Still not wanting to get off of the Dragon Quest train yet, after DQ3, I hopped right into DQ8~. I’ve technically played a little bit of this before, getting to a bit past the first boss in the English PS2 version over a decade ago, and while I enjoyed what I played, I never went back to it. I was determined to fix that this time, and finally saw DQ8 through to its conclusion. It took me about 70-ish hours to get the normal (non-post-game) in the Japanese version of the game on real hardware.
DQ8’s narrative is about you, the Hero (whose canon name is Eito), traveling with a strange little goblin and a bandit-looking fella in a horse-drawn cart. That bandit-looking fella is Yangus, an ex-bandit who has decided to follow you as part of your adventuring band out of respect, and that little goblin is the titular Cursed King, Torode of the English version’s subtitle, while the horse pulling the cart is the cursed princess of the Japanese versions’ subtitle. Toroden Castle was attacked and cursed by the evil mage Dhoulmagus, and you, as the only surviving member of the royal guard, are on a quest to defeat him and break the curse on your leige and the princess.
Writing-wise, I have very mixed feelings on DQ8. On the more positive side of things, this is easily one of the best presented narratives you’d seen in a game by 2004. The recently born Square Enix was really putting their money where their mouth is, and compared to contemporary Tales of or Atelier games, DQ8’s recreation of Akira Toriyama’s art style is incredibly impressive. While characters don’t have any VA in the original Japanese version, their facial expressions and gestures, when combined with the camera direction in cutscenes, tell a really impressive story nonetheless.
On the more negative side of things, there are the nittier grittier details of the writing and the themes that make me wonder if the game is like this through genuine intent, lack of ability, or just simple lack of time. The game’s first third or so has a lot of really impressive cutscenes and character beats as you pick up the other two members of your party, and it makes for a really strong first impression. However, after you get your fourth party member, what seems like a very character-focused story suddenly pivots back to the more familiar “adventure vignette” style that so many other DQ games (especially 7) use so well. This would be all fine and dandy (albeit a bit disappointing) if not for the game still occasionally wants to have bit character beats.
Near the game’s conclusion, it just suddenly decides to bring up larger political ideas from one of the minor antagonists (who is heavily tied to one of your main characters) that are very quickly discarded and never really addressed. The game then more or less doubles down on the notion that his (good) points don’t matter and are wrong in the post-game content (whose contents I looked up rather than played myself), and the whole game ends up with this weird vibe of being somewhere between glorification/apologia for royalty and the nobility of being status-quo warriors. For most of the game, I figured that the worst things I’d have to say about the writing were the very of-the-time sexism and the unevenness of the character writing/narrative pacing, but instead I was left with something that you need to kind of try and look past its themes to try and enjoy it. Were the character writing more complete and fleshed out beyond the first 20 or so hours (where most of the cutscenes are), perhaps this wouldn’t have been such a big issue, but as it is DQ8 is a very confused product narratively if you peer even a little beyond the surface level.
Dragon Quest as a series is generally pretty good at having stories about adventures that don’t try to say much with their larger themes. While DQ8 is mostly that, it also decidedly isn’t in a way that makes for a very uneven experience. It’s not something that will bother everyone, but it’s something that casts an unfortunate shadow across the whole experience for me. While it at least manages to end on a relatively strong beat, with how confused and messy (or, with a less charitable reading, outright bad) the themes are, it’s well below a lot of other JRPGs of the time for me. If I had to choose in terms of just narrative, I honestly prefer DQ7, if only because it’s such a better realized product than 8 is, and that’s to say nothing of contemporary games with much better realized character beats and themes like Tales of Rebirth or Atelier Iris. I certainly wouldn’t go as far as to say that DQ8’s writing or story are outright bad, but I definitely cannot deny just how disappointed the whole experience left me.
Mechanically, at least, DQ8 manages to be a very significant improvement over DQ7 in just about every way. The basic mechanics are still very DQ (spells, weapon types, items, that sort of thing), but the big change from DQ7 (and by extension 6) is that we are rid of the incredibly grindy job system! In its place is a much better executed skill system, where each of your four characters has five skills that gain levels as you put skill points into them with each level up. Each character has four weapon specializations and one character skill, with each weapon skill giving more power and moves to use when using that weapon, and the character skills giving anything from new spells, to new moves, to even special passives you’ll always have.
