Dragon Quest VIII is one of my new favorite rpgs and has converted me into a Dragon Quest fan. I love the art direction and visuals. The music is quite good (even though it's synthesized). I really like the party, and the battle system is simple but engaging. The alchemy pot is a fun way to acquire gear and repurpose old stuff and also serves as a good reason to explore the world. The skill system is neat but I don't like how you can't respec, so look up a guide. The story is solid overall with a nice theme of family, blood-related and found families are both explored through the story and it’s compelling. Overall, this is a brilliant RPG and if you had to play a Dragon Quest game, play this one.

Dragon Quest VIII feels like a conscious effort to strip the series back to something much more straightforward after the thoroughly maximalist approach that DQVII took. Gone is the job system or any of the sort of narrative or structural trickery that I've come to associate with the series (outside of a slight twist post Dark Ruins). There is now a far greater focus on fleshing out the characters and world, while still delivering on the chill episodic adventures that I expect.

This is one of the best parties in a Dragon Quest game despite their characterization being pretty frontloaded, and all the episodic bits do a great job fleshing out individual locations and side characters in a way that really makes you feel attached to the world. The QoL changes in the 3DS version are extremely welcome too, making this feel like much less of a slog than the PS2 release, and letting you bring along some of the most memorable side characters from that version for the final stretch of the game. I also love the addition of Cameron's Codex, which incentivizes you to become even more intimately acquainted with the world as you look for specific items to photograph.

My only real problem with the game is that I find this implementation of the overworld to just be kind of awkward. It's no doubt impressive to have these big open areas on a PS2, and doubly so to have them on a 3DS with enemies dotting the landscape. That being said, the vast majority of the overworld is just bland treescapes, and until you get the sabercat around the halfway mark it is just painfully slow to scrape the map looking for treasures and rare monsters. It just feels like a strange halfstep between a traditional JRPG overworld and a modern interpretation of an open world, and there might be other games that take this type of setup and really make it work, but it just falls flat for me here.

Despite that gripe I still really love this game, and it's maybe the most "Dragon Quest" Dragon Quest game as it defined the series' aesthetic as it shifted to 3D. It looms large in my mind whenever I think about the franchise even though it's far from my favorite, and I think that just goes to show how special Dragon Quest is to me.

How could I rate this game?

After playing DQ11S:EoaEA(lol) a year or two ago I was floored. A game that I had initially written off had become one of my favorites of all time after my 100+ hours with it. I was swept up in not only a deep appreciation for how precisely crafted the whole game was, but also a sense of excitement for whatever came next. It's exhilarating to discover that, as I get older, there will always be opportunities for me have new experiences that deeply resonate with me (even if that experience is just a turbo long jrpg). So it became inevitable that I would be revisiting the DQ well again and again throughout my life.

As winter rolled around I felt the unshakable pull of the Nintendo 3ds tugging at my heartstrings. I thought that maybe it was too soon to be trying a new Dragon quest. I thought wrong. It was finally time to play Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King. So what did I think...?

It was pretty good!

The general whimsy and pacing that I love is perfect but there weren't a lot of standout moments for me. I like the party members but they all feel a bit too solitary. Other than character specific main story moments the gang doesn't speak to each other very often. Yangus and King Trode truly carry this game. I like everyone else but I loved both of them so much. I also really loved the relationship between Princess Medea and the hero. It was perfectly fairytail-esque and the way it played out was so cute.

The weird perverted stuff is obviously here and definitely detracts from the childlike fantasy vibe. I know that is a series staple, but if there was ever a DQ game that didn't lean in to the objectification of every woman in the party it would probably be my favorite game of all time.

Battle system was perfect as always. I really enjoyed the tension mechanic and how it let primary healers build up for a turn where they would otherwise have to waste it on something else. I messed around with the tactics menu a lot this time around and it is excellent. Nothing feels better than setting everyone to fight wisely and just relaxing as the party deals with less important fights for you.

