Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King
Say hello to the best RPG of 2005.
Published: December 6, 2005
It’s the little things that really poke through; the way adorable demons with their tongues sticking out keel over when they try to cast a spell but have run out of magic points, or the little bits of stitching on clothing. The fine lines and thicker outer borders on characters end up creating a look that’s far closer to a living cartoon than any games that have tried it in the past.
This is an absolutely gorgeous game, but the visuals are so even-handed that you never really find yourself being blown away by effects or intentional vistas, just how the world comes together so effortlessly.
I spoke briefly about the voice work, but it has to be expanded upon here. This is some stunning stuff. Having native Englishmen and women doing voice work was the only way to accurately pull off the dialogue; hearing an all-American cast try to pull off the thick cockney soup that Yangus spills from his lips or the regal roll of King Trode’s condescending tone would just have come off as amateurish.
American audiences are getting something else besides all that voice acting added to the game post-Japanese release, though: a full symphonic soundtrack, and it’s fantastic. Though some of the tracks can come off as having a bit of excess echo, and inexplicably there’s more woodblock usage than I’ve ever heard in my entire life, but it’s all such a lush soundscape that it really doesn’t matter. Koichi Sugiyama’s compositions are rife with nods towards the music from earlier games – both direct and indirect, and they just have that fullness that gives the game that much more scope.
The pokes at the original games aren’t just in the music. Things like missed attacks or the level-up and end-of-battle fanfare is preserved perfectly, and it’s one of the many things that just gives you a warm, cozy feeling of familiarity whenever you hear them, like a bit of your childhood returned completely untarnished by all the growing up you’ve done.
I could go on for hours about how the little things in the text play at characters personalites, but I’ll try to restrain myself. Just know that having different descriptions for how enemies and characters avoid attacks or react to special moves (the witch’s puff-puff move in particular stands out as just being pure genius) is one of those little touches that won’t go unnoticed. There’s tons of them all over the game, and it shows the kind of attention to detail and labor of love that makes this a truly satisfying experience.
If you grew up on Japanese console RPGs, this should already be in your PS2 library. If you didn’t, or you’re turned off by them, there’s a certain level of charm here that seems to soften the harsher parts of a normally simple, repetitious gameplay style. It’s not going to outright convert most, but it is going to give fans of the genre something to play for weeks, and quite possibly a bit longer.
This was absolutely worth waiting for, and credit must be given to Squenix for releasing a game that bravely sticks to its guns in the face of all these ridiculously complex additions to the formula that Dragon Quest got right all along.
