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Dragon Quest VIII

When Square merged with Enix, it was a big transition for both companies and for a long time it seemed like Enix was getting the raw end of the deal. After all, much-anticipated Enix titles like Star Ocean: Til the End of Time were endlessly delayed while Square-originated products that sucked … like Unlimited SaGa … kept getting pushed to the head of the release-list like the principle’s son in a lunch line. However, the title that seemed most-delayed, the newest Dragon Quest game (previously known as Dragon Warrior in the US, until this installment) has finally been released and while it’s not perfect, it definitely qualifies as the best thing SquareEnix has published since Final Fantasy X.

I’ve long been a fan of the Dragon Quest series and remember playing the very first one on my original NES. More recently, I was one of the few gamers who slogged his way through Dragon Quest VII for PSone, released late in the life of the console, close to the release of the PS2. Dragon Quest VII was an old-school throwback title that delivered about 200 hours of game play; but the battle system and storytelling had evolved so little since the NES days that few modern gamers had the patience to truly immerse themselves in it and enjoy it for what it was. Times and gamers’ tastes had changed, but Dragon Quest hadn’t.

Gladly, that’s not the case this time out. Sure, when cell-shading wunderkinds Level 5 were announced as the Dragon Quest VIII development team by SquareEnix several years ago, I think everyone expected DQ8 to look better than any previous installment; what was less sure, however, is whether the game itself would undergo a similar facelift, or would it remain a 200-hour monster with endless battles, token plot and story elements and a breathtakingly-old school battle system that was overly simplistic for modern gamers, no matter how hot it looked? The answer is that SquareEnix has finally been fair to the Enix side of their brand and have delivered a thoroughly modern RPG experience while still retaining enough of the spirit of the Dragon Quest series to feel like an extension of the franchise.

You play as a hero you get to name, a young man who was working for King Trode when the royal castle was attacked by the evil Dhoulmagus, who turned the king into a short, green monster and his daughter into a faithful white horse. Your quest is to reverse the curse of Dhoulmagus, restoring the king and his daughter to their former selves, and seeking revenge upon the evil Dhoulmagus, who didn’t stop there but is wreaking havoc wherever he goes. You gather followers, but slowly. You start the game with Yangus, a reformed bandit, and eventually join company with Jessica, a young mage, and Angelo, a rogue knight, though don’t necessarily expect them to join your party the first time they lay eyes on you; they have problems of their own and will only join forces with you once it makes sense to them. Hey, motivated character interaction in an RPG? It’s a miracle!

The voice acting is solid and – unlike the recent Magna Carta: Tears of Blood – isn’t necessary to identify the gender of any of your characters, thank God. Although not littered with Hollywood stars like FFX and Kingdom Hearts, those doing the work deliver the goods without overacting, and that’s what counts. Also under auditory considerations is the soundtrack, which – despite countless RPGs in recent years that offer a soundtrack CD – actually delivers a memorable score. Utilizing a lively full orchestral production, the music is catchy, appropriate to the moment throughout, never a distraction but always listenable and memorable; it’s the kind of work that could easily stand on its own without a game to prop it up. In my personal opinion, it is the best-sounding music score released as part of any RPG since Lunar: The Silver Star Story Complete’s soundtrack, back in the heyday of PSone.

Now, on the battle front, the game maintains its turn-based roots but has added loads of depth to the battle-system, finally breaking the series away from the classic-but-dated-and-boring “four choices only” menu selection of the NES-era Dragon Quest titles. Although the battles maintain the essential spirit of classic Dragon Quest games, they have indeed been modernized for the current generation of gaming – at last. While the battles are plentiful, they never really overwhelm you as they often did in previous titles, making exploration a lot more fun, especially if you use monster-repelling items in the game on occasion to extend the battle-free roaming of the countryside.

One of the weaknesses of most RPGs is that they toss a lot of low-level enemies at you most of the time, making the majority of battles more annoying than they are challenging. DQVIII solves that in two ways; one is the “Intimidate” command, which allows you to attempt to frighten away weaker monsters, and works well if they actually are weaker. The other method employed is that the game does a good job of keeping the monsters challenging no matter how far you level up. While some may find it annoying to have the possibility of being killed off by a random-encounter battle present in the game, most gamers will appreciate the higher level of challenge DQVIII presents – there are no easy battles and unless you can gather enough scratch to stay stocked on healing supplies, you’ll need to keep your jaunts between town visits brief.

Yet the biggest asset of the game is not the graphic-novel-quality graphics, nor the audio accomplishments that make for fine ear-candy while playing, nor the wonderful improvements to the battle system; instead, the most marked improvement in the game is the rich story it presents. The last installment in the Dragon Quest series, DQ7 on PSone, was relatively thin on story and character, even by PSone-era standards. That made the frequent battles more annoying and made the 200-hour game a labor to slog through. But that’s not the case here; the story set-up may seem relatively basic, but with all the interesting characters, plot twists and memorable moments in the game, it’s like experiencing an entirely different game from DQ7. With DQ8, the series has not only been brought into the modern era of console RPGs, but proves to be the most successful execution of one since Final Fantasy X. Characters in DQ8 have motives for everything, a rich back story and never do anything expected of them (like joining your party) until it makes complete sense for them to do so from a motivational standpoint. It’s a story you’ll want to experience more than once, like a good novel.

Let’s face it: This has been a solid year for RPG lovers, and a solid holiday season, even. With titles on the market like Radiata Stories, Romancing SaGa, Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga 1 & 2, X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse, Magna Carta and countless others – not to mention those available on PSP, GameCube, PC and Xbox – this is probably the golden season for RPGs in this generation of hardware. But as this era comes to a close and a new set of hardware beckons on the horizon, many reviewers are griping that this holiday season has no “A-list” games available. Don’t believe the anti-hype. Dragon Quest VIII may have been many years in coming and the previous installment may have tarnished its reputation a bit, but make no mistake about it: Dragon Quest VIII has been restored to the former glory of the series and is one of a handful of “must own” titles out this holiday season on any platform. Of all the RPGs released this holiday season, Dragon Quest VIII is the king, baby, and that’s no curse!

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Posted by Craig "American Idle" Hansen on Dec 7th, 2005 and is filed under PS2 Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.

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