| Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King review |
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The Dragon Quest series has a very long heritage, stretching back to 1988 on the NES. Further games have appeared on the SNES and PlayStation, and remakes of the first two titles graced the Game Boy Advance. It has been a bit of a mixed bag though, with the early titles being regarded as rather poor examples of the RPG genre. Now Square/Enix presents the eighth game to possess the Dragon Quest name, so which of its siblings will it be most like?
The tale revolves around a cursed King, his daughter and a band of misfits. The player controls the unnamed Hero and, eventually, three other party members. The evil Jester Dhoulmagus is the man responsible for the ills of this world; it is this character the player will be forever chasing, along with a sacred staff, and it is quite a chase. The main game can easily take sixty hours to complete, even without taking in the side quests. This might sound quite daunting, and indeed it is a lot of time to dedicate to a single adventure, but this time evaporates very quickly as the game never has a dull moment. Whilst there is a fair amount of trekking and fighting to be done, it never becomes particularly laborious and it does speed up later on; the random battles are never so frequent as to annoy.
The story, whilst lacking huge unexpected or unforeseeable twists, is extremely well paced, revealing the history of characters as the game progresses. The plot is unveiled in manageable bite-size pieces, enough to urge the player to move on, but not so much as to overburden. It’s engaging and humorous at times; several of the cutscenes are particularly good with some traditional Anime “Whaaaa!” moments. The voice acting, an addition for the US version, is mostly very good, in fact some of the regional accents from the NPCs are quite amusing and add a lot of character; it’s certainly not cause to reach for the mute button, but it's more hammy than it is Shakespearean. The only criticism of the story is, if the game is left for a short time, it’s possible to forget what you’re supposed to be doing. The Hero can ask his companions about the task in hand, but often their replies are vague when a specific location needs visiting.
The world is massive, full of trees, mountains, rivers and lakes: there are forests, deserts and polar regions. The Akira Toriyama graphics are deceptively simple; the cartoon-style environments look good, very vibrant and colourful and there is a lot going on, even though there is pop-up, the odd framerate issue and jaggies everywhere. The characters are also wonderfully designed and animated, even down to the NPCs; it's easy to see different emotions register on their cel-shaded faces.
The game tracks the amount of miles covered amongst many other statistics: it pays to explore the extremities of the map and continents. Scattered about the land are treasure chests containing equipment, gold, attribute boosts and mini medals; journeying around the world is like the Sunday Ramblers club, only with more scrapping. Searching for stuff can be a lot of fun, especially with the wonderful musical score, that fits every moment played, to accompany you. Some chests can’t initially be opened and some content might appear worthless. However, later in the game our Hero will acquire an alchemy pot, which can be used to combine certain items to produce better and more powerful equipment. Again, the game rewards the player for exploring as recipes for the pot can be learnt from books and some of the NPCs, or simply by experimenting.
Through the adventure, the Hero will visit a number of dungeons. Unfortunately there aren’t any dungeons in the game for dungeons' sake, rather they are there as a plot device. It is a shame, as it would add something else to the exploration factor. There is some puzzle-solving involved in most of them, though a membership of Mensa isn’t required; it’s little more than moving objects about, pulling levers or pressing buttons in the right sequence.
As clichéd as it may be, Dragon Quest is an RPG where pillaging is encouraged. The first thing the Hero should do when exploring a new village is rob all the houses of their prized possessions, and smash their nice pots and barrels to pieces to see what’s inside. He can do this with impunity; the NPC will not say a word, even if done right in front of their face. Classic stuff.
The Dragon Quest series has always been uncompromising in its difficulty level, and as with its forebears, this is not an easy game to play through, particularly at the start of the game when there are only two people in the party. The Hero, skilled in melee combat, and Yangus, a reformed thug who’s also good at hitting things, are there from the beginning. Things get a little easier once Jessica, a skilled magic user and Angelo, a holy knight who has some healing and buffing spells, join the team. Normal random battles can be hard, so it doesn’t require much imagination to realise that boss battles are gruelling. The biggest issue, as with previous titles, is the lack of any timeline to determine when a character is going to perform an action. This makes tactical planning much more frustrating: selecting a healing spell when a character has low health might not ever come to fruition; instead they may well end up in a casket.
There are many different creatures in the world, over two hundred of them, and there are some fantastic and bizarre creations: evil trees, unicorn-crossed rabbits, slimes, bombs, statues and those encountered change as day turns to night. There's a certain amount of humour to go along with them, but don't become too enamoured though; while a number will drop without too much hassle, others can be a pain to wipe out. Some have attacks powerful enough to eliminate the party in just a couple of rounds. Others will heal or even revive the entire entourage, and there can be as many as twelve enemies to destroy in some skirmishes.
It’s possible to set the tactics for any battle and have the AI handle the actions of all other characters bar the Hero. Settings such as Concentrate on Healing, or Magic, or Sensible Attacks, or Defend can be selected. These tactics can be changed at anytime, and whilst it is a nice option, it’s much better for your party to follow orders on each turn instead. Along with the tactical choices, at the beginning of any round in a battle there is the option of running away, intimidating the enemy into running away or the party can stand up and fight.
Many battles can be won simply by choosing the attack option for every character each time, but this isn’t the most effective use of the party, and it’ll certainly make life trickier. As well as hitting stuff, a character can use special abilities and spells, or psych themselves up, giving an attack boost in the following round. They may also choose to defend, taking less damage, though this option seems to have limited use.
Whilst dying even when fighting random battles is more frequent than many RPGs, it isn’t a severely penalising event. When all characters in the party expire, any experience gained and equipment acquired is retained - the downside being half of the team’s gold is taken away, and they appear, resurrected, in the last church where the game was saved; this can mean a bit of retracing one’s steps is the order of the day, but this isn’t a huge issue.
Assuming winning is the outcome of a battle, rather than a visit from the grim reaper, the party is rewarded with experience points, money and sometimes treasure dropped by the slain creatures; once enough is earned, a character can level-up. Progression through the ranks is very simple: Health, Magic, Strength, Agility etc, are all raised automatically, and spells may be gained. Additionally, a number of skill points will be given that the player can assign to the different weapon classes a character can use. As these rise, special abilities are learnt, specific to that category. Experience can be gained relatively easily, given that death isn’t that big an issue; just hang around outside the gates of a city, beat up a few critters and go rest if need be. It isn’t an overly complex game, so anyone should be able to jump in and get going.
Dragon Quest VIII might be a meat and potatoes adventure, but that should certainly not dissuade any RPG fan from purchasing this most excellent game. Whilst it doesn’t do anything new, it delivers in every way that titles of this genre should. The story is compelling, the characters interesting, well developed and likeable, and it’s all gelled together in an environment that rewards the player for exploration, as well as being an enjoyable experience just to roam about and take in the countryside. Yes, the game does have some severe difficulty spikes, but this just raises the determination to see the end of the game, which as approached leaves one wishing the experience would last a little longer. In summary: a storming RPG. Play it.
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System: Sony PlayStation 2
Genre: Role Playing Game
Developer: Level-5
Publisher: Square Enix
Players: 1
Version: United States
Reviewed: Jan 2006
Writer: Marty Greenwell
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Pros:
- Vast game world waiting to be explored
- A quite brilliant musical score
- Simple meat-and-two-veg game mechanics
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Cons:
- It can be difficult going at times
- Simple meat-and-two-veg game mechanics
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Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King Video: 6.7MB
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