After a long absence Stateside, Enix's Dragon Quest series returns in
Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King. This time around, the
story begins with a small group of strange travelers camped out in the
woods. Leading the motley group is the Hero, a retainer from the ruined
Trodain castle seeking to restore it to its former glory. He’s joined
by a bandit named Yangus, who follows him around like a puppy, The
Hero’s liege King Trode, and Trode’s beautiful daughter Medea. Well,
she would be beautiful if it weren’t for the curse that has transformed
her into the party’s pack horse and Trode into some sort of
freaky-looking frog man. The group is hot on the trail of an evil
jester who stole the king's prized scepter and used its power to
destroy Trodain and curse everyone there. The Hero and his crew will
travel far and wide him track down and reverse the curse placed on
Trodain’s citizens, king, and princess. As you journey through the
world, you'll find out more about the ancient scepter, meet other
characters seeking the scepter for their own reasons, and get yourself
wrapped up in saving the world. Hey, it's an RPG, what kind of story
did you expect? While the plot reeks of the "ragtag group saves the
world from an ancient evil" cliché, DQVIII does a good job with the
story and does provide a few twists along the way.
The visual style of DQVIII is excellent and does a good job in
assisting the story. While it doesn’t have the best graphics that the
PS2 has seen, DQVIII's environments are lush and colorful, while the
characters all have a lot of charm of their own. The world has a
medieval fantasy feel, with lots of forests, open seas, and mountains
dotted with unique and interesting towns and castles. The NPCs are
bright and generally well animated, which you would expect since the
creator of Dragon Ball Z designed the art style. Characters and
monsters do repeat over the course of the game, but they are all very
interesting. Enemies, especially, have much more personality than you
would expect. In battles, they will often waste a lot of their turns
frolicking, laughing at you, and tripping over their own feet instead
of attacking you. A great example of this is an early imp monster that
tries to cast ultra powerful spells, only to fail and fall over because
it doesn't have enough MP.
The audio in DQVIII is astoundingly good and actually makes it a better
game. Every piece of background music is done with a full orchestra,
giving DQVIII a bit of a movie feel. Every single one of the tracks is
excellent, and makes good use of a number of instruments. You'll hear
the battle theme literally thousands of times and never get sick of it.
Since DQVIII cycles between day and night, most tracks also have a day
and night version. The daytime music sounds robust and exciting, like
the day is in full swing, while nighttime is more subdued and sounds
like a lullaby. This little touch adds much to the appeal of the game.
The background music isn't the only treat for your ears. The North
American version added quite a bit of voiceover work to what was solely
text-based dialogue in Japan. While the voiceover tracks are strangely
tinny, sounding like a low quality mp3, the voice acting is superb. The
voice actors are almost exclusively British, and each character has
their own style. Yangus is a cockney bandit, Jessica is a vengeance
seeking rich girl, Angelo is an aristocratic ladies man, and King Trode
is a noble whiner. The dialogue is mostly serious, but you'll run into
plenty of funny moments, especially when King Trode repeatedly sneaks
up on Yangus who exclaims "COR BLIMEY!" Also, in an interesting
throwback, a lot of the sound effects are seemingly lifted from the NES
versions of Dragon Quest. Spells like Zoom, actions like fleeing
battles, and other random sounds like finding an item after battle, are
very “8-bitish.” This was a strange choice of sound effects, but they
fit the game very well.
If you've ever wanted a lesson in classic RPG combat, DQVIII will
straight up school you. Like most turn-based RPGs, you start off by
picking one of a few options for each character, including the standard
attack, magic, flee, item, and special skills actions. You can also
build up character strength using “psyche up” and try to force the
enemy to flee using “intimidate,” but that’s all there is. Once you
enter in your party's actions, you sit back and watch your characters
and enemies go through their animations. Then you get to repeat the
cycle all over again. This is turn-based RPG combat at its most basic,
though the difficulty will keep you on your toes. There was a few times
when I caught myself biting my fingernails because I needed a healing
spell to go off before the enemy attacked and killed me. Combat does
get a bit easier later as you gain some key abilities, but each new
dungeon is a war of attrition with your magic points and health. Your
enemies stay difficult, even as you level up, and you'll run into very
tough boss battles when your characters are at their weakest. It can be
a bit frustrating, but it’s ultimately very satisfying when you finally
topple the boss using a few desperate attacks and a timely critical
hit. Sometimes, though, luck isn’t enough and the only way to get
through these tough spots is by spend a bit of time leveling up,
healing at town, and going back in for some more level grinding. DQVIII
is designed for this, and you will have to put in a few marathon
leveling sessions. They get a little boring, but it’s worth it when
you're done and ready to take on the next boss. It’s a testament to how
good this game is that you won’t get sick of it, even after a couple
hours of fighting the same enemies over and over again.
It’s a good thing that this game is so well done, because it is really
long. The main story can take up to 50 hours or so, with sidequests
that will add another 20 or more. Though some of this time will be
spent level grinding, the never feels like it drags at any point. The
story was very well paced, and engaging throughout. Just when the game
seems to wrapping up, the bad guy would sneak away, and the party had
to start hunting him down yet again. This game was certainly worth $50
just by its length alone, but that wasn’t good enough for Square Enix.
DQVIII also packs-in the highly anticipated demo for Final Fantasy XII. The demo can
easily be beaten in under an hour, but it's a tasty morsel that's very
hard to put down. No doubt, some people purchased DQVIII for the demo
alone, which is fine because they’ll be pleasantly surprised when they complete it and pop DQVIII in their PS2.
Dragon Quest VIII doesn’t mess with the series’ time tested turn-based
RPG formula. The simple battle system and massive amount of level
grinding can be a bit of a turnoff to some players, but they hearken
back to the series’ origins on the NES. Anyone who's even a passing fan
of RPGs should pick this game up. Just clear your schedule first.