This system isn’t perfect, mind you. The total inability to redistribute these skill points is a pretty damn mean choice, as even though you can technically max out all 5 by the time you hit level 100, you’ll also most likely be beating the game around level 42 or so like I did, so if you mess up and try to do a “jack of all trades” build not realizing that that’s terrible, there’s no way other than a LOT of grinding to get yourself out of that hole. DQ8’s difficulty curve is kinda all over the place (it peaks around the time you get the boat, at which point I had to do like 8 or 9 hours of grinding to get to a level where I could survive going forward), and the final boss was definitely one of the easier DQ final bosses I’ve fought, but on the whole I’d say this is certainly one of the harder DQ games I’ve played, so play sub-optimally at your own risk. My main piece of advice is to pick one weapon skill and then your character skill, and then max them out before starting to max another weapon, because it’ll make life a LOT easier.
The presentation, as mentioned earlier, is really stellar. The cell-shaded graphics and camerawork do an incredible job of bringing Toriyama’s art style to life in 3D, and it still looks great even through composite cables on a PS2, as far as I’m concerned (which is more than you can say about a lot of other 3D PS2 games, I’m sure I don’t need to tell you). The music in the Japanese version isn’t the orchestral version, but I still liked it a lot, as it’s that familiar Dragon Quest-y goodness that makes the other games so nice to listen to as well~. The game has some performance issues in some areas and even some boss fights, with the framerate very visibly struggling to keep up with the action, but this being a turn-based JRPG, that doesn’t really affect gameplay at least.
The last thing I’ll mention about the Japanese version being different from the English version is the UI, which is very different. Rather than the very stylized and picture-heavy English UI, it’s a UI much more evocative and familiar to what prior DQ games used. It felt like no change at all going from DQ7 to DQ3 to this, which I didn’t mind. Honestly, I like how simple and streamlined the Japanese UI is, but that’s something more down to taste than one being outright better than the other or anything.
Verdict: Recommended. Wonky difficult balance and sloppy writing aside, I did still quite enjoy my time with DQ8. The grinding goes quickly enough that it makes the weird difficulty curve not so bad, and the strength of the presentation does a lot to make the inadequacies of the writing in the places where the themes aren’t in turmoil. I would never say it’s my favorite DQ game, and it’s far from my favorite JRPG on the PS2, but DQ8 is still a good game that a fan of DQ or JRPGs will likely have quite a good time with. The 3DS port also adds some very nice quality of life features like sped up battles, enemies visible on the map, and making alchemy instant (because good god does it take an unforgivable amount of time in this version), and if you’re thinking of playing DQ8, that’s probably the version to play.
DQ8’s narrative is about you, the Hero (whose canon name is Eito), traveling with a strange little goblin and a bandit-looking fella in a horse-drawn cart. That bandit-looking fella is Yangus, an ex-bandit who has decided to follow you as part of your adventuring band out of respect, and that little goblin is the titular Cursed King, Torode of the English version’s subtitle, while the horse pulling the cart is the cursed princess of the Japanese versions’ subtitle. Toroden Castle was attacked and cursed by the evil mage Dhoulmagus, and you, as the only surviving member of the royal guard, are on a quest to defeat him and break the curse on your leige and the princess.
Writing-wise, I have very mixed feelings on DQ8. On the more positive side of things, this is easily one of the best presented narratives you’d seen in a game by 2004. The recently born Square Enix was really putting their money where their mouth is, and compared to contemporary Tales of or Atelier games, DQ8’s recreation of Akira Toriyama’s art style is incredibly impressive. While characters don’t have any VA in the original Japanese version, their facial expressions and gestures, when combined with the camera direction in cutscenes, tell a really impressive story nonetheless.
On the more negative side of things, there are the nittier grittier details of the writing and the themes that make me wonder if the game is like this through genuine intent, lack of ability, or just simple lack of time. The game’s first third or so has a lot of really impressive cutscenes and character beats as you pick up the other two members of your party, and it makes for a really strong first impression. However, after you get your fourth party member, what seems like a very character-focused story suddenly pivots back to the more familiar “adventure vignette” style that so many other DQ games (especially 7) use so well. This would be all fine and dandy (albeit a bit disappointing) if not for the game still occasionally wants to have bit character beats.
