeons are well-designed. Everything in the game looks hand-drawn and beautiful, and the graphics are just amazing all around. The character designs are amazing as well, and the animation is downright magnificent. Dragon Quest VIII's graphics are simply among the best in every aspect.

Sound-wise, the tracks in the game are mediocre. They're nothing special, but they get the job done. However, there just aren't enough of them. About halfway through the game, some tunes will get repetitive to the point of annoying. By the time the player works his way partly through this lengthy role-playing game, very few new tracks are ever introduced. The battle music is especially repetitive, and the town and dungeon themes are not much better. More variety would have helped this game's repetitive soundtrack. The voice acting, however, is praiseworthy. Most characters speak with English accents, and the lines of dialogue are appropriate for the characters. The speech is clear for the most part, and the voices parallel what little is shown of the characters' personalities. It's a pity that the protagonist is silent for this reason as well as many others.

The universe of Dragon Quest VIII is a very colorful and beautiful one. However, once the player gets past the flowery first impressions, there is nothing more than a game that is mediocre or worse in every respect. The gameplay is okay, but the boring story and horrible characters are definitely the weak parts. In the end, I think that this did not end up being my type of RPG. Besides my want for a story that can make me think and characters that are well-developed, I like action role-playing games more than those that are turn-based, but turn-based is usually also fun. However, Dragon Quest VIII's battle system is not fun: it is unnecessarily tedious and boring. In the end, a 4/10 is all that this game deserves.

As for renting or buying, I would recommend buying this game to those who loved the rest of the series and enjoy simple role-playing games; I hear that this game is a lot like its predecessors. However, for those like me who did not get into gaming early enough to appreciate this game as much, I would recommend renting it at best.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 03/06/06, Updated 09/05/06