BATTLE SYSTEM INTERACTION ORIGINALITY STORY MUSIC & SOUND VISUALS CHALLENGE Easy to Medium COMPLETION TIME 50-125 Hours OVERALL 4.5/5 Rating definitions

   A jester named Dhoulmagus has stolen an ancient scepter and unleashed havoc upon Trodain Castle, transforming the king and princess into beasts, and afterward decimating the palace. Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King follows a hero and his party's quest to track down Dhoulmagus, defeat him, and hopefully lift the curse on the Kingdom of Trodain and its residents. The game, while with its flaws, proves to be a grand accomplishment for the Dragon Quest series, not to mention Playstation 2 RPGs.

   Dragon Quest VIII, at heart, retains the same traditional turn-based battle engine that its predecessors have had: input all your characters' commands, including attack, magic, skill, defend, and item, and let them and the enemy beat the crap out of one another in a round. Turn order, as usual, is unpredictable, and even more annoyingly, varies at times, and the escape option isn't foolproof. There are, however, many interesting twists that make the battle system rise well above average.

   Alongside the mentioned commands is Psyche Up, where a character builds up Tension and can unleash a more powerful attack his or her next turn. However, even on his or her next few turns, a character can continue to build up Tension up to a hundred points, with each Psyche Up from the start consecutively increasing Tension to five, twenty, fifty, and a hundred points. Tension can be very useful with skills that hit more than one enemy or hit a single enemy more than once, and can literally spell the difference between victory and defeat against the toughest bosses, although many can nullify Tension. Still, with effective use of Tension, I managed to end most any normal battle within two rounds.

Talk to the hand!

   After a battle, characters gain experience and gold, and when they level up, they increase their stats and gain points they can invest into four weapon skills and one innate skill. For instance, the hero can wield swords, spears, boomerangs, or his fists, and has the Courage innate skill. After a skill's points are high enough, a character gains a new spell/skill or increased attack power with a certain weapon equipped (or, in the case of the Fists skill for all characters, unequipped ^_^). This system adds variety to the game, and accounts for endless possibilities during different playthroughs.

   Adding to the battle system is the Alchemy Pot, into which players can throw various items to concoct something more powerful. Players can discover new recipes either by experimenting or reading books from bookshelves. The Pot, however, can reject many item combinations, although it can yield powerful equipment early on for characters. Moreover, some may lament the fact that the Pot takes time to produce a new item, although this does give players time to do other things, such as advancing the game or working on sidequests.

   Among the main sidequests that comes into play with the battle system is the Scout system, where players can fight monsters seen wandering the overworld (normal battles are random), recruit them, and assemble monster parties of up to three to fight at the Monster Arena for various prizes, including items, the hero's ability to summon a monster team into battle, increased scouting capacity, and so forth. Summoning monsters into battle can easily give players a good head start against bosses without putting their main party at risk.

   If players do happen to die, the game, instead of dumping them back to the title screen like so many other RPGs, instead revives them at a church with half their money depleted. This might sound like a heavy price to pay especially if players are short on money, although they do eventually get access to banks that can safely store money, which largely nullifies the penalty of defeat. It's this reviewer's opinion that more RPGs should make some sort of effort to make players less pissed to die.

And now a message from the National Jaguar Institute: screw horses!

   Despite claims to the contrary, finally, I personally found Dragon Quest VIII to be a little on the easy side, although there are still some tough (not to mention cheap) bosses at certain times. Perhaps it was because I took full advantage of the Alchemy system, although the game is still one of the more balanced to come out in recent years. Overall, the battle system contains enough features to prevent it from becoming dull.

   Dragon Quest VIII's interface could've certainly been better, although that doesn't mean things are totally unintuitive. Some genius at Square-Enix decided that Americans needed a new menu system, which really doesn't make things any more user-friendly than in the previous installments, what with occasional lags when pulling up the menus, but still serves its purpose. Each character has his or her own twelve-item inventory, which in effect adds to the battle system's effectiveness, in addition to a large sack where players can limitlessly store items. Shopping could've easily done without all the merchant dialogue, and having characters will full inventories can create slight problems when outfitting them with new equipment, though players can mercifully see how equipment changes their characters' stats.

