This isn't my favorite Dragon Quest--it's maybe a bit too bread-and-butter to earn that distinction--but oh man is this still a good time. One of those games that really doesn't do anything poorly: good characters, good combat, good pacing, good story, good dungeons. It's just very good. I may have more appreciation for the generational not-the-hero's journey of V, the expansive multi-act ensemble narrative of XI, and the wildly ambitious time-hopping anthology storytelling of VII, but this is still a banger. I don't know if the enhanced port or this is better. I think the PS2 version probably has better game balance but going from 4 to 6 party members is really nice (Red is especially fun), as are a lot of the other additions.

This is the first Dragon Quest game that I enjoyed, and as such, I have a soft spot for it. I have never beaten it, and I doubt I ever will at this point. While it suffers from the same endless trope of dark evil magicians and evil dragon lords in the Dragon Quest series, it was easy to ignore.

The story, characters, and environments are a treat to explore. The progression system is quite unique for a console game of its era, allowing you to assign points to a weapon skillset, unlocking new abilities as you go. I can't really think of a JRPG that exists to this day that has a similar system. It's bordering on experimental, which is impressive on its own.

This one is easy to recommend.

Dragon Quest VIII: El Periplo del Rey Maldito

Me ha gustado mucho, sobre todo por la sensación de aventura que tiene durante todo el juego y las partes que me recuerdan a una peli de Ghibli.

Me gustaría que la parte del postgame estuviera en el juego base.

(8'5/10)

XI?

Minha experiência com Dragon Quest VIII foi muito positiva graças aos mimos proporcionados pela emulação, em especial a habilidade de acelerar a velocidade geral do jogo.
Em sua forma original, DQ8 é criminalmente lento. O argumento de que sua lentidão se dá para contemplação de suas animações e detalhes até que se sustenta, mas esbarra com força no combate e na exploração. O TBC é tão lento devido às animações que qualquer mísero conflito mundano consome uma quantidade ridícula de tempo, e o mundo aberto se torna repetitivo até o desbloqueio do Sabrecat. Acelerar esses momentos conserta o pacing de uma forma tão natural que imagino que foi desta catarse que alguém se responsabilizou pelo FAST do porte de 3DS.

Tirando a lentidão do combate e um tamanho desnecessário do mapa-mundo... Meio que é a bomba!

Dragon Quest VIII é um jogo maravilhoso. Fica difícil de lembrar jogos com personagens tão carismáticos como os encontrados aqui. Do sotaque pesado e da personalidade cascuda, porém leal e pura de Yangus, os grunhidos e emoções afloradas do Rei Trode, da personalidade mulherengo como fachada para ressentimento de Angelo, das dúvidas e esperanças de Medea, a determinação de Jessica, as birras e infantilidades de Charmles, o ego de Marcello...São tantos personagens, tantas micro-histórias se convergindo em uma única linha direta que cada pequeno episódio de DQ8 possui charme, personalidade e amor suficiente para um jogo inteiro. Tudo se converte em um set tão mágico, tão meticulosamente composto que a impressão só se expande nas 70 horas de gameplay. Parte disso se deve à dublagem: uma das melhores que já vi em qualquer mídia.

O combate é simples, mas possui um leque divertido e cativante que não o tornam massante (desconsiderando o TEMPO, ironicamente) ou ofensivamente simplório. A mecânica de psyche-up é extremamente útil, as habilidades especiais com diferentes tipos de armas são um bom incentivo para criação de builds e a quase não necessidade de bufs e debufs casa bem como esse combate "causa e efeito" sem necessariamente ser "elemental", algo como "tamanho é documento".

A trilha sonora é boa, mas se torna MUITO repetitiva. Isso é mediado pelas localidades variadas e, principalmente, pelas cidades exploráveis. Cada pequeno canto, com seus NPCs, lojas, construções e atmosfera são o verdadeiro brilho do jogo, transmitem muito mais do que uma simulação estética ou "aventura". São os verdadeiramente acertos mágicos que apenas a série Dragon Quest possui a maestria de proporcionar.

Jogo lindo. COR BLIMEY

text by Ario Barzan

★★☆☆

“A BEAUTIFUL BED-TIME STORY THAT€™S CONSTANTLY INTERRUPTED BY THE MONSTERS UNDER YOUR BED.”

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. This is a video game that managed to make me plunk down three days’ worth of hours, never to complete it, to speak of it as the most beautiful little monster. A great title that’s not great because it cheats itself out of true potential – accomplished by way of fetishistic and arid adherence to long-pointless craft, now cuddled by baroque swirls of Tradition – Dragon Quest VIII is presented as a young, budding musician in a shop who forsakes his talent and inherits his father’s business of shoe making. He’s forming the most wonderful compositions in his head – but, look, he’s in a shoe shop.



The story, here, is simple and straight, if sometimes embarrassing because of the (unusually good) voice acting that brings out the absurdity of situations (talking evil dogs with death vendettas). And, really, the voices are good, but I and the game could do without them. You are cast into the boots of Silent Hero Nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine, and your journey started before you started the game. Some time ago, a magician put a spell on the castle you guarded, turning most everyone into plants. Mysteriously, you weren’t affected. Now, you are stopping by a town for information, and your companions are a princess horse, a gremlin king, and a squat ruffian.

