Dragon Quest VIII (GAME REVIEW) 9/10

Why so few reviews lately? I was playing an RPG of course, the first to hold my attention until the end since Tales of Symphonia. I'm at 130 hours and have finished the game with both endings so here's a review since this game shares many elements of an anime series.

On the technical side this game looks really good. The overworld is large and colorful and well detailed. The land has topography so it's not just a flat plain with mountains and rivers blocking your progress. There are plenty of trees and plants so when you're supposed to be in a forest it LOOKS like a forest. Throughout the game you get a taste of various climates as well, from desert to winter landscape. The world has time that passes and throughout the game day turns to night and vice-versa, this looks OK but there are problems if you watch the sun and moon with them fading away in the sky during a transition rather than disappearing beyond the horizon, the starfield used in the night sky is also kinda ugly and there's no real weather to speak of. One other small complaint is that the mountains are not to scale. While they look great in the distance they're quite short close up, oh well.

The towns and castles in the game look OK but the towns only contain the minimum required buildings, INN, Weapons Shop, Armor Shop, Item Shop, Bar, Church, and a couple houses. I understand the system limitation but I really prefer when the town LOOKS like it can support a pretty good population.

The dungeons are pretty forgettable overall with the majority of them being of the boring brown cave variety. I wish there was a little MORE variety there, chanhe the colour of the walls or something.

The monsters look great with alot of different animations. The problem here is the massive number of monster designs reused again and again with nothing but a pallette change and a name switch. The monsters all have horrible puns for names and are pretty much all terrible. I give some love to the classic monsters from the original Dragon Warrior (I don't know if ALL the DQ games have these monsters but I suspect so.)

The main characters and NPCs were designed by the dude who did Dragonball and Chrono Trigger so they look pretty good mostly but there are only about 25 NPC deisgns and they're reused again and again WITHOUT A PALETTE CHANGE! This may have been cute on the NES or Gameboy but c'mon. Only the bunny girls are different colours and they're all still blonde. The main characters are quite good with the weapon and shield equipped visible on them and you can switch your party order to have different main characters to control in the overworld (though keep in mind the leader takes more damage in fights). Like most newer fully 3D rpgs there are some alternate costumes for the main characters but are limited to one for the main character after the end of the game and several provocative outfits for the busty jiggling female Jessica. Since I don't usually care for anything other than slinky outfits for my female character(s) this is OK as her outfits are actually benificial in battle and are a follows; Bunny Girl, Dancer, Bikini, Black Lingere, Sailor Moon. Yay!

The battles are remicent of the original Dragon Warrior as well. The turn based wait system harkens back to yesteryear when games couldn't handle multiple timers calculating everyone's attack frequency separately. While I like this, fans of the newer active battle systems in games such as the Final Fantasy series will go crazy with the whole, pick your moves and wait to see if the enemy kills you by the end of the turn. You also have precious few methods of increasing the number of actions you get in a turn while the enemies can get up to 3! The fights are in 3D with the same character models as the overworld and when selecting your turn actions the view is from the team's perspective facing the monsters as in the old Dragon Warrior. The fights have the standard attacks, special attacks and magic spells but the menus drove me nuts. There's no memory option that saves your last selection in battle so if you want to use Falcon Slash again and again you've got to move the cursor to "abilities" each turn then select Falson Slash. The "abilities" and "spells" menus save the last position but not the "items" menu which you use CONSTANTLY in the later stages of the game.

The story for Dragon Quest VIII is pretty standard. The hero is a knight at a castle and one day a magic staff kept there is stolen and the castle is placed under a curse. The hero and his king (turned into a monster) and the princess (turned into a horse) head off to find the culprit and lift the curse. The hero has a buddy named Yangus and along the way meets the redheaded, large breasted Jessica and the womanizing, gambling Templar knight Angelo. The story is quite linear with the party being hearded throughout the world a town at a time as the monsters get harder to kill. There's a little backtracking at times but the ability to warp between places you've been before reduces the annoyance factor. As the game progresses the mystery behind the curse is revealed and the world must be saved from the evil god dude. There are few boss fights in this game but HUNDREDS of overworld fights. Have fun with those.

I wish there had been more variety in the monsters, NPC's and dungeon designs and I would have liked more boss fights but I otherwise found this game really fun. I can see why the Japanese LOVE Dragon Quest so much since it doesn't add a fruity new battle system with every game and keeps the story simple and doesn't have crap like...well like the crap Final Fantasy seems to keep coming up with. Recommended