Just finished a second playthrough of this game .
And apparently in dragon quest , similarly to love , you never really get over your first.
And apparently in dragon quest , similarly to love , you never really get over your first.
The best Dragon quest game even nowadays.
Cool characters and open world with many side quests and variety of monsters.
Cool characters and open world with many side quests and variety of monsters.
Imaging making the game not dead easy like DQXI, with not just lovely character, but sexy characters, without modern censorship and without modern bash on sex appeal or fan service. Now add funny moments that are actually funny and finally add the sense of adventure that old JRPGs used to have. That sum what DQVIII do well.
You actually die in this game and dying have consequences, dead character can only be revive on save points (till you get the magic to revive, but that's like 20h into the game and it's a 50/50 magic) and getting wipe out take half of your money. I would not say this is a hard game, it's not, but is not completely easy.
The look is a 10 out of 10 for a PS2 game, the jump from DQ7 is HUGE, the biggest in all the series. Toriyama's character design is beautiful, even for NPCs. Jessica gets a lot of fan service costumes and details, I'm always grateful for that, because is something modern mainstream games are not allow to have anymore. For me the weakest part of the design are the monsters, i can't get used to the goofy monsters of DQ games. Scenarios and overall world looks awesome.
The world is very open and the sense of "going in an adventure" is very strong, there's no waypoint or HUD message saying where to go all the time.
The story is super simple and classic, cliché, i would say.
Alchemy and Monster Arena do a decent job to add some variety to the formula.
My main complain is how painfully SLOW everything is... No skip, nothing have skip here.
Saving takes take like 10 unnecessary question and/or menu movement, same with item movements, menu navigation, everything. Random encounters makes exploration feel slow too, I feel for PS2 era we should already have real monsters on the map.
Also, this game is grindy, unfortunately, the main and almost only way the game knows to add difficulty is raising levels, farming is almost mandatory. There's very little place for skill or tactic in this game, gameplay is super straight foward, plain for RPG standards. Status-effect, buffs/nerfs, elemental rock-paper-scissor... pretty much all is negated in most important battles, they feel useless to be honest.
So if you want a comfy adventure and you have the necessary patience, i recommend this game, its one of those works where you can clearly see it was made with love. In my opinion this is the right game to get into the Dragon Quest series.
You actually die in this game and dying have consequences, dead character can only be revive on save points (till you get the magic to revive, but that's like 20h into the game and it's a 50/50 magic) and getting wipe out take half of your money. I would not say this is a hard game, it's not, but is not completely easy.
The look is a 10 out of 10 for a PS2 game, the jump from DQ7 is HUGE, the biggest in all the series. Toriyama's character design is beautiful, even for NPCs. Jessica gets a lot of fan service costumes and details, I'm always grateful for that, because is something modern mainstream games are not allow to have anymore. For me the weakest part of the design are the monsters, i can't get used to the goofy monsters of DQ games. Scenarios and overall world looks awesome.
The world is very open and the sense of "going in an adventure" is very strong, there's no waypoint or HUD message saying where to go all the time.
The story is super simple and classic, cliché, i would say.
Alchemy and Monster Arena do a decent job to add some variety to the formula.
My main complain is how painfully SLOW everything is... No skip, nothing have skip here.
Saving takes take like 10 unnecessary question and/or menu movement, same with item movements, menu navigation, everything. Random encounters makes exploration feel slow too, I feel for PS2 era we should already have real monsters on the map.
Also, this game is grindy, unfortunately, the main and almost only way the game knows to add difficulty is raising levels, farming is almost mandatory. There's very little place for skill or tactic in this game, gameplay is super straight foward, plain for RPG standards. Status-effect, buffs/nerfs, elemental rock-paper-scissor... pretty much all is negated in most important battles, they feel useless to be honest.
So if you want a comfy adventure and you have the necessary patience, i recommend this game, its one of those works where you can clearly see it was made with love. In my opinion this is the right game to get into the Dragon Quest series.