A fantastic localization may finally get the granddaddy of Eastern RPGs the respect it deserves in the states.
Neither fledgling franchise was met very enthusiastically in the states, however, and the following three Dragon Quest games would see diminishing returns in their North American release, while in Japan they were so popular that laws had to be released forbidding the games from coming out on a school or work day. And while the Final Fantasy games would garner more limelight with an emerging focus on storytelling and high presentation values through the sixteen bit era and culminating with the groundbreaking Final Fantasy VII on the Playstation, Dragon Quest instead refined the exact formula of its original game with each new title, garnering no new fans. By the time Dragon Quest VII came out for the Playstation in the United States, it was graphically obsolete and incredibly Spartan, unable to attract any interest in a country that had made Final Fantasy VII its star.
Still, the franchise has its fans, even in the states. Players enchanted by the series’ focus on exploration, high adventure, addictive but simple combat and massive quests embraced each new game fervently, and to this day Japan goes crazy for each new game in the series with a fervor that can only be compared to the US’s reception of Halo 2. When Dragon Quest VIII was released for the PS2 last year in Japan, someone in Square Enix must have been taking notes and saw the untapped potential for the series success in the West. And so, instead of taking a low-budget approach that Square-Enix usually applies to its more niche titles, the company went all out and overhauled the already impressive looking Dragon Quest VIII for its domestic release. The result is not only an old fashioned RPG that proudly carries on the Dragon Quest namesake, but an English version that actually surpasses the Japanese original and is easily one of the best produced games on the PS2.
The game itself isn’t very far removed from Dragon Quest VII, released four years earlier. As with any Dragon Quest, a nameless hero embarks on an epic quest spanning continents and sometimes worlds to defeat an evil demon lord. There are a few surprises and colorful additions to the plot, but that basic summary still applies to most any Dragon Quest game. The real meat of the franchise is the essential RPG ingredients that its been built on since the first chapter: the game world is huge and brimming with secrets and things to find and do. You’ll find yourself salivating over new equipment and wondering where you’ll find the gold for them, or endlessly tinkering with your alchemy pot to create new weapons and armor, or hunting down mini-medals to trade for new items, or tracking down rare monsters to compete in your monster arena team… the game is packed with content, dense with adventuring and discovery. And since each discovery will likely foster some worth and value (unlike the potential hordes of equipment you can accrue and just sell in a game like Diablo), the mere act of uncovering more and more of the gameworld remains just as fun when you’re preparing to battle the final boss as it does in the opening dungeons, if not more so. And the time you’ll spend exploring the world is massive – unlike other RPGs boasting inflated playtimes, you’ll be hard pressed to finish this game in less than sixty hours. Considering the amount of side quests and extra content, not to mention bonus dungeons and a continuation of the story available after completing the game, it’s easy to see where one can get eighty or even a hundred hours out of this title.
Of course, the game doesn’t consist solely of the act of exploring – as this is an RPG, you can expect to get into your fair share of battles: probably around a thousand, if my initial playthrough was any indication. Surprisingly the battle system hasn’t changed that much from the franchise’s earlier installments. It’s faster and certainly more colorful, but many of the spells and abilities are exactly the same. If you’ve already played countless other Dragon Quests this might be a problem, but even then it can feel like returning to an old friend. The fights remain challenging and engaging throughout the game and require you to make good use of the equipment and magic available to you. The amount of skills has actually been toned down from earlier installments, limiting each of your four characters to five possible sets of skills instead of letting everyone learn whatever class they like, but the result is a much more focused battle system that makes it nearly impossible to create a useless character. That said, you can still play the game through multiple times and take each of those four characters in a different direction each time.
So really, the skeleton of the game has changed very little from any of the game’s predecessors, which stretch back all the way into the early days of the NES. Where the game has made great strides, however, is in its presentation values. Developer Level 5 of Dark Cloud fame was contracted to put the game engine together, and their technical prowess shines through and through. The cel-shaded world of Dragon Quest VIII is one of the best looking games on the PS2, and it’s only more impressive when you realize that this game world compares quite favorably with the size of earlier (and uglier) Dragon Quest worlds. But not only do the characters and locales look like something ripped right out of the pages of a comic by series artist Akira Toriyama, but they animate well too. No longer does checking a bookshelf consist of walking up to it and pressing X: now your character will pull the book off the shelf and flip through it, or just finger through the bookspines absent-mindedly until they decide there’s nothing they want to read. Little touches like this don’t add much to the gameplay, but for a series that has ignored the technical aspect of things for so long, it’s refreshing to see Dragon Quest go from zero to hero in the span of one game.
But the polish doesn’t end there: also noteworthy is the sound, especially considering how it’s improved in the transition from Japan to America. The original Japanese version wasn’t necessarily a slouch, with a fitting soundtrack composed by longtime series contributer Koichi Sugiyama. The American version, however, does away with the synthesized midi version used in the original and employs instead the same soundtrack as recorded by an actual orchestra. As a result the tunes, which are very reminiscent of previous Dragon Quests, come alive in a new way. The difference is evident from the moment you start up the game, and you can’t help but wonder when titles like Final Fantasy will follow suit.
Also added to the English speaking version were… well, English speakers. The original Japanese version had no voiceovers, but Square Enix decided to add them to our release. While this might initially be cause for concern with series purists, especially considering the spotty track record of voice acting in niche games, Square Enix has outdone themselves with one of the best translations in the history of games. The voice acting was done almost entirely out of Europe, which gives the game a kind of English flavor. Not only is this a refreshing approach, but the voice actors are phenomenal, even when they’re hamming it up. The voice actor for Yangus, the bandit-turned-straight-man, changed the character from one I could care less about based on screenshots to my favorite character of the game. There’s a lot of voice work throughout the entire game – surprising, considering the game originally had none – but even one-shot NPCs or boss characters are given their own accents or personalities via a great script and colorful casting.
Negatives? There aren’t many to be found, so long as you’re a fan of the Eastern style of RPG, but there are some. The menu and inventory screens have also seen some retooling from their Japanese counterparts, and while they’re certainly prettier they still have the same limited functionality. Items can only be moved from character to character to your catch-all “backpack” one at a time, and usually through more button presses than should be absolutely necessary. Its clunky, inefficient, and hardly improved over the menus used in the 8-bit days. Considering how stubborn the franchise is about holding to old fashioned design philosophies this isn’t surprising (the franchise only recently discovered context sensitive buttons), but it’s still annoying.
The only other annoyance I could recall is that, even at 60-100 hours, I still found myself wishing for more. Granted, the game is not for everyone, but even those turned off by the franchise’s lackluster visuals will find themselves enjoying this expertly crafted chapter in a finely honed series. It’s a game that knows its audience and goes to great lengths to satisfy them. If anything about a massive quest through a fairy tale world rife with secrets, monsters, and new abilities, spells, and equipment appeals to you on any level, than you’re probably a part of that audience, and you probably owe it to yourself to check this game out.