In Japan, the Dragon Quest series is one of the most popular rpg series around. One would even dare say on equal terms of the Final Fantasy series. However outside of Japan, the series have problems just attracting the attention of regular rpg gamers much less the mainstream rpg gaming audience. The problem lies in the fact that the Dragon Quest series remains core to its old school rpg approach instead of trying to introduce new and cutting edge things for gamers to check out. This makes the series outdated compare to today's rpgs that showcases new gameplay systems. It's like asking gamers to continue to buy a 1990 car when they can buy a 2006 car. People are going to want to see the latest new features and not some rehash of some old features that they have seen before. Dragon Quest VII is the best example of this problem. Released in North America as Dragon Warrior VII on the Playstation system as a new game within the series, the game ended up displeasing a lot of possible new rpg fans that have never seen the series before due to the fact that Dragon Warrior VII featured graphics and gameplay that were more for the 16 bit console system than on a 32 bit Playstation system. People aren't going to pay top dollars on a brand new game that has outdated graphics and gameplay. And this is why Dragon Warrior VII failed to garner any attention on the Playstation system. One system generation later we take a look at Dragon Quest VIII on the Playstation 2. Will this be a repeat performance of past mistakes or be a new successful story? You're about to find out….
STORY
I'm Dhoulmagus, fear me.
The end to our journey is near.
In the kingdom of Trodain, an evil jester by the name of Dhoulmagus has invaded the Castle of Trodain and stolen a mysterious powerful scepter sealed away within the castle. With the scepter in hand, Dhoulmagus used its power to place a cursed on the castle, turning everyone to stone, transforming Princess Medea into a horse, and King Trode into a toad looking monster. However one castle guardsman wasn't infected with the curse at all. That guardsman is you, the hero, who now travels the world with the King and Princess on a wagon in search of Dhoulmagus whereabouts in hopes of taking back the scepter and breaking Dhoulmagus curse by defeating him in battle. A long journey that will take you to the far edges of the world where you will witness Dhoulmagus path of terror and befriended other victims of Dhoulmagus evil deeds who will decide to join you on your journey. But is Dhoulmagus really the evil being behind all of this or is there something more sinister that will threaten to engulf the world into an age of darkness? The truth shall be known as you make your way deeper into the journey of the cursed king, Dragon Quest VIII.
No heart and soul is the best way to describe the story. And when you have no heart and soul, there's no emotion there. Without those ingredients, a story is just plain boring. When you read or watch a story unfold, you want to feel something from it. Passion, excitement, anger, joy, sadness, or whatever that will move you in one direction or another. Only than will you become involve within the story and have interest in it. When you feel no emotion for a story than you have no interest in it to the point where you rather do something else. And that is what happened here. There are a few reasons why the story isn't interesting. The overall plot itself is too simple and uninteresting. The overall world that Dragon Quest VIII takes place in doesn't seem like a very exciting fantasy world. The characters themselves are plain and uninteresting. This is probably the main reason. If you don't care for the characters than their journey will be less exciting and important because the main purpose of any rpg quest is to go on a journey around the world with the cast of characters to help fight against the evil that threaten the world. In this case, your journey is to help cure the curse that is place on King Trode and his daughter. But the problem lies in that the King and his daughter are an annoying distraction in the story. And if they are an annoying distraction, you don't really want to go on an adventure to help save them. Hence this takes away the focus of the reason behind the storyline. Another citing factor is that in today's rpg game, heroes that don't talk are outdated and hurt the overall storyline themselves. The hero is the main center piece that keeps the whole story together. And if he doesn't really talk or express any emotion, it's hard for gamers to connect with the hero. A good story always has their readers expressing interest in the main character because that's where the heart and soul comes from. Unfortunately for Dragon Quest VIII, the story seriously lacks all the ingredients that would make it a good story. From the beginning to the end, there just wasn't anything there to really grab your attention. By the time you finish with the story, the only thing you feel is whatever. And that's not a good sign at all for anyone.
Score 5/10
CHARACTERS
Ok I'm the leader of the team.
This is one of the more bland bunch of characters around. You have basically 4 main characters, the hero, Jessica, Yangus, and Angelo. A supporting character in King Trode. So you can say a total of 5 characters in this game. The problem here is that the characters are either plain or just annoying. There's nothing special, unique or likeable about these characters. The hero doesn't talk but make facial expression sometimes so expect nothing from him. Yangus comes off very idiotic the way he talks and his constant nose picking is more dumb than funny. King Trode comes over very annoying for the entire game. Angelo, I suppose is to come off like the cool type character but the end result was an annoying playboy voice that you really don't want to listen to. Jessica is the most appealing of the group for the eyes and the ears as her voice is more mature and appealing to listen too. The entire casts seem to all have a European accent to them which seem very odd and out of place for this game. For Jessica, Yangus and Angelo there's a bit of a character background development right after they join your party but after that not much. The character development for the hero pretty much comes only in the replay game and at the very near end of the game which doesn't make sense to do. But really the problem with the characters is that they are just plain uninteresting overall. The fact that they lack the right personalities that can attract an audience is the main problem here. Average characters in an average story is the best way to put it.
