Dragon Quest VIII

Available Platforms: Playstation 2

Many people assume that Role Playing Games are just for sweaty nerds that hang out in their mother’s basement rolling dice and arguing about whose barbarian has a higher dexterity rating. While the RPG community does have plenty of these greasy gamers, you are not required to be one to enjoy or even try out an RPG. It’s not all Dungeons and Dragons. For those of you whose range of games consists of Madden 05 to Madden 06, don’t be afraid to pick up a controller and try out a role playing game. I promise that your friends will not abandon you because of you newfound geekdom and your girlfriend will not instantly call to tell you she has left you for a real man. Dragon Quest VIII is a great RPG that newcomers to the genre will love and seasoned role playing vets will appreciate.

The game’s visuals are simply gorgeous. There is not better way to put it. The game just looks good. The cell-shaded animation gives the game a very different look than most other games out there. Cell shading is a process that makes computer generated animation look hand drawn, like a comic book or cartoon. This is by far the best looking cell-shaded game since Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker or Dark Cloud 2, which is also from the game developer behind Dragon Quest VIII, Level 5. If the characters look like they are straight out of Dragon Ball Z, that’s because they were designed by Akira Toriyama, the man who designed the characters for DBZ. Toriyama designed every character in the game, from the main characters to the lowliest creatures that you fight in the beginning of the game. Every single character has such great detail; there are no more mundane enemies that have plagued RPGs in the past.

The random battles with these creatively designed creatures are just as refreshing as the aesthetics. Most role playing games feature brainless enemies, who are much weaker than you, doing one or two basic attacks until you whack it with a sword. The fights in Dragon Quest VIII actually make you think. The enemies are fairly strong and some element of strategy is required to defeat each one. You can not go hacking everything up blindly or you will lose. The enemies also do not follow the old pattern of attacking you until they die. Many times they will pull out a spell that you have not seen them use, run away, or even call for back up. The fact that each random battle takes a little thought takes away a lot of the monotony of the random encounter battles that pretty much every RPG has. My only complaint would be that these battles happen way too frequently. It is impossible to travel from point A to point B without getting jumped seven times. As fun as the battles are, fighting them every six seconds does get a bit tedious.

The combat system is menu based which is pretty standard fare for this genre. You will also equip your party with items and manage their inventory through a menu system which can be accessed outside of battles. All menus are very easy to navigate and are fairly intuitive. However, just because the menus are easy to sift through and understand does not mean that you will master the game immediately. There are many nuances to equipping the right weapons and items to achieve the best results. Equipping a stronger weapon does not always make your characters stronger. The menus are simple by design but mastering the game is very complex.

The voice acting for Dragon Quest VIII is also done very well. Most of the characters that are involved in the story actually talk, instead of text shooting out of their mouths. Each character has its own unique voice and this contributes to establishing a very rich and believable environment. Many games that feature voice acting turn out cheesy because the acting is done very poorly, which definitely is not the case for Dragon Quest VIII. Not only do the characters display emotion through the face and body language (thanks again to Akira Toriyama), you can hear their emotion in their voice.

While the actually story of the game is slightly generic, it is very entertaining. Everything about the game is an absolute triumph. The visuals, the sound, and the gameplay come together to create one of the most enjoyable RPGs to date. Dragon Quest VIII is simple enough for newcomers to pick up and play without problem but is also deep enough for long time role players to revere.

Overall Grade: B