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Ive decided to hold off on next gen consoles for another year or more due to the fact that the ps2 still has so many quality titles that i havent experienced yet. I have played many rpg's but never played a Dragon Quest game in all these years. This game was excellent. This is one of those titles that is well worth your time, i recommend it very much.
Anyway, let's take a closer look at why this game is so popular.Story:The Kingdom of Trodain has been attacked by an evil jester named Dhoulmagus who breaks into the kingdom's treasure vault and takes a mysterious scepter.he then uses the magical scepter to inflict a plague across all the lands in an attempt to free Rapthorne, the prince of darkness. There are some tedious aspects to the game: leveling can take quite a few kills to advance just one level.and the gold distribution doesn't reflect the price of the weapons, armors, and items you'll need to progress the story. This aspect of the game is highly addictive and more often than not you'll find yourself searching for monsters to capture rather than advancing the story.Graphic and sound:Being a cell-shaded game, Dragon Quest has some of the most stunning graphics around. Monster Arena grants you the option to capture certain monsters to use in a 3-on-3 battle against other teams in the arena. You control a precocious young scamp named Hero who is in search of a way to reverse the spell that has plagued his world. you must confess your actions to a member of the clergy.but this is only a minor annoyance. The sound doesn't match the graphic's quality but is adequate for conveying the mood of the game.Final thoughts:Dragon Quest VIII is the very definition of RPG.
Another feature that is either hit-or-miss depending on your taste, is the church save system. The world, its characters and everything else that it encompasses is beautifully rendered and a joy to experience. While there are quite a lot of side quests, Monster Arena is by far the most fun. You will recognize the characters as they were designed by the creator of the Dragon Ballz and are cell-shaded to produce that true anime feel.
This is the first Dragon Quest to make its appearance on the PS2 and quite a debute it is. You control a precocious young scamp named Hero (you'll name him yourself, thus the generic name) who was unaffected by the plague and is asked - neigh - commanded by the king (now a monster) to retrieve the scepter and defeat Dhoulmagus so the plague will be reversed. However, once you do finish it, there isn't much in the terms of replay. The game also includes a playable demo of Final Fantasy XII.though I bought mine used and never got it. Each character also has a unique ability that when optimized will offer the party some intriguing abilities during battles. It utilizes well-established aspects of the genre and introduces a few new ones. The game is loaded with side quests like Monster Arena, alchemy, and collecting mini tokens that can be exchanged for some valuable prizes.
With many costing in the 1000s you will soon discover that the amount of enemies you'll need to fight just to acquire that amount is staggering. Upon entering your first town you learn that an evil jester has been killing innocents who are mysteriously linked to each other, but how.Gameplay:As with previous Dragon Quest games, they don't really offer any revolutionary advancement in the RPG genre.just your basic turn based fighting system, but where the series shines is the amount of customization you're allowed for each of the playable characters. If you want to save your game, learn about your characters, cure them, etc. There is enough here to keep new and old fans of the series busy for weeks.
I was never a big fan of DragonBall, so it's not a fanboy statement when I say that the character designs from Toriyama fit the game atmosphere so well, and while the enemies are sometimes too cute to look truly menancing, it gives the game a distinct look and feel among the gritty gray-and-brown-only palette of so many current-gen games.It certainly has some flaws, some of them related to the retro-feel of the game, such as the savegame spots being scarce (although you can teleport with a spell you learn pretty early in the game, solving this issue), and the inventory system feeling pretty clunky and unfriendly sometimes. I haven't been able to stop playing Dragon Quest VIII.I'm a big RPG fan, but over the last years, all japanese RPGs have been invaded by whiny androgynous spike-haired prettyboys with amnesia and a knack for giant swords, roaming around a techno-magical world, and never seeming to get a grip about the feelings of the lovely but klutzy female party member who was also a childhood friend. but most of those problems don't ruin the overall experience, and may even feel like a reminder of how things were in the old days of gaming, so count them as a plus if you are a retrogamer.I'm liking it pretty much. I almost never play my RPGs from start to finish, usually leaving them to play something else for some time before jumping back and finishing them. It makes for a prety straightforward plot sometimes, but is a refreshing change among hundreds of games filled with convoluted plots and non-sequitur filled conversations. Mind you, I loved Final Fantasy VII, but I'm getting tired of playin the same story with the same stereotypes over and over again.DQ VIII is a throwback to the good sword and sorcery RPG games of the NES/SNES era, with colorful and likable characters, and decidely evil antagonists. Plus, the dialogue with the NPCs and specially the interacions among the party members (a feature often overlooked and sorely missed since the Grandia series) is often funny and even hilarious, but is also very endearing and touching when it needs to.Graphically, the game is totally gorgeous, and the expressive and cartoon-like graphics will likely age very well overtime, unlike many other games (RPG or not) that tried to be realistic in their time, but look like total crap nowadays. But this may be one of the few games that I'll play throughly without distractions, because it just keeps pulling me in.
Thoroughly enjoy it. Challenging and hard to put down once you starts. This is a riviting, fun game. Time just slips by. I wish they would make more of this type of games for the older systems.
So you can imagine that seeing little tamagotchi characters showing you how to defeat your enemy, made me feel almost insulted (I realize that Kingdom Hearts and Fantasy Star U are RPG-just not turned based, but take a look at FFXII which was being developed and already was included as demo in one of the US releases of Dragon Quest and you see huge differences)So, I guess I should have looked at the original release date (which is actually October 2004 in Japan, the 2006 date refers to US only) and the TEEN rating, but to tell you the truth, it should at most be 'tweener' since apparently battling with brightly colored fun little pokemon animations has no real basis of what defeat in real life would be.
Nathan A.
Also, this is now the second Square Enix game I've bought that, to me, doesn't live up to it's reputation.
Webster "Musical anti-snob" has a great critical review, so I won't say anything more on the actual game set-up, especially since I played the game through about, well let's say just the first couple of battles one must go through in the instructional introduction.
I guess, this could all be due because I have already played through twice Final Fantasy X and both the Kingdom Hearts, plus I'm currently playing FFXII and Fantasy Star Universe.
I totally bought this game because of Amazon's delightful way of making recommendations for you based on what you purchase.
I changed the game disc at that point, and this now sits up in the stack of my things that I will probably never do anything with ever again, except to put them in a box when I move them to my next home.
Since I read a lot of Fantasy books with Dragon in the title, plus I have PS2, this was a sparkling jewel that has no real value, now that I have seen it for myself.
I guess my Quest to find a captivating game these days is like a Journey of the Cursed
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