Level-5 / Square-Enix
Reviewed by Anthony
I think everyone goes through those moments in their gaming lives where it seems the rest of the world thinks the world of a game and you just don’t feel it. My latest installment to that saga was Dragon Quest VIII. I picked it up as a kind of time killer game that I always meant to play, remembering nearly universal stellar reviews for it. Then 70 hours of gameplay later, my main feeling was something like “..huh.”. Not anger, not joy, just some middle ground where I’d finished a long, decent game that was supposed to be an amazing one.
Dragon Quest VIII stays faithful to its Dragon Quest origins and follows a silent protagonist on his quest to defeat an evil entity who has cursed a once noble kingdom, in particular its King and Princess. It’s a traditional RPG through and through, even keeping completely random battles. Additionally, characters can be customized slightly towards specific weapons/spells/skills, and items/armaments can be fused into stronger ones. It’s a solid game that’s made very well but ultimately failed to draw me in.
What’s good:
- Though I’m no fan of the character artwork, I have to admit that the game looks great. The cel-shaded colors pop on the screen and the world always looks full of life. Backgrounds and environments look appropriate and it feels like they just fit very well with the game. Arguably one of the best graphical aspects is that of the enemy sprites. They kept very faithful to classic DQ monsters’ poses, yet animated them and brought them to life to great effect. DQ fans are sure to love this.
- My first thought with the high number of random battles, the different character development points, and the item creation system considered, that this game would be very unbalanced. I was very impressed by how well they balanced all of these aspects. Although guides may tell you to always stick with a specific weapon type per character, to absolutely make x item at y point in the game, or to collect every hidden medal... truth be told, I just kind of went by how I wanted to play the game, and the result is that I did just fine. Some battles were very tough, yes, but using good strategy, I was never unfairly brutalized, nor did I have to go insanely out of my way to level up. It’s moderately difficult, but a bit of work keeps it moving. I appreciated that.
- Being able to collect a monster team from the wild and battle with them in a tournament was fairly cool, but the fact that you could call them out in battle to take a few turns for your party was just awesome. Although the monster arena is a little frustrating with its poor, uncontrollable AI making terrible decisions for your team, the reward of being able to use two teams and get nice items from it was a great deal.
- Keeping all of the classic DQ sound effects for misses, level-ups and the like was a great touch. It didn’t feel too cheesy, and was another nice touch of gaming throwback.
- Despite being old-school inspired, the battle system was pretty solid. A healthy supply of buff and debuff spells rounded out regular skills and the ability to focus up one’s attack for bigger hits. Overall it had a good risk/reward system that played out well in coming up with the best way to beat the more threatening bosses.
- Although it was sometimes slow in practice, the staple DQ casinos were a nice way to earn supplemental income or rare equipment if you put in the time for it.
What’s neutral:
- We love good music in games, and given the crazy laud that was heaped on this game’s orchestral soundtrack, I was ready to be wowed. Instead, I had more of a feeling like all of the music was composed with an orchestra that gets bored easily and was performed with little context to the game itself. Music like the random battle song just feels “busy” with instruments playing all over each other. For the most part, songs feel very distant to the rest of the game, and rarely like they truly match. It took until very late into the game that I finally heard one that sounded pretty. Otherwise, the transitions and orchestral nature of music was impressive, but I don’t think it fit well at all.
- Everyone loves a dapper British accent, but full out cockney English accents? Yee. Performed well enough and all, but the characters’ accents were a bit grating and took a bit away from what was otherwise a pretty solid amount of voice work.
- Some of the characters border on likeable, but otherwise the whole thing felt a bit too cheesy. Jessica apparently had to change into a more revealing outfit to do battle, Yangus had a bunch of weird-attempt-at-cartoonish “comical catchphrase” moments, and while King Trode was occasionally funny, his lines and voice acting were just a shred too over-the-top at times. The characters have unfunny forced-laughter scenes that just elicited eye-rolls, though the ending at least had a couple of cute moments with King Trode and being able to still say “No” to some very obvious “Yes”-needing sequences.
- Treasure hunting progression is nice and all, but the whole thing of putting locked treasure chests in various parts of the world that need stronger keys is tedious. It’s one thing to remember a town with a hidden vault, but to remember to travel in x direction from y town when you have z key while random battles pester you is not fun. I would’ve rather they kept the treasure hunting aspect out of the world map.
What’s bad:
- It would be nice to know the skills you can obtain before permanently putting skill points into a certain weapon/type of abilities. Otherwise, you’re just hoping it’s something good or running to a guide for the list. This is compounded by the fact that some MP-requiring skills do less damage than regular attacks. Huh...
- As mentioned, having no AI control over the monster arena battles was tedious and annoying. It meant you could have a team perfectly capable of winning a rank, yet they’d continually make absolutely moronic choices that would lead to them losing. Sure, keep attacking the least threatening character instead of the one that revives him or their potent damage-dealer. You just sit and watch it happen for minutes on end... annoying.
- I feel like the game should’ve better been titled “Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed Fetch Quest”. Much of the game’s length is caught up in long treks through interconnected fetch-quests... here’s a particularly bad example: At one point, you reach a dungeon, and you’re told you can only get in with a certain item. They tell you to travel to a nearby town. You make your way there, find out bad stuff has happened and you should trek much further to another castle. In said castle-town, you find a prince is missing, and you have to scope around the large castle-town to find him, which takes a special trick aside from just finding his location. Then you’re sent on a mission to go collect an item from a dungeon. You do, then back in town, the prince runs off with it and you have to find him again. Then you’re given access to the item you originally needed, except oops, it has no power! Now you have to go to another area to find a sage. You then find out that you have to sail around a certain area and use the item in battle against a specific monster. Then you can continue back where you began. Friggin’ wow guys.
- Speaking of long treks, although the ability to warp between towns and out of dungeons is a huge benefit, still be prepared for a very slow natural running speed. Although dungeons, towns, and the world map are in pretty glorious 3D, they have your character run at a pretty slow speed throughout. Given that only towns are safe from random encounters, it means even “short” dungeons can take quite a while, or you could spend a good hour+ searching for that aforementioned missing prince. Eventually you get a way to move much quicker on the world map and a ship for sailing, but random battles still happen for both of those. It isn’t until the very end of the game that you finally get a way to travel the world quickly and free of battles.
- I know the story is never the strongest point in Dragon Quest games, but this one was still kind of painful. If it had been intentionally tongue-in-cheek I might’ve given it more lenience, but I’m pretty sure they were serious here. By the time they got to the point where they figured out a staff was evil, and it then kept passing hands and killing people while we sat around watching it happen, any sense of taking the story seriously fell out the window. Not to mention their emotional scenes usually involved characters you just met dying while your party lets it happen. Sigh.
I’m pretty sure there’s nothing wrong with me, but so help me, I can’t see any argument as to why this is supposedly one of the PS2’s best RPGs. Aside from great graphics and a well-balanced battle system, there’s no other single exceptional aspect to the game. Though I had fun at times in grabbing stronger equipment from the world and seeking out monsters for the team, the story never grabbed me (it even managed to annoy), and the game’s length was mostly padded with slow dungeon exploration through long series of fetch quests. Truth be told, I had significantly more fun overall playing the DS’s Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker.
That said, there is some charm here. Great monster art and sound effect throwbacks permeate, and who knows, maybe you’ll get attached to the cheesy characters. But on a system absolutely loaded with RPGs, even as cheap as this game is to obtain, I don’t see a ton of merit in picking it up for anything other than an inexpensive timesink.
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