Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King
Say hello to the best RPG of 2005.
Published: December 6, 2005
Console role-playing games have been getting more and more complex over the years, so much so that it can end up being almost laughably cumbersome. The need for an engrossing story has taken a back seat to streamlining the travel and banging Hollywood names over your head in an overcompensative attempt at somehow validating video games’ place as a real artistic medium.
There has been perhaps no bigger offender here than Square-Enix, who continue to lavish the Final Fantasy with more and more CG sequences and insane character designs. Perhaps that’s why it’s so impressive that the most refreshingly old-school and grounded RPG to hit this year also comes from Squenix. It also happens to be one of the best RPGs in years.
It’s almost like the megadeveloper/publisher wanted to illustrate this point, because there’s a demo of Final Fantasy XII packed in with Dragon Quest VIII, just begging you to count the differences. Instead of a radically revamped battle system and all-new setting, DQVIII is more than happy to stick with the same core fighting system and simple fantasty-themed world it’s used since the very first game.
In fact, nearly all of the game is delightfully simple; the battles are still the same turn-based gameplay allowing for basic melee attacks, the use of an equipped item, some spells and perhaps just a few tweaks here and there. You can forfeit a turn to increase tension, which boosts attack, or tap into the skills learned after leveling up the skills for a characters’ particular weapon. That’s it. No crazy swapping of characters, no complex meters that have to fill or extra buttons to press – in fact once you’ve locked in your commands for each character there’s nothing to do but wait – and yet it works better than almost any battle system in recent memory.
DQVIII’s storyline centers around a scepter being pilfered from a castle by a jester with machinations on ruling the world – standard stuff, except that he happens to turn the king and the princess of the castle into a troll and horse, with respects. The castle is then swiss cheesed by vines that turn all the inhabitants into living plants, frozen forever in a state of surprise or caught unawares. The only one that survives is you, a generic Akira Toriyama design that could really be any random villager in a Dragon Ball Z episode.
There’s more to you, of course, but that’ll take a good 35 hours to discover – and that’s when the game really starts. Along the way, you’ll make a trio of friends that join the party and all of them are fantastically fleshed-out. It’s a major credit to the translation team, Plus Alpha Translations in the UK and AltJapan in Japan and especially the work done at Side UK with all the voice work that lends the proper fantasy air to the game. A series like this is nothing if not heavily Anglo-Saxon in feel, and the voice work fits perfectly.
Still, it’s the combination of the voice work and characterization and the world you’ll inhabit for a couple weeks. That’s not a trite generalization of how you’ll experience the world, either; you’ll literally live in the land that Level 5 created, and it’s teeming with personality and variety.
Streams meander between high cliff faces, rolling meadows give way to sparse plains and all the while the open sea beckons. Every single village in the game has its own vibe and look, varying size and misshapen expansion. There’s a very real sense that you’re encountering something new and wholly unlike what’s come before every time you step into a new town and then begin exploring the countryside.
There has been perhaps no bigger offender here than Square-Enix, who continue to lavish the Final Fantasy with more and more CG sequences and insane character designs. Perhaps that’s why it’s so impressive that the most refreshingly old-school and grounded RPG to hit this year also comes from Squenix. It also happens to be one of the best RPGs in years.
It’s almost like the megadeveloper/publisher wanted to illustrate this point, because there’s a demo of Final Fantasy XII packed in with Dragon Quest VIII, just begging you to count the differences. Instead of a radically revamped battle system and all-new setting, DQVIII is more than happy to stick with the same core fighting system and simple fantasty-themed world it’s used since the very first game.
In fact, nearly all of the game is delightfully simple; the battles are still the same turn-based gameplay allowing for basic melee attacks, the use of an equipped item, some spells and perhaps just a few tweaks here and there. You can forfeit a turn to increase tension, which boosts attack, or tap into the skills learned after leveling up the skills for a characters’ particular weapon. That’s it. No crazy swapping of characters, no complex meters that have to fill or extra buttons to press – in fact once you’ve locked in your commands for each character there’s nothing to do but wait – and yet it works better than almost any battle system in recent memory.
DQVIII’s storyline centers around a scepter being pilfered from a castle by a jester with machinations on ruling the world – standard stuff, except that he happens to turn the king and the princess of the castle into a troll and horse, with respects. The castle is then swiss cheesed by vines that turn all the inhabitants into living plants, frozen forever in a state of surprise or caught unawares. The only one that survives is you, a generic Akira Toriyama design that could really be any random villager in a Dragon Ball Z episode.
There’s more to you, of course, but that’ll take a good 35 hours to discover – and that’s when the game really starts. Along the way, you’ll make a trio of friends that join the party and all of them are fantastically fleshed-out. It’s a major credit to the translation team, Plus Alpha Translations in the UK and AltJapan in Japan and especially the work done at Side UK with all the voice work that lends the proper fantasy air to the game. A series like this is nothing if not heavily Anglo-Saxon in feel, and the voice work fits perfectly.
Still, it’s the combination of the voice work and characterization and the world you’ll inhabit for a couple weeks. That’s not a trite generalization of how you’ll experience the world, either; you’ll literally live in the land that Level 5 created, and it’s teeming with personality and variety.
Streams meander between high cliff faces, rolling meadows give way to sparse plains and all the while the open sea beckons. Every single village in the game has its own vibe and look, varying size and misshapen expansion. There’s a very real sense that you’re encountering something new and wholly unlike what’s come before every time you step into a new town and then begin exploring the countryside.