Dragon Quest VIII for the PS2

Reviewed by Kit

Cel-shading, voice-acting, British slang…things never before seen in a Dragon Quest game. And they work, let me tell you. But enough about the new little aesthetics that have been added to the series. First, I’ll begin with a little bit of plot summary. You begin the game with a hero, an ex-thief, a toad-like creature, a horse, and a carriage. The horse and toad creature are actually a princess and a king, and the hero was a loyal soldier who worked at their castle. The quest begins outside of a town where you are looking for a man who might be able to lift the cruse from the king and his daughter.

There are four major characters, and each character has five ability categories that can receive skill points whenever someone levels up. For example the hero has Sword, Spear, Boomerang, Fisticuffs, and Courage. Enough points in the courage category will reward the player with abilities such as Zap, Tingle, or Zoom (greatest spell ever).

I could probably go into a lot of details about what is involved in this game, but let’s get on with the breakdown and I’ll mention some of my favorite aspects.

Graphics: More than likely you’ll be like everyone else, look at this game, and go, “OMG it looks just like Dragonball Z.” And you wouldn’t be incorrect. As you probably know by now, the art designer was Akira Toriyama, who does DBZ as well as artwork in games such as Chrono Trigger. Still, the graphics are beautiful with cel-shading, and the character animations give a liveliness to monsters and NPCs alike. 4/5

Story: Epic…Deep, beautiful, and full. Still, I wouldn’t consider it the most action-packed, and there are moments where you will just want to bang your head on the table until something picks up. 4/5

Gameplay: The battle interface is simple to use. It’s turn based completely. You pick what you want to do without having any idea how the monsters will treat you that turn. So, if your character has low health, but not life-threatening, you might want to consider healing anyway as you don’t know what creatures might decide to critical on him. The skill system is interesting. 4/5

Audio: Good music, but nothing outstanding. There are some scores that are beautiful or even nostalgic. Still, there is voice-acting done in the cut scenes, and these are well done. The British voices add flavor to the characters, and there are British puns throughout the game, like the characters Bangers and Mash. 4/5

Replay: It is a long game. Once you make it through, I doubt you will want to play it again. But there are things that you can do differently in another run through. Put skills in another category, do more in the monster arena, or ride around on the sabrecat for hours. 3/5

Overall: It’s a good game, a great game even. It’s long, it’s beautiful, it has a plot worth playing. I would recommend this to any hardcore RPG player with a good amount of time on their hands. 4/5