Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King PlayStation 2

An RPG That Truly Gives Old School A Good Name

By ?  Jul 22, 2006

Pros: beautiful graphics,lengthy gameplay,very challenging,please fans of old-school.

Cons: the game can get too difficult at times,lack of save points,not-so-interesting story.

I've played all the DQ before (in Eng ver of course),including 5 and 6 through emulation, and this game blows them all away. STORY: 7/10 Here is where the game suffers most. SquareEnix, the godfather of RPG's, are renowned for their storytel...ling skills, and weaving a heart-breaking tales of love, war conflict and peace throughout most of their games. Level 5, however are renowned for good games, but rubbish storytelling skills, and this is where the game falls down.The problem with the game is it's predictability, and usless things that happen on your giant quest, that could be put out of the way, leaving the way open for a more mainstream quest. You often find yourself realising what is about to happen, 1 or 2 hours before it actually happens in gametime, so it is hard to be suprised by anything that happens. GRAPHICS: 10/10 One thing I can say for sure is that the cell-shaded graphics of Level 5 keep impressing me with every game they do. This game looks VERY good. The level of detail that went into it is just amazing. From the town structure to the monsters. Everything is well crafted and enjoyable to the eyes. SOUND & MUSIC: 9/10 I was floored by how good this soundtrack was. Not many composers could pull off a fully orchestrated soundtrack and especially sound this good. I love the music when you are exploring and every mode of transportation you get, there is a different piece of music that really just makes the game feel more epic. The battle music seems decent at first, but once you get used to it, you start liking it more and more. Every piece of music fits well with the game and I just love it! The US version has voice acting and I must say I am Impressed,though the voice acting in this game is not in pair with other Square games like FFX. GAMEPLAY: 9/10 Gameplay is considered by many, and frankly by the sane gamers, as the most important element in a game, high over graphics or whatever you might have. Thankfully DQ8 pulls this off easily, and well, tremendously well, but has one downfall, which is BIG, but thanks to everything else being so good, you dont really care about it, because if you take your time to level up, the obstacle becomes nothing.The game world is huge, I mean, really, really huge!You do have to backtrack in this game, but dont let this put you off, because your characters learn, very early on, a spell that can warp you to any place previously visited, so there is no worry there. The battle system is actually FUN and leveling up can be enjoyable instead of a nuisance. Almost all of the monsters have weird skills and actions that they do and most of them are hilarious.The bosses in this game are not easy, they require a lot of thought, and carefully selected choice of attacks and skills to perform in battles. Here is also the game's downfall, some random battles can be very hard, or take very long. Some enemies can poison your party, send them to sleep, and deal about 100 damage or so, all in 1 or 2 turns. There can also be a ridiculous surplus of enemies in occasional battles, such as 8 of a powerful enemy.Money in this game is also hard to find.An enemy you defeated nets you 300+ exp,but only 40+ gold.This game is surely very challenging even to expert players. VALUE: 10/10 This game will take your hours, possibly hundreds. This is not because it is bad or anything, far from it. The main quest will take at least 75-100 hours to compelte, even for the most experienced RPG gamer, for others it would take 125-150 hours. Now lets through in the numerous sidequests such as Princess Minnie's Mini Medals, this would take roughly 10 Hours to collect everything, and with the other multitude of quests, your are looking at 125-200 Hours of gameplay. FINAL COMMENTS: This game should appeal to almost all RPG players, except players who are dedicated to complex battle systems and story lines. While the story line is good, it's not going to be made into a play on Read more Less