Dangerously time consuming.

User Rating: 9.6 | Dragon Quest VIII: Sora to Umi to Daichi to Norowareshi Himegimi PS2
I owe you an explanation: I am a hardcore Final Fantasy fan. When I bought this game, I did this so that I have any other game that isn't one of the FF series. I wasn't really thrilled with Dragon Quest's advertisements that kept coming as the game was released though. But I decided to give it a shot anyway. What I was surprised were astonishing graphics, music and something I adore in jrpg games the most (if they have it, obviously): voice acting. These were te first things that kept me playing the game for the first 12 hours. Then I started to love the characters which are memorable, funny and a bit different from what we normally see in rpgs. Our cast of characters, even though it's small (4 playable characters and tonnes of npcs) compared to some other jrpg games is probably deeper than in most games of this genre. Which is a giant plus, I love to know much about my heroes and what are their motivations. Speaking of which, here comes the story featured in the game. To be completely honest with you, this plot is rather silly and predictable (even the plot twists) for my taste. But with the mentioned lovely cast of characters and omnipresent humour it is really fun and it doesn't hurt to spend even the longest time experiencing it. That said, I must warn you that this is one of the most time-consuming game I had pleasure to play in a while. My first gameplay, without any unnecessary leveling up and doing sidequests, took almost 90 hours. When we're at leveling up and sidequests, there're plenty of things the game has to offer. First of all, the battles are strategy turned, you have all the time in the world to decide what to do. I'm quite sure you'll enjoy fighting all those unusual fiends that will be brave enough to stand in your way. Starting with the Dragon Quest/Warrior trademark the slimes, you'll have a chance to fight bells, pots and many others, wonderfully designed monsters. Even though you'll fight many of them, your levels won't rise very fast and your abilities depend on these too. Every time you'll gain a new level, you'll have a chance to give your character skill points on different abilities. It is a good idea to plan what you'll want your character to be as you will not be able to change
that as the levels will increase very rarely. There is much to be said about this wonderful game, but I'd rather see you playing it. You'll have fun helping the king and the princess, travelling through the vast world this game offers and simply enjoying it. Keep in mind
that this game is very light-hearted so it'll be probably a breath of fresh air if you keep playing depressing, saving-the-world games. With that said, go and play it!