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| | Title:
Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King
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System:
Playstation 2
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Genre:
Role Playing
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Publisher:
Square-Enix
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Developer:
Level-5
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Release:
15 November, 2005
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Online:
No
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ESRB:
Teen
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Time and time again Square Enix proves why they’re the best at what they do. Even before the company merger, both Squaresoft and Enix had strong backgrounds in the RPG genre. Squaresoft is obviously most revered for their Final Fantasy series, but included in their all-time greats are Chrono Trigger, Xenogears and Secret of Mana, to name only a few of many. Enix brought to U.S. shores titles such as Valkyrie Profile, Ogre Battle, Illusion of Gaia and, originally, the Dragon Warrior/Quest series. With both established companies working together, the latest installment to the Dragon Warrior/Quest series just has to be good.
Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King, which we’ll call DQVIII from here on so I don’t have to type so much, is obviously the eighth installment of a long-running series started by Enix in 1985, launched shortly after the NES itself. There’s a couple of theories on why the series takes two names; Dragon Warrior and Dragon Quest are one and the same, Dragon Quest usually reserved for the Japanese titles, becoming Warrior in the U.S. I don’t know why they went back to Quest but it’s probably due to naming copyrights that might have expired (Dungeons and Dragons is rumored to have held the Dragon Quest copyright in N.A.). The other strong theory is that the U.S. market probably responded better to the name Warrior rather than Quest. Since Square Enix is such an established name, the title of the game plays a lesser role now; just knowing it’s published by these guys is the strong selling point. However, Level 5 (known for their Dark Cloud games) are the ones who actually did the development work here, and did it well.
Journey of the Cursed King is not just a fancy title, but it’s probably not as mysterious and dark as it sounds. As a matter of fact, this game is quite bubbly and upbeat most of the time, but that’s not to say this game is not infected with a fantastic story that taps you on the shoulder then comes around to smack you in the face.
Cursed to roam the lands as a monster, the cursed King Trode is journeying to retrieve the magical scepter his kingdom once protected. It was stolen by an evil magician known as Dhoulmagus. Before fleeing with the scepter, Dhoulmagus cursed the king and his daughter, Princess Medea, in the forms of a toad-looking monster and a beautiful white horse, respectively. Only one other survivor remained as the city itself was also wrapped in a curse, consumed by living vines. The Hero travels with the king as his advisor, warrior and protector, along with friends they’ll meet along the way, which includes: Yangus, the short and stout ex-thief; Jessica, the daughter of a town's Mayor avenging a death in the family, and Angelo, a Templar Knight searching for a murderer. The story unfolds sparingly, but it tugs you along like a donkey with a carrot in its face and then feeds you a whole basket of them, persuading you to move on. It's nothing award-winning, but it certainly has an impact.
It’s been quite some time that I had the boyish admiration of an RPG that had me gaping and waiting until I could play again. It’s just something about DQVIII that brings back the RPG goodness that was once so prevalent on the Playstation--the era of RPGs. Perhaps it’s the presentation, having the brightly laid and inviting atmosphere that really puts meaning behind the term “role playing”. Coupled with a soundtrack that absolutely amazes in its detail and beauty, immersion is no tough feat. You’ll be sucked into some the largest, free-roaming 3D environments you can take, with probably the most impressive use of the cel-shading technique used for all characters and monsters. Even 90% of the game’s story is spoken dialogue, assisting with a much deeper character involvement and feeling of mood and intent. The characters range in accents from a strong Italian to Cockney British, though, most of the characters speak British. The Hero, however, is the strong, silent type and has no dialogue, not even written. This works to keep things more mysterious, but it doesn’t do much for character development. I would assume what Square Enix was going for was to allow the player to fill in his role. At first it was sort of disappointing because Square has some of the most memorable characters ever created, but it starts to fit as you go, then you won’t be able think of it being any other way.
Of the many, many monsters you’ll encounter, only about 30-40% of them will be re-used. That’s where they change the color of the monster, make it tougher, and then give it a new name. All of the monsters and characters are unique to any other game, all designed by Akira Toriyama. If you don’t know that name, then you’re not very familiar with Japanese artists. Toriyama-san is known mostly for his work called Dragon Ball. If you’re familiar with Dragon Ball (including Dragon Ball Z; he didn’t do Dragon Ball GT), then you’ll instantly know he did the work here. Everything is a marvel to look at. This is no highly-rendered super polygonal display you’d see with something like Dead or Alive 4 on the 360, but it’s a very attractive and pleasing sight with the hand-drawn characters and lush, colorful environments. Some great details were not spared, including the excellent use of shadowing on the characters. This is important because this game utilizes a day and night feature. As the sun is going down and you’re heading west, your shadow lengthens behind you. The characters move fluidly and retain life-like qualities as such, even in battle. Toriyama-san and his trademarked style and ability are quite apparent, and there’s even some very strong Dragon Ball Z likeness in this game. As a matter of fact, “Psyche Up” the Hero to 100 and see what happens.