Your first battle is with three blue, bouncing, happy-faced dollops called Slimes, seemingly the series’ mascot, who leap out from the grass at your camp site. The screen’s colors smudge, then refocus. A first-person view shows the enemies with text saying “A slime appears!” three times. You select “Attack” from a menu displaying battle options, and you or the ruffian named Yangus will lash out with sword or club. You exchange blows with the Slimes until they are dead. It’s quick, mindless. The slimes are cute. Were this a one-time, referential throwback, I’d be slinging an arm around Dragon Quest VIII‘s back and telling it, “Listen – let’s hit the town, tonight. Drinks are on me.” But, no. Japanese RPGs come and go, faceless drones pumped out of the unloving corporate womb, and it’s a shame that here is Dragon Quest VIII, containing more character than damn near everything, and it’s a tragedy of design.

For forcing me into a three-to-five-or-more-minute situation every fifteen seconds, the game doesn’t do a very good job in validation. It’s not even that I have a big problem with the turn-based mold. Super Mario RPG was excellence. This realizes its format and hands in a circle with two dots and an upward crescent as a portrait for its figure drawing class. Simplicity is fine, provided there’s a constant verve. Dragon Quest VIII‘s mechanics are grayed by a tired prosaicism: there are no tweaks that produce even mildly involving combat.

The timing of button presses in Super Mario RPG let you better your attacks or reduce the potency of enemies’, and that simple element slipped such a deceptively thin layer into the fighting, leading to great results, like taking out bosses in a single usage of the Super Jump because you were awesome enough. Dragon Quest VIII‘s “timing,” then, is the Tension feature. Select “Psyche Up” and watch your avatar attempt to ease their constipation and incrementally increase their strength. This simply makes them into a pacifist; if you want your hit to be powerful enough to matter, you’ve go to keep selecting “Psyche Up” with each turn and refrain from all other actions until you’ve become a pseudo-Super Saiyan. Sometimes you won’t even fully power up. I guess that’s the game’s idea of a cute technical quirk. It’s cardboard-flavored, and relies on arbitrary oppositional behavior for proper execution (i.e. oh god I hope this boss doesn’t kill me before I can get a hit in at MAXIMUM POWER).

None of the fighting you do – and you do a hell of a lot of fighting – seems to matter, because you aren’t doing any fighting. Every attack is an animated substitute backed up by statistics, numbed by a wash of NES RPGs’ graph-paper-white and the disconnect from player input. It’s your numbers crunching against others’, and the so-called skill required for progress translates to the path of time consumption and “paper beats rock.” It doesn’t help that equipment is sold at merciless prices. The blur of the screen and the swell of the battle music sends a sickness through the gut similar to the feeling upon looking at the clock and knowing your shift at a hateful job is about to begin. The fighting isn’t something to be enjoyed within itself; it’s an aspect to get over with as soon as possible, which is sort of morbidly hilarious, considering how dragging the fights really are. There are awkwardly long pauses for loading and “charming” padding that drags. If Yangus hits an enemy and paralyzes them, the screen will say “X is paralyzed!” below, and represent this with zig-zagging lines around the monster. Then, the camera will zoom in on the monster and repeat the line, “X is paralyzed!” These annoyances build up to form speed bumps. Even saving is a bunch of drawn-out nonsense.

It’s a weird twist that part of Dragon Quest VIII‘s undoing is its own sincerity regarding its format. Seams are touted as time-honored triumphs (Look! I’m like what you played when you were little!). I surprise myself when I say the thing could be better off with a slice of dishonesty. Or, preferably, guts. I mean, okay – random fights. Why don’t we give them reasons for happening, rather than warping us to scuffles with three dragons when there were not three dragons in front of us on a huge field four-seconds ago? Logic, people. As part of any game becomes literalized, the remaining abstractions clash more furiously. The cohesiveness, pacing of Dragon Quest VIII‘s world cracks when naturalness is split up with antiques. Chrono Trigger did it right, and maybe if we’d stop being so afraid of it, maybe if we were willing to digest its ideas and stop treating it as that game – maybe we’d be somewhere.

So what else is left? Everything you do outside of the killing, and that, ladies and sirs, is the running, which is some of the most gorgeously divine running next to Shadow of the Colossus. It’s so good, hell, you might want to walk. I don’t care what you think about Akira Toriyama, his imprisoned character style be damned, because Dragon Quest VIII is luscious to gaze upon. When it’s on the television screen, I am playing 3D for the first time, as it were, using the camera like a madman to sop up blue, blue skies and bending trees on green, rolling hills. Heaven help those who’re insufferable maintainers of the same Mature Gamer pride that kept them from appreciating the joy of Wind Waker‘s style (God knows what would happen if they weren’t found chewing beef jerky, guffawing at a Chuck Norris joke, and sniping someone’s head via Sam Fisher). You could live in Dragon Quest VIII‘s buildings, warmed by fireplaces and thick colors, supported by velvety beams of wood and brickwork you want to touch. It’s disgustingly rich. Yes, I invested close to seventy hours on my file, and it was all for the running and the clean shorelines and the freshness of a pale sunrise.