   Old-school gamers, moreover, will relish in the massive overworld Level-5 provided, which, while admittedly unnecessary, does add to the game's epic feel, with occasional treasure available to those who choose to explore every corner of the world. Those who prefer a more straightforward adventure, additionally, may find help in the ability to converse with allies, who mostly help keep the player moving in the right direction. One thing I liked the most, though, is the availability of spells to instantly exit dungeons and teleport among visited areas, long-forgotten conveniences of most of today's RPGs. Players can also obtain maps within dungeons to keep them going forward. Some may find the ability to save only at churches to be irksome, although the fact that the game is nice to you when you die largely compensates for this.

   Dragon Quest VIII's translation was done in Europe, and it shows. Dialogue has a distinctly British flair, with many words spelled with U's, and words like "traveler" spelled with two L's instead of one. I would have perhaps enjoyed the conversations more had I known more about British culture, and aside from that and a slight bit of ouchin' battle dialogue (i.e. "But the enemy is too stunned to move!"), the localization is more than adequate.

   Dragon Quest VIII is not a terribly original game, filching its basic mechanisms from its predecessors. The skill point system is also not unlike that in Diablo II, and the Alchemy Pot system resembles the Invention system from another Level-5 game, Dark Cloud 2. The story, moreover, bears some minor resemblances to The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and Dragon Warrior III, although many portions of the plot are still unique. The game, moreover, certainly deserves credit for having perhaps the largest, most realistic overworld to date in any RPG.

"Go get 'em, scouts!"

   The story's execution could've used some improvement, although it's still more than adequate for a Dragon Quest game. The characters, the silent protagonist included, contain reasonable development, likeability, and motives, and there are some interesting twists, a few of which are nothing short of unforgettable. The plot, though, tends to become somewhat dependent on fetch quests at times. Moreover, although one would suppose that the story would continue the trilogy allegedly begun by Dragon Warrior VII, there are in fact more links to Dragon Warrior III. The ending, however, is reasonable lengthy and conclusive, and the plot, overall, is more than satisfactory.

   Dragon Quest VIII could've certainly used some improvement with regards to the execution of its soundtrack, as well, although most of it is quite decent. Composer Koichi Sugiyama returns with another mostly neoclassical soundtrack, and fans will recognize remixed themes from the third and fourth installments of the series. The only major problem is the limited diversity and short duration of many themes, chiefly the normal battle music, which is less than a minute long. This works in games where fights don't commonly take that long, but just about any battle with more than one enemy will result in the music looping, and it gets old a bit quickly.

   Dragon Quest VIII is also the first in the series to feature voice acting, a feature absent from the Japanese version, with the recording done in Britain, and every actor having an accent of sorts. It easily beats most American voicework, although there are a few annoying overacted characters, and some of it can be somewhat embarrassing to listen to when someone else is in the room with you. Still, the acting, coupled with the music, creates a nice atmosphere for the game overall.

   Dragon Quest VIII, like Level-5's other games, buries itself in a colorful cel-shaded anime feel, with Akira Toriyama's character and monster designs, for once, showing their true glory, alongside richly-detailed environments and the ability to see your party in action in battle for a change. Granted, some of the scenery does seem slightly rushed and jagged at times, although the eighth installment easily looks light-years ahead of its predecessors.

   Finally, Dragon Quest VIII is a fairly lengthy adventure, taking anywhere from fifty to a hundred and twenty-five hours to complete, depending upon whether or not the player decides to spend time with the extras, among them being a post-game dungeon. Ultimately, the game proves to be one of the finest RPGs to appear in the current generation of consoles, and the best in the Dragon Quest series, to boot. Some aspects, admittedly, do leave some room for improvement, although Dragon Quest VIII leaves little to desire in terms of beauty and enjoyment.