Near the game’s conclusion, it just suddenly decides to bring up larger political ideas from one of the minor antagonists (who is heavily tied to one of your main characters) that are very quickly discarded and never really addressed. The game then more or less doubles down on the notion that his (good) points don’t matter and are wrong in the post-game content (whose contents I looked up rather than played myself), and the whole game ends up with this weird vibe of being somewhere between glorification/apologia for royalty and the nobility of being status-quo warriors. For most of the game, I figured that the worst things I’d have to say about the writing were the very of-the-time sexism and the unevenness of the character writing/narrative pacing, but instead I was left with something that you need to kind of try and look past its themes to try and enjoy it. Were the character writing more complete and fleshed out beyond the first 20 or so hours (where most of the cutscenes are), perhaps this wouldn’t have been such a big issue, but as it is DQ8 is a very confused product narratively if you peer even a little beyond the surface level.
Dragon Quest as a series is generally pretty good at having stories about adventures that don’t try to say much with their larger themes. While DQ8 is mostly that, it also decidedly isn’t in a way that makes for a very uneven experience. It’s not something that will bother everyone, but it’s something that casts an unfortunate shadow across the whole experience for me. While it at least manages to end on a relatively strong beat, with how confused and messy (or, with a less charitable reading, outright bad) the themes are, it’s well below a lot of other JRPGs of the time for me. If I had to choose in terms of just narrative, I honestly prefer DQ7, if only because it’s such a better realized product than 8 is, and that’s to say nothing of contemporary games with much better realized character beats and themes like Tales of Rebirth or Atelier Iris. I certainly wouldn’t go as far as to say that DQ8’s writing or story are outright bad, but I definitely cannot deny just how disappointed the whole experience left me.
Mechanically, at least, DQ8 manages to be a very significant improvement over DQ7 in just about every way. The basic mechanics are still very DQ (spells, weapon types, items, that sort of thing), but the big change from DQ7 (and by extension 6) is that we are rid of the incredibly grindy job system! In its place is a much better executed skill system, where each of your four characters has five skills that gain levels as you put skill points into them with each level up. Each character has four weapon specializations and one character skill, with each weapon skill giving more power and moves to use when using that weapon, and the character skills giving anything from new spells, to new moves, to even special passives you’ll always have.
This system isn’t perfect, mind you. The total inability to redistribute these skill points is a pretty damn mean choice, as even though you can technically max out all 5 by the time you hit level 100, you’ll also most likely be beating the game around level 42 or so like I did, so if you mess up and try to do a “jack of all trades” build not realizing that that’s terrible, there’s no way other than a LOT of grinding to get yourself out of that hole. DQ8’s difficulty curve is kinda all over the place (it peaks around the time you get the boat, at which point I had to do like 8 or 9 hours of grinding to get to a level where I could survive going forward), and the final boss was definitely one of the easier DQ final bosses I’ve fought, but on the whole I’d say this is certainly one of the harder DQ games I’ve played, so play sub-optimally at your own risk. My main piece of advice is to pick one weapon skill and then your character skill, and then max them out before starting to max another weapon, because it’ll make life a LOT easier.
The presentation, as mentioned earlier, is really stellar. The cell-shaded graphics and camerawork do an incredible job of bringing Toriyama’s art style to life in 3D, and it still looks great even through composite cables on a PS2, as far as I’m concerned (which is more than you can say about a lot of other 3D PS2 games, I’m sure I don’t need to tell you). The music in the Japanese version isn’t the orchestral version, but I still liked it a lot, as it’s that familiar Dragon Quest-y goodness that makes the other games so nice to listen to as well~. The game has some performance issues in some areas and even some boss fights, with the framerate very visibly struggling to keep up with the action, but this being a turn-based JRPG, that doesn’t really affect gameplay at least.
The last thing I’ll mention about the Japanese version being different from the English version is the UI, which is very different. Rather than the very stylized and picture-heavy English UI, it’s a UI much more evocative and familiar to what prior DQ games used. It felt like no change at all going from DQ7 to DQ3 to this, which I didn’t mind. Honestly, I like how simple and streamlined the Japanese UI is, but that’s something more down to taste than one being outright better than the other or anything.
Verdict: Recommended. Wonky difficult balance and sloppy writing aside, I did still quite enjoy my time with DQ8. The grinding goes quickly enough that it makes the weird difficulty curve not so bad, and the strength of the presentation does a lot to make the inadequacies of the writing in the places where the themes aren’t in turmoil. I would never say it’s my favorite DQ game, and it’s far from my favorite JRPG on the PS2, but DQ8 is still a good game that a fan of DQ or JRPGs will likely have quite a good time with. The 3DS port also adds some very nice quality of life features like sped up battles, enemies visible on the map, and making alchemy instant (because good god does it take an unforgivable amount of time in this version), and if you’re thinking of playing DQ8, that’s probably the version to play.