Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King (Sony PlayStation 2, 2005)

I bought this game first and foremost because I am a collector of Squaresoft/Enix/Square Enix games.

My wife and I are playing it together and we just think it's the bee’s knees!
Here are the things we like about it:

GRAPHICS - way cool looking and easy on the eyes, nice vibrant color
MUSIC - completely orchestrated soundtrack that's not too overbearing
STORYLINE - my wife's favorite part, superb voice acting, can't wait to see what happens next
CHARACTERIZATION - you get a history on everyone which adds a much needed depth to the story and allows you to make an easier emotional investment in the game overall
AUTO-BATTLE FEATURE - it's fantastic that the AI can control your three comrades during battle if you so choose; this makes light work of the all too frequent random battles
SIDEQUESTS - this is a great staple in a lot of rpgs, enough stuff to keep you busy for hours
FREE-ROAMING WORLD MAP - for those that played Final Fantasy X and thought, "what's this linear path crap!?" have no fear, walk where ever your feet will take you

Here is what we found lacking:

LEVEL GRINDING - if you try to just run though the game from storyline to storyline without level grinding, you WILL get smacked down, the game difficulty is such that you are supposed to spend time leveling up your characters, this is a disturbance for those (like my wife) who just want to see what's coming up next, thank goodness for the Auto-Battle
MENU SYSTEM - no matter what action we are trying to perform be it attacking an enemy, healing our companions, or trying to outfit our party with different armor, we always feel like we are forced through page after page of menus and are pushing way too many buttons to do what ever it was that we wanted to do
SAVING THE GAME - why does it feel like it takes soooo damn long to save this game? oh no, you can't just go up to the priest and select save, choose a memory card, select overwrite game, and save it, you have to sit through his annoying talking (which you can't fast forward though) between each of the steps I just mentioned when saving. Is this a ploy to get you to save less time during the game? I don't know, but it needs fixing.
FREEZE GLITCH - so, I was impatiently trying to speed through the 'you-must-read-this, you-can't-skip-this' text of the stupid girl who was trying to sell me herbs in Port Prospect and when it came time for me to select yes or no if I wanted the herb, the game froze. I hadn't saved in over 4 hours previous to this because of the reason stated above but also, I had no idea that the game would glitch, games aren't suppose to glitch, now I'm being beaten into submission by my conscience to suffer through the long tedious process of saving my game every five minutes in fear that it will glitch out on me again. this was the one and only time it glitched on me and I think it was a freak isolated incident, but still...

Overall the game is a winner. If you enjoy old-school RPGs like Final Fantasy IV & VI, Chrono Trigger and the like, get this game! It's very reasonably priced.

Unlike other RPG's there aren't any confusing battle menus, skill trees, or terribly horrific magic systems with a steep learning curve. It's all about straight up battle and story line. DQVIII begins with a guard, "you", who strangely withstands a magical attack from a demented court jester named Dhoulmagus. This jester puts a whole city into a form of "suspension" via vine roots, of course with the exception of, you guessed it, you. Later in the story you befriend a funny bloke Yangus and begin your journey to find out what happened. A very typical premise.

I can only imagine the developers in their first meeting:
Boss says with hands out as though measuring a small fish: "I got an idea, lets have a teenage hero...hear me out, a hero that saves the world from evil?...eh, ehh?" *looks around the room for approval*.
Yes Men/Women unanimously approve with nods and whispers.
Yes man #4 says "...and maybe we can throw in a princess, to save from said evil, sir?"
Yes Men/Women look towards Boss for reaction.
Than Boss says after smacking his tongue against the roof of his mouth for 10 seconds, "Yes...yes! I like your thinking Johnson!".
Yes man #4 "Its Thompson sir!".
Boss "What ever, moving on...".

This game is easy to jump into, if you've ever played an RPG circa 1990's, you'd know all about random battles and staged events, its all there, your typical throw back RPG with a modern flair. Walk around long enough, and you'll be entered into a fight whether you like it or not. Collecting, equipping, buying, selling, talking to towns folk to further the story is simple and quick. You'll rarely find yourself lost or out of touch with current events, thanks in part to the option to chat with each and all current party members so-as to get an idea of what to do next.

