"Everything you expect from a great RPG that has been done with an exceptional amount of quality and polish."
In Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King, the whole kingdom of Trodain has fallen victim to a curse that leaves the whole castle in ruins and covered with thorns. What's more is that the King and Princess of this fair land have been transformed into a troll and horse, respectively, almost as if to be made fun of. As a respected member of Trodain's royal guard and the only person not affected by the curse, you, the main hero (that you can name yourself) has pretty much put it upon yourself to see things through and make everything right again. This would mean tracking down and defeating Dhoulmagus, the jester that's responsible for this mess, and recovering the castle's legendary scepter.
At its core, Dragon Quest VIII plays very much like your typical RPG. As the hero, you move from town to town in order to obtain information about what you can do in order to progress, while also trying to survive and gain strength when you're on fields or in caves and dungeons. Along the way, you'll meet up with a variety of characters, including those that will join you in order to help the cause. You'll also try to manage your currency in order to afford items that will be important for your journey. In this case, DQVIII doesn't stand out from most games in the genre, except for probably the fact that all of these elements have been maximized in order to gain the most enjoyment out of the experience.
Even early on in the adventure, you'll start to see where a lot of the magic will be coming from, as this game oozes with a great number of memorable characters right from the start. Along the way, you're almost sure to have a group of characters that you'll love, love to hate, and have pretty much have every other emotion in between as you learn more about them. In fact, there isn't an important moment in the game where it feels like certain characters are there just to prolong the adventure and appear lifeless, which could have easily been a problem for a game of this scale (more on that part later, trust me). Even a lot of the enemies that you face in the game manages to stand out and leave a lasting impression on you as you play through the game and afterwards.
The cast of memorable characters will include your own party, who all soon discover their reason for joining up. The group of heroes includes Yangus, who is by your side during the entire game and has a rather unique and humorous vocabulary, Jessica, a daughter from a family of aristocrats that is well known for her magical skills, but probably even more for her figure than anything else, and Angelo, a knight that's serious about his duties in protecting the abbey he serves, but still devotes most of his time to gambling and being a lady's man. All of these characters offer their own unique abilities to not only the battlefield, but they're great for talking to in the case that you're lost in the main adventure. The icing on the cake is the occasional chuckle or laugh that someone will provide along the way.
Not to be outdone by the game's story or characters, DQVIII's battle system is also one of the most solid and engaging turn-based systems you'll find. As with most battle systems, you're given the choice to attack using a constantly growing variety of techniques, use items to help chances of success, and even defend yourself if the situation calls for it. Much like the adventure portion of the game, DQVIII manages to make the most out of all of these options by giving you plenty of opportunities to make great use of them. To add to this, the game also offers a "Psyche Up" option for you to increase your "tension" and power up your attacks and spells. Using this feature well is key to beating a number of the game's enemies, both bosses and standard foes.
As your characters level up, they will get stronger and gain certain spells in order to take on tougher opponents. However, what will really stand out is the skill system and the variety of abilities you can have your character learn. As you start to make progress early in the game, your characters will also start to gain skill points whenever they level up. When you acquire these points, you then have the decision of making which of five different attributes you will add these points to. These attributes are different for every character, and once you've given a certain amount of points to an attribute, they become more skilled in that particular area. This could mean added power to a certain type of weapon, a new ability/spell for use in battle or on the field, and a few other things.
The real beauty of this system is that you have complete control of which areas you want your characters to become better with. Each character is can wield three different types of weapons, and that can play a part in how you want you use these valuable skill points when you gain them. If you decide to focus too much on one weapon, you may find yourself a bit disappointed when you have a more powerful weapon of a different type and can only do basic attacks. You can also wish to fight without a weapon, and that even counts as an attribute that you can improve. The final of these attributes will grant you special skills that are closely tied to the character's personality and can be used at any time, regardless of how you wish to fight. This feature in itself can offer slightly different gameplay experiences and encourage you to play the game again with a different mentality.
All of the above said, none of this would be worth the time if the enemies didn't offer some sort of resistance. Fortunately, that is not the case this with this game. Dragon Quest VIII features a massive variety of adversaries for you to take on. The majority of enemies in this game will have a particular unique move or ability that you'll want to make track of. Most of these are indeed bad things. However, there will also leave plenty of instances that will have you scratching your head at the pure uselessness of a certain action , although there are also some of these actions that will start to take shape when you see your character affected by them. This may make you believe that some of these enemies are pushovers, but chances are that you'll be thankful for some of these actions. The fact is that this game can be challenging for even the RPG experts out there.