Score: 5/10
GRAPHICS
Nice armour you got there.
The best thing about this game is the graphics. A major improvement in what was seen in Dragon Quest/Dragon Warrior VII. While the graphics isn't the best of the best or something to be at awe at, it's at least on par with most of today's Playstation 2 rpg games. The graphics are done for the very first time in 3-D mode for a Dragon Quest game. Not only is it in 3-D mode, it's also done in cel-shading. In terms of the cel-shading part, it's almost as good as Dark Cloud 2 which many industry insiders (including this reviewer's opinion) considered to be the best cel-shading game to date. So that's a major plus for the game. Now in terms of the graphical art designs, you'll probably recognize where you've seen the art design before if you are a major anime fan. Akira Toriyama, the creator of the Dragon Ball anime series, is the one responsible for the full look of Dragon Quest VIII. In fact he's been behind the graphical art look of previous Dragon Quest games too. Whether or not you like this approach in art designs may depend on whether or not you like the Dragon Ball anime series since that anime series has just as many haters as lovers overall. Personally I found the graphics to be very colorful and clean to look at. Nothing that wowed me but enough for me to be putting it on par with most of the other rpgs on the Playstation 2.
Score: 8/10
MUSIC
Let's celebrate with music and songs.
Music is above average at best. There are various different musical tunes from different categories such as town themes, character themes, and event themes. But none of the tunes really stood out on their own. Due to this fact, you really don't feel the effect of the game music at all in your adventure other than just music playing in the background. Sort of like going to the shopping mall and hearing the shopping mall music playing in the background as you browse the mall to find what you want to buy but you don't pay any attention to the music at all. That's how it is in this game. You know the music is there but you don't pay any attention to it. The battle musical score and the field traveling musical score are the only 2 musical scores that you will recognize over time as you play this game more and more. And this is only due to the fact that you spend most of the time in battles and running around out in the field. It's not really a bit surprising if the music isn't as good as you may expect as music usually go hand in hand with the story telling. If the story isn't as thought provoking and as exciting as it can be or should be than the music will be the same too. And that's the case here. After all, remember that music help bring the story to life.
Score: 6/10
GAMEPLAY
Feel the furry of lightening.
Ok monster team, get to work.
Game Information
Genre: Traditional Rpg
Publisher: Square Enix
Disc: 1 DVD Disc
Memory: 177 KB
Players: 1 Player Mode
Analog Control: Yes
Digital Control: Yes
Rating: Teen
Release: November 2005
This is what you would call basic traditional turn base rpg gameplay. If you play any rpg game you would be very familiar with how everything work without even reading the instruction manual. Almost all rpgs are base on turn base in one way or another but in this case this turn base is not done in real time nor does it have any really special unique features that would stand out amongst today's rpg games. The game itself is very linear to the point that you just go from one town to the next. Talk to a certain town person to get the story moving which in most cases would mean you have to accomplish a request from that person. This means a quick trip to the nearest dungeon. Most of the dungeons are fairly small and easy to explore. You can stock up on supplies such as equipment and items in towns. The battle encounters are done randomly as you trek out in the field or exploring inside a dungeon. You can restore HP and MP by resting at INNs and make a save at the local church. The battle system itself is very basic that you would know what to do just by starting the game as oppose to spending time reading the manual. You basically input commands for each of your party members and than watch the fight unfold and repeat again. To cut down on the number of command inputs you have to do for each party member, you can assign 3 of your party members CPU command that the CPU will do on their own to their best abilities. In this way you only have to input a command for one character as oppose to all 4 characters. The game does feature the usual regular features you would expect from an rpg game such as abilities, magic, and items. The tension feature is probably the only small unique feature in this game. We'll do a quick run down of these features right now.
Abilities: Abilities are special moves that comes from a character
personal skill or weapon skills. Some abilities will consume MP while some don't.
In regards to abilities that comes from a weapon skill, a character can only use
that weapon ability if she or he is actually equip with that weapon on hand. Spells: Magic is simple to learn and use. Each character will learn their
own set of magic that they can use as they level up higher and higher. Psyche Up: Psyche Up is the new tension feature in this game. Each time
you psyche up, you are storing power known as building your tension level for
the next turn to use. In other words you are storing power to deliver a stronger
blow on the next turn. The maximum tension level that you can psyche up to is
100 which can deal a massive amount of damage. Intimidate: Intimidation works the same way as fleeing in battle. The difference here is that intimidate mostly work on weaker enemies and when the enemies do flee they sometime will still drop items while they don't when flee is used instead. Personally I still use flee more. Skills: The skill system is a little different in that each character have their own different personal skills and weapon skills they can learn. As each character level up, they will gain a small amount of skill points that they can use and distribute to a personal skill or a weapon skill.
