I’ve been playing Dragon Quest VIII for PS2 pretty much exclusively since it came out on November 15th. Dragon Quest VIII is a really great old school role playing game starring six people on a quest for revenge against a foul jester named Dhoulmagus. You take on the role of the hero as he ventures forth accompanied by the cursed King and Princess of the kingdom of Trodain who have been turned into a troll and horse respectively by the evil jester. On their journey the come across a few people that join their party each for different reasons, first of there is Yangus a former thief who the hero saves from falling to his death and as thanks he swears to help the hero on his quest. The second person to join them on the quest is Jessica the magic user who is determined to avenge the death of her brother who is murdered by Dhoulmagus. The third and last person to join is Angelo who is a knight of the templars seeking to avenge the murder of his adoptive father by Dhoulmagus. The heros journey across the world trying to stop Dhoulmagus but as the venture forth they start to doubt that Dhoulmagus is really the evil driving force behind all the chaos and destruction.

The gameplay is a really great, like I mentioned it’s old school. You are presented with a battle system that contains all of the available fighters (four) in each battle at the same time so there is no problem with having to mix and match characters like in recent Final Fantasy games where you end up with unused characters who are really low leveled. Fighting is pretty fun but in the long run choosing commands sometime gets tiresome so the use of tactics similar to the Breath of Fire series comes in handy. Each character also has his unique fighting style and you can choose from three available styles for each person and you get skill points to distripute among these styles as you level up.

The graphics in Dragon Quest VIII are beautifully cel-shaded 3-D graphics with 360 degree viewpoints. The only thing that troubled me about the game was the music it’s horribly repetitive and really feels like it’s lacking something. I really hope they get a new composer for DQIX. Anyways to sum up this most likely the role playing game of the year (2005) and most likely won’t be topped until FFXII comes out. I finished the game in 63 hours and 45 minutes for the first playthrough and then spend another 4 hours finishing of the end game extra dungeon but decided to skip the Dragovian Trials which are a number of boss fights with various powerful dragons, I skipped them because I didn’t have time to level up for hours at end to be able to beat them. But anyways I recommend this game to anyone looking for a good roleplaying game, but be warned this game is no small undertaking and finding 60-70 hours to spend playing a game is no small feat but is possible with determination and good planing (and a understanding or really busy girlfriend (or boyfriend)).
Rating: 5/5

Related posts from the blog:

• Män som hatar kvinnor (e. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo)
• Gun
• Resident Evil 4
• Simon The Sorcerer I
• Star Wars KOTOR II