Overall, I thought DQVIII was great! It's hard for me to fairly assess it because, flaws and all, playing a Dagon Quest game for an hour or two is one of my greatest comforts. How am I supposed to bottle that up in to some stars on this website? Leave me alone!

Dragon Quest 8 marked a large leap for the series in a lot of ways. Among those changes are doing away with the vocations of 6 & 7 in favor of learning spells via level like usual and introducing "skill trees" that are mostly tied to your weapon of preference. This restructures the many attack skills introduced in 6 & 7 into a more permanent and simplified form that also creates lots of replayability. The music is once again fantastic, the final boss theme being my favorite in the series to date. Party member dialogue was another major shift, moving from party chat being your main method of learning about your team to organic dialogue throughout story scenes to further flesh out your companions. Lastly, the overworld became vastly larger.

Now while all of these sound like major boons for the series, I can't say much of it wowed me the way it seemed to do for many others. I found the overworld far too big for its own good with a lot of wasted open space that makes travel an agonizing experience. Skill trees are fun but some are far stronger than others, and if you happen to realize too late that you don't like the pathway you picked, there's no fixing it or respec-ing without modding or restarting your entire save. Our cast has been given strong backstories that give you a reason to care and a good reason to join your journey, but I felt that as soon as they joined their character development stopped there and then. There's occasional banter and jokes that make for good laughs but outside of that, I felt this was one of the flattest groups in the series. An unfortunate downgrade from the joy I experienced getting to know the casts of 6 & 7.

Overall I had a good time and the improvements are objectively good for the series moving forward, but I'd be lying if I said this was the pinnacle of the series like it's often heralded to be. Oh, and the plot is kinda barebones on account of how much important lore is hidden away in random bookshelves that would've benefited greatly from being included more organically.

I'll say it right off the bat. This shits on DQXI. I don't care what you say. This game is proof that older games are still (and/or) better than newer ones. This story is so damn good and the cast I love all of them!
Psyche mechanic is so damn busted and it's super fun to destroy annoying bosses. (Seriously fuck any boss who spams disruptive wave, the single worst move in the franchise)
Also Hero x Medea 4 life (sorry, not sorry Jessica and her fans, she maybe great and all but it isn't right to deny Medea of her childhood friend and love)
Also also YANGUS IS BEST BOI!

Lo jugué por casualidad (nunca había jugado otro DQ) y me lleve una sorpresa gigante como es que un juego con sistema de combate que me pareció "simple" (pero no malo) me gustó tanto, y eso solo sería decir lo más superficial, el cast principal junto con su participación en la historia y su personalidad diferente (aquí excluyó a Red y Morrie porque son personajes aparte y agradezco que no hayan modificado mucho la historia para forzarlos ahí), las destrezas individuales de cada uno que los deja tener habilidades exclusivas que concuerdan con ellos, el mundo abierto a explorar y las formas en las que el juego te deja recorrerlo, los diseños de los monstruos, el sistema de alquimia, entre muchas otras cosas hicieron que fácilmente esté en mi top de RPGs favoritos y me deja con mucho hype para cuando juegue el XI.

A fun adventure but doesn't have any strong points. I felt that most of what this game attempts, other Dragon Quests pulled off better.

The game looks pretty great for the series first 3d entry, but the overworld looks like shit. Travelling massive, empty wastelands in between towns with virtually nothing worth exploring got tiring very fast.

Skill trees would be interesting if some weren't blatantly stronger than others. With no way to respec it's easy to get trapped into subpar skill sets. None of the skill trees are worthless but it'd be nice if there wasn't such a large disparity in usefulness between them.

The dungeons are mostly unique and memorable but a lot of them have really annoying puzzles that are easy to solve but tedious to navigate.

The final dungeon is great but randomly making me go on a fetch quest right before the final boss sucked all the hype out of it. Horrible note to end the game on.