Once a certain skill level has been reach, an ability will be unlock for you to use in battle. Alchemy Pots: The Alchemy Pots is the best and most fun feature in this
game and can be quite addictive. It's basically the synthesis feature in this
game where you can combine different things together to make new and better things.
In most cases you'll looking to make better equipment and accessories by combining
various weaker equipment together. You can get clues on what to combine or to
make by finding or reading an alchemy pot recipe.
Well for the gameplay you'll either going to enjoy it or find it boring. There's no middle ground here. The gameplay is probably more appealing to the old school rpg gamers who don't mind the non interactive real time system where everything is done in a turn base system command mode for each character and battle time stop until a command is entered. However for some, the idea of simply inputting one command after the other is too simple and plain that it becomes boring after awhile. Battle animation and magic spells aren't dazzling to watch as well which makes the game system looking dull at times if the battle scenes don't look too exciting to watch. The difficulty in this game ranges from easy to hard but like with most basic turn base rpg games, if it seem too hard than you need to spend some time leveling up. From this reviewer's opinion, I found the gameplay to be flat with nothing interesting to keep my attention. The only feature that I actually enjoy is using the Alchemy Pot and mixing things together to create new stuff. The rest of the stuff became more of a chore that I needed to do as I got deeper and deeper into the game. The gameplay might have been more engaging if the story, the quest, and characters involved were more interesting to being with but unfortunately they weren't. In this day and age, I and most of those that share my opinion would prefer a more fast pace real time turn base system where the battle system is done in a 3-D environment than simply a 2-D one with images of monster. A real time battle system allows gamers to be more interactive and be quick thinking as the enemies won't wait for your turn is done to attack again. Here you can go for a 10 hour break and the monster still won't attack until you make your move. This Dragon Quest gameplay system is really outdated now to be of much interest in this new age of rpgs. Still, there are still a small group of hardcore old school rpgers that may find games like Dragon Quest VIII to be a breath of fresh air. A reminder of how things used to be for rpgs.
Score: 6/10
EXTRAS/REPLAY
Challenge Torneko in Monster Arena.
The extras are kept to a minimum in this game. And what extras the game does offer is fairly easy to complete well before drawing near to your conclusion of your adventure. In terms of mini games the game offers two casinos location where you can gamble for tokens that can be traded in for items. Each casino location offers different mini games to play. Winning tokens can be hard or easy depending on your knowledge and mini game that you decide to play. The monster arena is probably the biggest extra feature in the game. The concept is base on the fact that you can fight and recruit various monsters around the world. Once you recruit the monsters that you want, you can form them into a team of 3 members. You can use your monster team to be summon in battle during regular gameplay or you can use your monster team in the monster arena in a tournament to win various prizes. The monster arena tournament in itself isn't really hard to complete if you can find and use the right monsters. Near the end of the game there is a very small bonus dungeon you can do. But in all honesty the bonus dungeon isn't even worth doing or mentioning since it's so small to near pointless.
The replay value of this game is a bit more interesting. You don't really start the game at the very beginning but what the game does do is start the game at the point where you are just about to fight the end game boss. From this point on you can try to get the second ending also known as the true ending. You'll have access to one area known as the Dragovian Sanctuary where you can get a bit more of an in-depth story to the hero's past. The Dragovian Sanctuary also offers a few extra Dragon boss fights in the Dragovian Trial to gain access to special equipment for the hero. Other than that the whole purpose of replaying again is to finish the Dragovian Sanctuary to gain access to the true ending.
The extras, I didn't spend a whole lot on as there really isn't anything worth to be spending a lot of time on. Nor was it that interesting. I found the gambling in the casinos a waste of time. The monster arena was too easy to finish that it barely held my interest. The Dragovian Trial was a challenge during the replay game but getting the equipment wasn't really worth it as there are better ones for the hero. The second ending was just a slightly different version of the first ending that it's not something to be excited about.
Score: 6/10
Dragon Quest VIII is an improvement to VII but not by much. The problem with VIII is that it still carries a lackluster story with boring cast of characters just as VII did. Add into the fact that the gameplay is still the basic traditional old school gameplay making the game overall having nothing really new and exciting to offer to gamers when compare to other rpgs introduce into the market today. Its strength is the old school appeal but yet at the same time the old school appeal is also its greatest weakness and downfall. If Dragon Quest is ever to expect major success outside of the Japanese market, major changes needs to be done to the series. The old days of the hero not talking and simple basic turn base rpg system can no longer sell games alone. You'll need to have an interactive cast of characters as well as excellent graphics and music on top of a new cutting edge game system to garner success in today's rpg market. As for Dragon Quest VIII, you might want to pick this game up as a pre-used game than pay full market price for it. And only than if you don't have any other rpg games to play. Old school rpgers might find this game a lot more interesting than the regular rpg gamers.