Satisfying to all hardcore RPG fans, the battle system is true, turn-based and menu-driven combat, with random encounters and all. The battlefields are 3D, however, with a dynamic camera that changes angles and viewpoints between attacks and encounters, which is certainly a good thing. There are standard commands such as Attack, Magic, Abilities (individual to the character), Flee and Items. What’s not standard is the “Intimidate” command, which allows the person whose turn is up next to scream at the enemy in hopes of driving them off. Often times this is comical, but not overly helpful as you can’t scare away most of the strong enemies. It does work to decrease fight times if you’re in a hurry. Of course, you could just use a Holy Water to prevent encounters from weaker monsters. Another addition to your menu from standard stuff is the “Psyche Up” command. At first I didn’t find this one very helpful, which is until I realized that each time you psyche up, your power increases exponentially. It can be done with any character but uses their attack turn. It’s only beneficial on the tough bosses, since it uses a turn, but if you can psyche up 3 or 4 times in a row, the attack is absolutely devastating, dwarfing what you’d accomplish with 3 or 4 regular attacks.
There are many other elements that increases playability, including the aforementioned day and night feature. Sure, other games have used it, too, such as Radiata Stories, but it’s not such a dominating element that it becomes a nuisance, but some things happen in the game that don't happen during the day.
The use of an Alchemy Pot is a feature in this game that is very important. You can combine items to make better and rarer ones, some you just can’t do without! If you’re one of those types of gamers who has to find and accomplish everything in a game, there’s some stuff here for you! Side quests are here for you with alchemy, and with a Battle Arena. As you traverse the lands, you’ll come across some “Infamous Monsters” that you’ll eventually be able to send to the “Battle Arena”, ran by the guy with the strong Italian accent I might’ve mentioned. Here you’ll be able to fight your monster team against other monster teams to gain prizes, similar to the Coliseum in Final Fantasy III, Kingdom Hearts, and even Tales of Symphonia.
Another useful and strategic element is the use of Skill Points. Each character is awared points as they level up and they can be spent on attributes. Likewise, each character's attributes differ and directly effect their abilities with each type of weapon they can use. For instance, Yangus can use Clubs and Axes, whereas none of the others can. If you use all your Skill Points on Clubs, he won't know any abiliites for the Axes, costing him attack power and cool moves. It's a strategy element, but I'm not particularly fond of it as some just don't make any sense, such as "Fisticuffs". Spending Skill Points on this ability, which all 4 characters have, would give you strength to fight with no weapon, and/or increasing your agility. Sounds neat, but with the Alchemy Pot and weapons being so cool (you can see the weapons and armor change on the character when you buy or replace), you'll never spend a single point on it.
Replay value is probably nill in the standard sense of playing again after beating the game. The game is around 100 hours long (assuming you perform every side-quest and get all the items) and fun until the last drop. There is not enough after-play content to really make you want to play it again after beating it. But not very many RPGs do provide enough reason to go at it a second or third time, anyway. This game doesn't mix up the genre, but it does most of the standard stuff well and provides enough diversity in combat, scenery, story, and items that you'll easily forget any shortcomings, like the massive amounts of random encounters you'll face. Furthermore, the dungeons and puzzles don't get tedious and overbearing. You don't feel like you're in a dungeon just to be there and trodding along to fill the game in. In my mind, when you ask about replay value for an RPG, you're asking if you can easily commit to the full length of the game and have fun doing it. Permission to buzz the tower granted, Ghost Rider.
And here I am, guilty of saving the best for last. The music in this game is some of the best I’ve ever heard, on a whole. Some games have a tune or two that strike out to be remembered as one of the best ever, but in this game, the whole darn soundtrack is fantastic. Everything is recorded from a fully orchestrated procession as Koichi Sugiyama returns to composing the series, engulfing you completely into the surrealistic world like a drug. From the title menu down to moments of heart-tugging sadness to upbeat symphonies of valor, this game has a unique tune for all occasions. I would probably purchase the soundtrack to this game. I even hope they would add some pizzazz to it, though, with clean, electric guitar chords, much like what Square did with memorable Final Fantasy songs, creating “The Black Mages”.
How could I close this review any other way than to urge and implore you to buy this game, assuming you’re an RPG fan (because you probably wouldn’t be reading this if you weren’t)? Dragon Quest VIII is a fantastic addition to the RPG genre and is definitely one of the best of this generation. We’ll see what comes of the Mistwalker camp for the next generation, but this title holds it’s ground for 2005 as the best RPG around.
| The Core Score |
Overall
9 |
| Fun |
|
9 |
| Gameplay |
|
8.5 |
| Graphics |
|
9 |
| Audio |
|
9.5 |
| Replay |
|
9 |
|
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