Dragon Quest VIII is incredible from start to finish.

Despite being a pretty typical JRPG, invoking tropes across the board, everything it does is so expertly crafted and thought out that it'll feel like you're playing something petty modern - the gorgeous transition from 2D to 3D definitely helps.

The soundtrack is perfect. The visuals have barely aged. The characters are all wonderful and memorable. And the game is beefy, but without needing to bury you in side quests and optional objectives. Plus, while it's an inferior version technically, the 3DS has a port of it, so you have no excuse!

Hurry up and play one of the best RPGs ever made already. Sheesh.

Great party, great soundtrack, great story, great world. There's no real major aspect of this game that I can point out as failing. All of it reaches such an incredible level of quality. One of my only slight bummers is the soundtrack in the 3DS version. Those MIDI's are horrendous and the open world absolutely loses some luster when there's a bunch of random monsters sliding around like idiots. I still obviously adore it, but I feel like if I played the PS2 version I may have liked it even more.

This is not going to be a popular opinion. I became a fan of Dragon Quest fairly recently after having a fantastic time with DQ3. Since then I've played 1, 2, 4, 5, and 8.

This game is often held up as the best of the series, and I couldn't agree less. Before I'm burned alive, let me start from the beginning and try to explain myself.

From the start of the game, I loved the opening premise. Escorting this particular caravan and trying to hunt down the magician responsible for their fates was a great initial hook for me. What I didn't realize at the time was that for the vast majority of the game I would be following this magician around the world from place to place a la Sephiroth in FF7. That's perfectly fine, just as it is in FF7, but that means the burden of sustaining the player's interest falls on different elements. FF7 has a few important ways of keeping things interesting. First, that section of the game is minimized somewhat by the fact that Midgar exists before it. Second, the places the party visits are fantastical, interesting locations all on their own, like the Gold Saucer, Junon, or Cosmo Canyon. Thirdly, FF7 has a large ensemble cast with both backstories and ongoing "front" stories. This means that most locations can be of personal significance to at least someone in the party. Corel prison isn't just a desert prison, it's the site of a whole story arc for Barrett, a character who the player is hopefully invested in.

Dragon Quest 8 does not have these things. DQ8 for the most part features plain fairy tale kingdoms with their own isolated stories that are largely detached from the main overarching plot or the personal affairs of the party. In my personal opinion, those town stories are not interesting enough, and are hugely outclassed by similar stories in other Dragon Quest games.

Each party member has their own One Piece style recruitment arc, except Yangus... kind of. A big part of the problem is that "Each party member except Yangus" includes exactly two other people. All three of these party members are fine. They have likable enough personalities. Unfortunately their development as characters stops dead the second you leave "their town." I know there's a lot of love for these characters but if I measure them against the cast of any similar RPG I can't help but feel that they come up short.

I enjoyed the gameplay until about 2/3rds of the way through, when I discovered that if I want to actually beat this game, I'm going to have use the tension system. More advanced Dragon Quest gameplay tends to involve setting up buffs and having the boss cleanse them off of you. Usually this is fine. However inflicting decent damage in DQ8 requires you to "tense" up for several turns in a row while praying to your god that the boss doesn't do his completely random buff cleanse that he does every few turns. Dragon Quest 8 does this for almost every boss in the latter portions of the game, and I found it absolutely maddening. Not maddening in a challenging and difficult sort of way, just in an incredibly, unnecessarily frustrating and unfun way.

At the end of the day I don't think either the gameplay or the narrative of DQ8 are anything to praise, and that saddens me as a huge fan of DQ3, 4, and 5.

A fantastic game with an enchanting world to explore beautiful music and endearing characters. I was addicted to this game the moment I started playing and it is responsible for making me a DQ fan. It would be my favorite in the series and even my favorite game, but its post game content is frustratingly awful. 100% completion is so awful not even a masochist would attempt it. And the super boss gauntlet requiring specific stats and skill tailoring would be fine if i could reallocate stats. Since I cant my only option is to farm skill seeds until I have all the skills I need or play the whole game over again. Awful game design.

This game took forever to beat. More exactly 90 hours and 13 minutes. But I loved it from the very start! I began playing it in the summer of 2020 with the goal of beating it before summer's end, as my PS2 is in my vacation spot, and not where I live. Needless to say, I did not manage to beat the game, but had to complete it during my winter break instead. I spent many hours playing it during the break, and I actually managed to beat it just hours before I was leaving. That felt incredible. But enough backstory, let's talk about my opinions, of which I have plenty!

I came into this expecting a pretty standard JRPG, and that is also basically what I got. The unexpected thing was how basically perfect it handles this "standard" JRPG idea. It has a story that is reasonably intriguing, but pretty simple compared to some other games, but where the game succeeds is how amazing the sense of adventure in this game is. It's not just that there is an overarching quest, but every town you visit (and trust me, there are many) has its own sub-quest so to speak, so it feels like the game is telling an overarching story and lots of small stories too. This adds to the feeling of adventure, and another thing that really accomplishes this is the amazing soundtrack. Really one of the best I've heard probably. It sounds absolutely wonderful due to it being played with live instruments, and I love the neoclassicistic style that most of these tunes have, especially when it strays more towards the "neo" part (looking at the final dungeon theme as one of my favourites). I also grew to absolutely adore the battle system. I like games where you don't really have to grind, and this game balances that out with the tension system. By charging up your tension, your damage will increase in exchange for your turn, and once you get to high tension, you will deal ridiculous amounts of damage (but tension returns to normal after doing something with it, so it's not completely busted). You can actually potentially one-shot certain bosses with this, and it's definitely an incredibly satisfying mechanic to play around with. I managed to beat the game while being under the recommended level according to a strategy guide, and that speaks volumes as to how useful the tension system is. This game also features a great roster of characters, which all have great voice actors. The voice acting and the dialogue is definitely the funniest part of the game, and just made me appreciate it a lot more. The game also has a massive world which feels great to explore, and it feels like every new place has a different and unique culture, and I can definitely remember basically every town I went to. So everything feels unique in that way. Overall, probably one of my favourite RPGs ever played. Highly recommended if you have like 90 hours to spare!

To me, Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King is the version of the fairytale storybook JRPG approach that I love the most.

This game simply captivated me with its unending charm, compelling story and plot, interesting setting, strong intro, amazing music, lovable characters (esp. party members), awesome character and creature designs, powerful conclusion, great pacing and the absolutely sublime translation and voice acting, whose british touch perfectly merges with the games humor, themes and lightheartedness.

And it kept me captivated and did not let me go until the very end.

I love this game.