Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King is one of the first games I remember reading about in a magazine. It got a huge amount of hype for being the first in the series to feature fully 3-D environments, and also for having cell-shaded graphics that would best show off the artwork of Akira Toriyama. Bearing for the first time the rightful title of the series, this game was a little surprising to a lot of people in America, who knew the series as Dragon Warrior instead. For whatever reason, the series was hugely popular in Japan, but only moderately successful in the States. Even so, Dragon Quest VIII got people’s attention. I didn’t get to play the game for a long time after I read about it, but when I did, I found that there had been some really great design that went into it.
The game begins with you heading into town with a wagon, accompanied by a small Namekian and a scruffy bandit type. You jump straight into the quest with a minimum of exposition, basically to the effect of “evil jester cursed the kingdom, and you’re out to stop him.” The story starts off kinda slow, and meanders significantly, but by the end of the game, you get a pretty decent plot. The game plays out mostly as a bunch of side-quests, many of which are really fairy-tale-like. For example, in one kingdom, you have to help a king who is grieving for his dead wife to extremes, and to solve the problem, you have to go to a certain hilltop at night, and pass through a door made of the shadows of the moon. Inside, you find an elf, who uses his music to reunite the king with the good memories of his wife. It’s mostly unnecessary to the main plot, but it’s a pleasant little story. And if the main plot is not very good for a long while, the side stories are well-written. Also, if the cell-shading doesn’t make this game look like an anime, it at least makes it seem something like a colored manga, with running gags and some pretty good still shots.
The characters in this game are pretty interesting, with a number of really deep side characters, as well as some well-developed villains. The ultimate evil villain isn’t very great, but some of the minor villains along the way do some devious stuff. The playable characters are decent, if not 100% great. Yangus is an ex-bandit, who has his gruff, earthy ways, but a good heart. Jessica is an aristocratic sorceress who is kind to everyone, especially children. And Angelo is a templar by name and a flirt by habit, with a sardonic approach to most things. The main character doesn’t get much, because he’s a silent protagonist avatar for the player, but there are some interactions that give you a good idea of what he’s like. All the characters in the game are significantly helped by very good, if occasionally excessive, voice acting. Most of them have British accented English, but there are a few other accents thrown in for good measure.
The battle system is solid, if a little bland. You get to attack, use magic, use an item or flee. There’s also the option to intimidate enemies instead of fighting them, but that doesn’t work very much. You can psyche yourself up to increase the damage of your next attack, but again, it’s not terribly useful except in one or two circumstances. What is really cool about Dragon Quest VIII’s system is how you level up. Whenever you level up, you get some points to put into one of the character’s weapon or skill proficiencies, which, once enough points are put in, yields some special ability or attack. An example might be if you level up Yangus’ club skill, his attack power increases with club weapons. Another example is Jessica’s sex appeal skill, which gives her access to the hustle, which restores hp to all party members. You’ve got five skills for each character, so you won’t be able to max out much more than one or two.
There’s a bunch of fun stuff to do on the side for this game. There’s a monster arena, where various monsters you catch on the world map can fight other monsters in teams. You can make things by combining two or more items into the alchemy pot and walking around for a good while. This is especially cool because there are some items that are useless until you combine them with something else, and you can get some really great equipment. Plus, the mini-medal collecting and casino aspects of previous Dragon Warrior games returns. It’s a good thing that many of these sidequests have rewards, because you do not get very much money from monsters relative to the cost of new equipment. This often means you’ll have to make do with equipment that you find laying around or make yourself, rather than relying on buying up the best gear available.
Dragon Quest VIII is a reasonably long game, so you’ll definitely get some good mileage on that front. However, the early game is pretty unimpressive, and you only really start to have fun when most of the sidequests have opened up. If you don’t mind that early part, you definitely can find a lot of interesting things to do on another playthrough, because of the level up system that forces you to choose only one or two of five areas to specialize in for each character. And, since recipes you discover for the alchemy pot will, for the most part, work at any point in the game, your old save file’s recipe data will help you get through the early game more easily. All in all, this game rates a “one playthrough, and then a good two or three more to really get all you can.” As a final note, you can unlock some optional areas after you’ve cleared the game once, playable on the file that cleared the game, so there’s an epilogue of sorts to play through.
The rating for this game is pretty easy. There’s very few issues with this game, and most aspects are either outstanding or at the least good. However, it is unfortunate that some of the weapon/skill trees are simply not very good at all. It reduces your opportunity to try out different strategies to some extent, because there are only a few that really work. That, and exploring, especially areas that you can use a mount of some sort, is really tedious, with a slow walking speed and huge map. So, the numbers. This guy’s running in at 9.2 out of 10. It’s a really excellent game, and even the minor issues don’t hurt the game too much. Yeah, it takes a little getting used to it, but you’ll be glad you did once things start to open up a little.
How I Broke Game: So, mystifying mixtures are made by combining a moonwort bulb, an antidotal herb, and a medicinal herb. They sell for more than the total cost to buy these ingredients. However, their price is weird. I sold them for 290 gold at some points, and 980 at others. I have no idea how this happened.
Quick Tip: If you’re not doing anything else with the alchemy pot, put a pair of herbs in. You get tons of herbs through the game, and the good healing items you get can be really helpful.
If you liked this game, you might want to try playing one of the following games. Dragon Warrior VII, which is not even close graphically, but has similar story elements and an even better class system. Dark Cloud 2 is made by the same developer, and has some really good item creation systems, not to mention similarly cell-shaded graphics and decent voice acting. Legend of Mana has an entirely non-linear story, made up of vignettes, and also has some item creation in it.
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