Koichi Sugiyama, close to being in his eighties, and a gear in the series’ distinct trio (the other two being Toriyama and Yuji Horii), really got me to buy Dragon Quest VIII. The man is Bernstein, Debussy, Hubert Parry – a wealth of composers rolled into one distinct mind. He’s another Hitoshi Sakimoto, writing compositions not bound by the usual play-required context of game music. As far as I’m concerned, Sugiyama still hasn’t gotten past the peak of Dragon Quest V, a commonality in the field (Uematsu has his Final Fantasy 6, etc.), but it’s difficult to get disappointed with how consistent he is. This consistency, admittedly, has made some of his output feel a bit recurrent. Dragon Quest VIII‘s non-Japan release has (usually) orchestrated music, a decision I can appreciate, not being the world’s most rabid fan of MIDI. The soundtrack is sweet, clear, waiting to be explored, though it could use some restraint at points, or extra spice. The overworld theme gets too loud and too loopy after a while. On the other hand, the music for sailing is the greatest sailing music in the world, anything and everything it should be.





There is a part in Dragon Quest VIII where you’ve exited a town near the sea. The town is renowned for its sculptors. Beyond it, the climate has changed. Trees’ leaves and the grass are coated in autumn tones, a result of the Northern location and its nearby snowy lands. Between you and your ulterior motive is a Pisa-like building called Rydon’s Tower. Rydon, a man obsessed with height in his architecture, is supposedly still in the tower, still building up to the sky, still trying to outdo himself. Each slice of a floor is supported by columns, and their spacing exposes the blue enamel of the sky and brown, limber trees. The wind and Sugiyama’s in-game masterpiece quietly mingle. It’s a dream. As a professor is more critical of the slacker genius than the brain-dead slob, I pick on Dragon Quest VIII. While the coating is generally matured, sparkling, the mechanics remain rooted in the diaper they shat in two decades ago. An invocation of nostalgia is used as a crutch for entertainment, and the battle design isn’t “daringly antique” or “classically refreshing” – it’s stagnantly unaltered and impotent. People fear change above all else: this fear squashed and wrinkled Dragon Quest IX‘s intention to put us in the action. I hope Square-Enix has the balls to give the series’ pants a kick in the future. Dragon Quest VIII is a frustrating mixture: both sub-mediocre and soaring above the crowd. For that, I recommend it and say, “Stay the hell away.”

LA MAGIA CLÁSICA DEL JRPG

Dragon Quest fue una saga inédita en Europa hasta la aparición de este juego, la octava entrega. Tras esto, nos llegarían el resto de entregas principales a modo de Remakes para las portátiles del momento.

El Periplo del Rey Maldito es la esencia clásica de lo que es un JRPG, nada de filosofía ni aspectos profundos, estamos ante una aventura de corte clásico donde nuestros héroes están en una búsqueda para salvar el reino de un malvado hechicero que está causando problemas en el mundo.

Un estilo artístico característico gracias a Akira Toriyama, una banda sonora con mucha personalidad, un precioso apartado artístico y unas mecánicas clásicas de combate por turnos con encuentros aleatorios acompañados por un enorme mundo que explorar y descubrir.

Un JRPG clásico llevado al mundo moderno.

Oh my god, this game is so unbelievably mediocre. I've played for 30 hours now and eventually plan on finishing it, but this game is such a slog! The characters are nothing (just "lovable meathead", "bratty rich girl" and "rebellious teen"), the overworld is a green void of nothing, the level up speed and cash output are pure padding, the story is "chase bad guy", the music is unremarkable and the ps2 vibes are missing! The game is fine, I didn't dislike turning my brain off and mashing X with my party on "Fight Wisely", but the experience is entirely unremarkable and way too long for what you come away with. The alchemy system is interesting, though hardly worth exploring beyond googling the best gear currently craftable, and Akira Toriyama art, but all of Level-5's games are exactly the same, carried only by a whimsical charm that excites Japanese schoolchildren. Maybe the problem here is I'm playing a children's game in my early 20's...

VIII always seems to be heralded as one of the best Dragon Quest games and I certainly agree. The world is wide open (but not enough where you'll frequently be consulting a guide or getting lost), building your characters is great as ever, and instead of the usual Dragon Quest method, this game opts to keep to a smaller party of 4 (Up to 6 if you're playing the 3ds version) which allows the game to focus on the characters much more in depth than usual. It's one of those games that you'll basically always come out with a smile on, as it's just such a pleasing game. The fights aren't quite slouches in this one and you'll actually need to be using your skills that you're investing in frequently and intelligently, unlike certain other RPGs. It's not ballbusting, but difficult enough to be a serviceable challenge, which is really the best difficulty you can ask for. As the RPG "Comfort Food" that Dragon Quest is sort of known to be, with the traditional and simple but incredibly well crafted experience it always is, VIII is great. I can't speak praises enough.