The weapons, potions, magic and items are extremely straight forward. There's even a type of Alchemy pot in which you can create better items and equipment later in the game, simple, quick and just plain fun. Want to know what works best for each character before you equip something, no problem, they show it to you. One of the things that really struck me with DQVIII was the soundtrack, it was amazing! From the initial load-up menu to the in-game itself, it sounded epic. Although I'm not a huge fan of cell shading, I liked the graphics. It was crisp, clear and enjoyable to watch.

As good as the world looked, I was surprised to see that just about every towns folk looked exactly the same as the last. And whether your in Town A or some boondock village B, each and every inhabitant looked identical as the last. The monsters suffered the same fate, they were basically cookie cutters of each other, and varied slightly in looks as they get tougher. Fight a lesser brown Wyvern in one area and later it's a meaner purple one with a slightly different name, and so on. Another issue I had was with the equipment. With the exception of Jessica, no other character physically donned the armor you put on. It damaged the experience.

The voice acting was surprisingly better than most RPG's and the gameplay was plenty enough to keep me going right up til the great twist at the end. Speaking of the ending, I would have preferred a better one, instead of the lame "animal house" esque photo stills subtitled with their wacky future achievements (or lack of). Over all, if you like conventional RPG's and own a PS2, this is a must buy.

If you're the type of RPG gamer who grew up playing the original dragon warrior and final fantasy NES games, and who still thinks of them fondly, then this is the RPG for you. Designed to be more of a "traditional RPG" DQ8 does just about everything right. From the gorgeous graphics and detailed animations to the beautiful soundtrack and enjoyable sound effects and on to the stunning overworld and dungeon design, DQ8 is an absolute masterpiece. -Story. Recall that this is a traditional RPG, and what tends to go along with that classification is a traditional storyline. There's some great evil brewing somewhere evil and evil people are doing evil things because of it. -Characters. Characters are interesting and unique in personality and are fun to interact with. You start out with only two playable characters, but that increases to a max of four as the story progresses. And these characters are full of personality as well as different enough from one another to not seem like clones. -Voice Acting. Top-notch. Some have complained that most of the voices are British, which is definitely true, but is that really a bad thing? -Graphics. Absolutely gorgeous. If every game had graphics of this caliber, I’d buy them all.-Music and sound. Beautiful and appropriate. From the opening title theme that most old-school RPGers will recognize to the ending track, all music is fully orchestrated and a delight to hear. Granted, there aren't many tracks overall, and many of them will be played over and over again, but don't be too disappointed. Remember, even the common tracks are pleasant to the ears. -Battles. Just like the old days. Battles involve the good guys lined up on one side and the bad guys lined up on the other side, facing each other. Action is turn-based, with the player inputting commands for all the characters (fight, magic, skill, run, defend, etc) and each character's and monster's reaction statistic generally determines the order they take their turn. Battles are fast and fluid. Characters jump toward the enemy, blast them, and hop back in line. Again, lightning fast. And this is a good thing.
-Magic and skills. As you level up, you'll get skill points that you can assign to various types of skill categories such as sword, spell, sex appeal, etc. Which categories you see depend on which one of the four characters you're dealing with. Depending on where you allocate these points, the characters will learn particular skills when they level up. In short, the system works well, with the magic casting characters getting the good spells and the offensive-minded characters getting the good attach stuff. -Overworld and dungeons. One word: expansive. The world is designed to mimic a real, living place. When you travel from Town A, through the forest, across a rope bridge, through the valley, and up the hill to Town B, you actually get to do all that. It's not simply a case of pointing your character to the east, and holding down the "run" button until you bump into the next town. -Random encounters. -Extras and side quests. There's a reasonable amount of stuff to do once you finish the main game, including a cool battle arena where you pit monsters you've "collected" or tamed against ranks of computer controlled monster teams to win prizes and other cool things. Other things include hidden treasure chests, dungeons and bosses. Really, this game is long and fulfilling. This game is a gem and is an absolute masterpiece.

