One of the best RPG i've ever played

User Rating: 9.6 | Dragon Quest VIII: Sora to Umi to Daichi to Norowareshi Himegimi PS2
This is for hardcore RPG gamers only. Not to say that a n00b won't have fun with this as well, but they won't get as much out of the experience. This game's arts was done by Akira Toriyama (creator of Dragon Ball Z) and the graphics in this game look great because of this...The cel-shading is used very well and the characters themselves remind me of an episode of DBZ ('cept for their weird british accents). The game play is traditional turn-based action and level ups require the basic, get enough experience. When you level up, though, you get to decide what skills you want to get better at. Basically learn new abilities for that weapon set. Every character can wield 2 to 3 different types of weapons; Axes, Swords, whips, knives, bows and such. So with this, the battles are pretty diverse if you've got many abilities for different weapons (which you can equip and remove during battles). The story isn't as good as other famous RPGs i've played (FF VII, LOD, and others) The story isn't bad by any means...it's just not focused on too greatly throughout the game. The audio is pretty good overall. The music is nice and mostly orchestral. Some of the sound effects to me aren't the best that i've heard. The level-up sound and victory fanfare aren't what i would like to have heard...not bad, just not something that i would have picked. The VO for the main characters is good and gives them great personality (even though the main character doesn't have a voice) He's just referred to as "the hero" or "guv". Some of the other story characters don't have the best voices,but they never speak too much, so this didn't really bother me very much.
Overall: This is a great RPG, probably the best to be released this year, and should NOT be missed if you're looking for a good game that takes a new spin of the genre.