Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King for the PS2 {Retro Review}

Remember Dragon Warrior on the Nintendo (NES)? I loved that game. I've enjoyed every game in the Dragon Warrior series that I've managed to get my hands on. Dragon Quest VIII was the first installment in the series available for the Playstation 2. (Formerly known as Dragon Warrior in North American, it's always been called Dragon Quest in Japan.) It's one of my all time favourite PS2 RPG-style games.

The game looks and sounds great! The soundtrack is amazing. Those who've only played the demo need to know that the music has been completely revamped for the full release. The symphonic version of the music is beautiful. The parts of the soundtrack which have the danger of becoming repetitive are subdued. At other points, where key storyline moments occur, the music adds wonderfully to the action and intensity.

The visuals are gorgeous. The cell-shading anime-like style is beautiful to look at. The brightly coloured, beautifully rendered graphics are full of plenty of little details. There are butterflies fluttering in the fields. Birds, cats, dogs, horses, and sheep wander on the overworld map. You're not going to get breathtaking photo realism here, but the visuals are very consistent in their quality. The actual game play looks every bit as good as the cut scenes.

The overworld is huge! At first I was overwhelmed by the size and because I had yet to find the in game world map (don't worry you get one eventually) I avoided exploring due to fears of getting irrevocably lost. However, my fears were without base. The game does a good job of limiting you from just wandering endlessly, while still maintaining the feel of a wide open world. As this is an old school style roleplayer I fully expected to be hoping right onto the level up treadmill. However there is so much to do and explore in the overworld areas that this was never a concern. There are tons of treasure chest hidden throughout the world map. There are also notorious monsters to hunt down in each area. There is so much to see and do that the leveling up ends up happening while you're busy just exploring and attempting to hunt down all of the hidden extras.

The world is beautiful to look at and utterly engaging. Time passes from day to night. The sun and the moon rise and set. The (gorgeous!) stars come out to light up the night time sky. You encounter different, more difficult, monsters based on the time of day. For example, some notorious monsters only show up at night time. The towns folk also have different things to say based on whether it is day or night. The towns aren't large, and there are a limited number of towns folk character models. I was pleasantly surprised by the changes in the townsfolk as the game progressing. For example, as the time line progressed in the game I kept returning to the first town, and each time some, but not all, of the characters would have different things to say. What they had to say wasn't always important, sometimes it was just window dressing, but the fact that there was constant change really added to the immersive feel.

The game play is simple and intuitive. The menus were clean and easy to work with. Movement both in town and on the overworld map is fluid. You have complete control over the camera angles at all times. Much frustration has been eliminated by making "warp" items immediately available in the game. From the moment you start playing you can purchase items to let you warp out of a dungeon or back to town. Also the spell equivalents are learnt early on. At any time you can warp back to any town you've already visited, thus taking out any frustrating or time-consuming back tracking. The monsters are great to look at and consistently amusing.

The entire game is full of amusing and unique characters. If the storyline is the standard save-the-kingdom-from-the-evil-mage fare, the game makes up for it by having some rather unique characters. (My favourite being your sidekick Yangus, the reformed bandit.) The characterization and character interaction is great. Some very amusing stuff here. The plot is fairly linear, but the amount of side quests, and the wide open feel to the world, help nix the feeling of being dragged along. There is a vein of humour running throughout the game that I think most players, of all ages, will enjoy.

My one disappointment was in the voice acting. I thought it was horrible! Teeth grittingly horrible. I was particularly annoyed by the cheesy accents. Why is each speaking part a different nationality? (eg. French bartender, Russian fortune teller). The guying doing the voice acting for Yangus wasn't bad, but why is he British? Overall, I felt they could have just left the Japanese voice acting in place (with subtitles) and I would have been much much happier. While on the subject of sound, my husband was exceedingly annoyed by the classic "do-do-do" beep noises that happen as text goes by. It didn't bother me... but I think he was ready to rip a speaker out.

Overall, Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King is definitely one of the best RPGs I've played in a LONG time. Fluid, intuitive, game play, gorgeous graphics, wonderful sound and an immense, utterly immersive, world, make this an RPG that's not to be missed. It's probably the best roleplayer available for the PS2 period. Pick it up, you won't be disappointed.