Dragon Quest VIII is a classic RPG in every sense. This installment really doesn't do anything new or take many risks in introducing new ideas into the RPG genre. However, what this game does do right, is refine traditional RPG action to a high degree.

You'll immediately notice that the graphics are cell-shaded and whether you love cell-shade or not, this game is beautiful. The world to explore is massive and really cannot be described without doing it injustice. Each character has a distinct, though somewhat cliche personality. Voice acting is featured during major cut-scenes and events and is also top-notch. Though you may find it funny that all of the characters have distinctly British accents.

You'll begin the game like you've begun many other RPG's - trying to undo an evil curse and set things right in the world. Where the story takes you from there you'll find out over the course of 60-120+ hours of gaming. This is a game where you can really take you time enjoying the vistas and fighting mechanics and turn your characters into true powerhouses. Or, you can quickly make your way through the game skipping sidequests and story plots.

On the topic of fighting mechanics, you'll find nothing new here. Just finely tuned and balanced turn-based combat. You'll select from tradional fighting and magic attacks to character specific abilities. One very cool feature is the ability to "power-up" or charge you character. In the process you sacrifice a turn, however, the rewards are ultra powerful attacks. If you manage to find the limit of the charge ability you'll find that your characters appearnce even changes!

Throughout the game you'll encounter various friends and foes each with a distinct and individual personality. The game features over 250 individual types of enemies and over 70 "Legendary Monsters" that you'll eventually be able to enlist into your ranks should you best them in combat.

Additionally, the game features an alchemy system for creating new useful items or equipment. You'll spend many hours scouring the land for recipies and clues for that new weapon or armor. Some items even manage to permantely change the appearance of your characters.

All in all I highly recommend this game. I did not once put this game down to play something else. If you love RPG's you'll almost certainly love this game.

First off, if you don't know what RPG stands for (or you think it means Rocket Propelled Grenade), then you may want to start off with a more mainstream series such as the uber-popular Final Fantasy or Kingdom Hearts series first. Even so, this game is well-crafted and will provide countless hours of exploration and fun for nearly any age, even with no background in the genre.
In this game, you start off controlling a character known as the Hero, who is searching for a way to cure his "cursed" king and princess, in a small town with many people and little information. You must find the source of the curse and eliminate it....easier said than done.
The gameplay feels very non-linear, as the game subtly gives you clues to the next location you need to go to, and you must explore the world, mostly on foot. You will need to fight monsters ALOT (go explore the world) in order to become strong enough to defeat the bosses, (which are usually HARD) and you will actually need to strategize to survive (none of that button-mashing the X button---Attack, Attack, Attack). Some tips would be to explore a lot, talk to everyone, look in all of the cabinets for items, press Start and talk with your party members often, and don't let everyone in your party die. It's also important to know that you can only save at a church and nowhere else. The story is very interesting and complex (but not as emotional as a Final Fantasy), and there are quite a few good side-quests and minigames. The music is good, a little repetitive, and the graphics are amazing, with cel-shading giving the game a Dragonball Z look, and cool-looking monsters, as well as the fantastic array of environments, especially later in the game. The battle system is turn-based ala FFX, with many options, though it seems slower than most, but it's still great. The voice acting is super (and mostly British), with the only problem being that it's a little slow, but it's a welcome addition.

So, to summarize:
Graphics --- A (very detailed environments, great characters and artwork)
Sound --- A- (soundtrack kind of repetitive, but great voice acting)
Controls --- B+ (cannot customize buttons, user-controlled camera a must)
Gameplay --- A+ (lots of sidequests, 2nd ending, extremely long game 50+++ hrs)
Learning Curve --- B (takes a while to understand the game mechanics)
Value --- A (comes with FFXII demo, and you may want to experience the story again and again)

This game has a learning curve even to RPG veterans, but is still accessible to a large range of people (not a kiddie game either). If you're at all into RPGs, buy this, you won't regret the experience!!!