It's fine. I've long wanted to play this one and after being a bit disappointed by 11 picked this up for 3DS a few years back.

The problem with VIII is that it introduced a lot of things that other JRPGs have refined and done many times better in recent years. There's no doubt it was influential with its bigger scope, overworld design, and voice acted characters, but now it feels a bit trite.

The thing now is that there's nothing really special about the story and little that's really endearing about the main cast other than Yangus and Trode's hijinks. Everything is very generic through a modern lens and yes I get that DQ rarely seeks to push boundaries but you definitely feel it with this one.

The combat is great especially the boss fights and there's nothing better than the rush after getting all that exp from metal king slime farming, but the overworld enemies are so boring and require very little strategy. It's very grindy in that sense. The overworld design generally is also pretty boring, with big fields full of almost nothing that take ages to roam. The dungeons are fine, but none of them really stood out to me.

The plot is also a little nonsensical and progression is based on many triggers that don't really seem logically connected. Unlocking the next story cutscene can require you to do some pretty unintuitive stuff such as visiting random NPCs in isolated towns you wouldn't really think to revisit.

I loved IX and the Monster's Joker series as a kid and maybe its just nostalgia speaking, but I feel like these 'bigger budget' DQ games focus on the wrong things. I don't play DQ for the story I play it for the combat and for min-maxing those RPG systems. When there's so much plot obfuscating the core gameplay loop of these games it gets old pretty quick.

I don't know if I enjoyed it more or less than XI really. On one hand it's more charming, I prefer the characters, and the music is great. On the other hand, 11 is objectively more polished, more put-together, and more combat-focused. Maybe I've outgrown DQ but I'm yet to find a game I enjoyed more than the DS era games.

My favorite Dragon Quest (and "classic" RPG) is V, but VIII is also really great.
I love Angelo, best character I've seen in a DQ game. The story is overall pretty solid, but I honestly think it's a bit forgettable.
I love how they adapted for the first time the art style in 3D (even though that was in the PS2 version). They did a good job with the soundtrack too, even though I think they removed some orchestral tracks from the original, which is a shame.
Had to grind a bit in order to beat the final boss, which kind of annoyed me but I might just suck at the game.

It's just an overall really important game for the (J)RPG genre, and if you want to get into that type of games, this alongside with V and XI are some of the best entries in the series you can start with.

A really great game but it had a lot of things working against it, but it was still an enjoyable experience.

The story was nothing new, but well executed, although I didn't feel the need for the secret Jessica ending as I found the Hero and Medea had a really nice friends-to-lover romance which had been introduced to the players from basically the start of the game. I found the other playable characters especially stale, Yangus was really the only one I cared about.

The overall gameplay was basically as Dragon Quest as can be. Although I was quite suprised how easy it was to level up, as someone who is used to grinding for a while before taking on a new boss, I kinda overleveled myself and it was fairly easy to beat the entire game at around level 40.

I absolutely HATE the way you equip items, why the hell is there even a an equipment window when you have to manually transfer all items from your bag??? Wish it looked more like the equipment screen from DQ9.

I liked the addition of Red and Morrie as playable characters, but they are way too busted. which isn't bad but it turned every fight into: get as much tension as possible (hope the enemy doesn't use disruptive wave), do your best attacks, profit. EXCEPT FOR...

Memories Lane, holy hell, I am glad the other bosses in this game weren't as difficult as these. Dhoulmagus was like the biggest, pray to Jesus fight ever. Literally made Estark, the actual final boss, look like childsplay. Talking about Estark, I'm glad he made a return. Apparently bonked his head or something. (fyi kasnooze, setup, attack...)

Enough whining, I still really enjoyed playing this game, it still is probably in my top 3 DQ games, there are a lot of QoL changes they could've made, Zoom costing 1MP? Equipment Screen functionality,... but it is definitely worth a playthrough, maybe even two!