As you would expect, when you proceed to newer areas in the game, the monsters will get tougher. At first some of these enemies will just appear to be a different version of an older enemy, but once they bring their own unique skills to the table, you'll come to respect them nonetheless. Things really get interesting once you run into certain monsters that will get multiple attacks in one turn, psyche themselves up to increase their attack power, and use techniques and spells to counter those of your own. And even when you feel like you've ran into a certain enemy one time too many and start to play around a bit, they then find someway to shock you, such as fusing with their fellow kind to form a newer and much tougher enemy. It's not everyday that something turn-based can still manage to keep you on your toes.
The end result to the battle system itself is one that will have you playing for countless hours. And as mentioned before, this can be a very challenging game should you choose to underestimate it, due to the enemies being quite unpredictable at first glance. When it comes to bosses, even knowing them doesn't help when you find your entire party wiped out. The good thing is that the game doesn't punish you by forcing you to play from your last save point, like a lot of games do (although you will lose half of your money, so losing is still a bad idea). This reduces frustration to a minimum, but doesn't take away from the accomplishment of beating a foe.
The ability to use and equip items is also something most people have come to expect in RPGs, and Dragon Quest VIII even turns this into a fun activity. Along the way, you'll gain access to the Alchemy Pot, which allows you to mix to already existing items to create better and more convenient items (hopefully... there is also the chance of making a few duds). This allows you to obtain powerful weapons, armor, and accessories that you wouldn't normally be able to obtain. Also, the pot itself will also get more powerful as you go through the game, which opens up even more possibilities right when things really start to get intense.
Another really cool thing about Dragon Quest VIII is that you can decide to take the main quest alone and this game will be well worth the price of admission. The fact that this game offers a number of enjoyable side quests and additional areas to go only serves to give you more bang for the buck, since it's not really needed to make up for a lacking adventure. Taking on these side quests just gives you more of what makes this game what it is. Beating this game was no cakewalk, as I logged over 100 hours when I completed the main quest with only a few of the side quests completed. And to discover that there is something to do AFTER beating the main quest was a real treat.
If there is ANYTHING that can be said about this game negatively, it would be the game's world map. Simply put, it can be a drag when you're working with a map that marks important areas with only dots. Seeing as how many areas you'll visit through the course of the game, it doesn't help that you don't even get a name to go with these dots when you're traveling. To make matters worse, you're only given two views of the map from either a really close proximity or a really far view. Seeing as how there is no in-between with this, it can sometimes make exploration longer (and even much longer) than it should be. To help make up for this, you'll more often than not have access to an ability that will allow you to quickly travel to areas you've been to before, but once you really get lost somewhere, it can be tough getting back on track on your own.
On to the production values section of the game, this is simply one of the packages you can get out of a PS2 game. Once again, it appears as if nothing was wasted with this game, nor
do you sense that someone was slacking off along the way. From a visual side of things, the game is an excellent example of technical accomplishment and artistic brilliance combining to make an awesome looking game. The game manages to blend a cel-shaded style with a wonderfully created world. All of this also helps to bring life to Akira Toriyama's (known for his work with this series, as well as being the creator of the Dragon Ball series) designs like few things that have come before it. There are also a number of animations and gestures throughout the game that are sure to leave a smile on your face.
Chances are that you won't be disappointed in the sound/music portion of the game, either. The game's soundtrack has treated with a great deal of care, as it is orchestrated, with Koichi Sugiyama, another person that has become a staple with this series, doing as solid of a job as ever overseeing the music of the game. Almost as great as the music is the voice-acting, which plays a great part in giving a major cast of characters their charm (or lack thereof, but I won't say anymore because I'm not trying to spoil things here *laughs*). Combining the solid voice acting talent with a fantastic script to work is what seals the deal in this area.
To sum this up in a few final words, Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King is everything you expect from a great RPG that has been done with an exceptional amount of quality and polish. It's not every day you see a game that has the bar set so high and manages to meet, if not exceed every expectation, like this gem. This is one of those rare games that will have you loving it from beginning to end... and likely again, because it's just that good. This is a definite must-buy for any PS2 owner looking for a solid RPG experience or anyone that just wants to add another fantastic game to their collection.