Back in the early 2000’s, there was a little-known JRPG developer with a game called Dark Cloud. Despite receiving positive reviews around the world, the game was in such a deep, niche corner that even Japanese players barely paid attention to it when it was first released. Today, Level-5 is among the most revered with games and series such as Professor Layton, Ni No Kuni, and the upcoming Yo-Kai Watch. It wasn’t until Level-5 put out Dragon Quest VIII (Dragon Quest 8) in 2005 that they gained the popularity that have brought them to such heights today.
Perhaps the most obvious claim one can make for Dragon Quest 8 today is that the game still looks incredible. With a combination of cel-shaded graphics and Akira Toriyama’s (Dragon Ball, Chrono Trigger) art style, character models look beautifully hand-drawn and are arguably comparable to some games released today. While the environments attempt to incorporate the same hand drawn look, they end up looking like a muddy backdrop when compared to the stunning models. Fortunately, the environments are quite inventive at times, and the sheer whimsical and fantastical nature of some scenes help to ignore the otherwise bland looking textures.
To accompany these characters and scenes is the music. Dragon Quest 8 was one of the first games to fully orchestrate their soundtrack. To this day, I still haven’t heard a soundtrack quite like this one. With light strings decorating the varied towns and landscapes to angry horns blaring in dissonant keys towards the enemies, each piece is wonderfully written and placed. Even late in the game, new tracks are revealed that pull at your heartstrings harder than the last one. To put it in plainer terms, the music is freaking awesome.
To the game’s discredit, the story isn’t particularly interesting. It’s mostly a tried and true revenge formula. There are some twists here and there that do reveal some actual fantastic moments. However, none of these moments happen until at least half way through the game, which depending on how you play, could take 20 – 30 hours of gameplay. In fact, most of the initial 15 – 20 hours you’ll play is all set-up to create motivation for each main character, resulting in a somewhat boring and long introduction. I found myself tuning out and watching silly videos on YouTube in some of the more grating scenes. I half expected to see a title screen when the world finally opened up as it’s definitely where the game really begins. To make things more frustrating, of the four characters you control, only the protagonist has any sort of impact on the overall story. The rest just feel like they’re along to fill the party’s battle roles. This fact is hammered in especially with the character Angelo, who despite being one of the four party members, has less spoken lines than most of the NPCs and only exists to cast multi-target heal spells. At the very least, most of the other characters are written and voiced terrifically, featuring some of the most entertaining and funniest dialogue I’ve heard in a JRPG.
Fortunately, the gameplay is where Dragon Quest 8 truly shines. This is exactly what a JRPG should be, in my opinion. Each battle is simple, and yet completely engaging. It never felt like busy work to play this game. Even level grinding is enjoyable, though somewhat unnecessary. Essentially, it’s based around character building. Each character has five extremely simple skill trees. When a character levels up, they receive a number of points that are put into these trees. When a certain number of points is hit, they learn an ability. The five trees themselves are broken into three possible weapon types, an unarmed style, and a character specific skill. This subtle system allows for some incredibly varied party combinations. My main character, for example, is a crowd controlling boomerang fighter with some sword abilities to deal with single targets and bosses. Other players might turn him into a Dragoon-type spear user, or a magic slinging boxer using only fisticuffs and spells. There are some balancing issues, and many players believe certain abilities and weapons are factually better than others. While that definitely holds some truth, the game never gets so difficult that investing points “correctly” means the difference between success and failure. So, experimenting is perfectly fine, and I’d recommend it to get the most out of the game.
In addition to the battling and character development, there is a major emphasis on exploration. From the first moment you step out into the world, it hits you with just how large and incredible everything is. There are hidden items, special monsters that you can convince to join you, and secret locations to discover. While early dungeons are pretty simple, some of the later dungeons require you to solve puzzles to complete, and their layouts actually get fairly complex, making dungeon exploring both dangerous and fun to traverse.
Dragon Quest 8 also has a fairly steady difficulty curve as well. Nothing ever feels too difficult to complete, but you will be punished if you run from too many fights or ignore side areas. There are definitely some jumps here and there to make sure you’re paying attention – particularly when you enter the open world section of the game -, but, it’s not completely unmanageable, especially with the inclusion and introduction of the now infamous Level-5 Alchemy Pot. Once it’s unlocked, you have access to some of the best equipment in the game almost immediately. It’s fairly easy to break the game with giving yourself some incredible equipment early on, but it can be useful if you’re feeling under-powered.
Dragon Quest 8 is easily one of the best JRPGs of all time and is definitely the best in the Dragon Quest series itself. Whether you’re a fan of Level-5 and want to take a look at some of their older games, or you’re just an RPG fan who wants to experience the “Va-Va-Voom!” for yourself, you really need to check out this game.