DragonQuest VIII is an RPG (role-playing game) for the Playstation 2, and was published by Square Enix, who published all of the Final Fantasy games. In this game, the player controls a party of four that starts out as two, at the start of the game.
The storyline is well-written but it seems similar to other storylines in different traditional RPGS. The story begins with King Trode and his daughter Princess Medea. King Trode was turned into a monster and Medea has been turned into a horse by an evil jester named Dhoulmagus; the Hero (named by the player) however, doesn’t get affected by the evil magic of Dhoulmagus for some unexplained reason.
The player’s party consists of the Hero, Yangus an ex-bandit, Jessica a mage seeking vengeance for her deceased brother, and Angelo a templar also seeking vengeance for his deceased abbot.
The point of the game is to basically find Dhoulmagus to return the king and his daughter back to their original forms.
The gameplay is not like final fantasy with limit breaks, or the active time battle system. Dragonquest VIII is one of the only Playstation 2 games that uses the old traditional turn-based system that can be found in earlier Dragon Warrior games for the NES (Nintendo Entertainment System), as well as the earliest Final Fantasy game.
The turn-based system is just as the name suggest. The player chooses the commands for his party and then each character takes a turn to attack; when all the attacks are executed, the process repeats.
Another thing that makes this game interesting is the voice acting that perfectly matches each character in terms of how they sound.
The game uses cel-shading graphics, which is the same kind of graphics that are used in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. In other words, the graphics were splendid, especially for being on Playstation 2.
One thing that can be tedious in the game is traveling to new locations on the world map; it takes forever to walk to those locations and the random enemy encounters make the process of traveling even more tedious.
Another flaw in the game is when the player’s party loses a battle, it has to go back to the last church that the player saved their game at, which can prove to be annoying; if the player loses against a boss in a dungeon as dungeons in the game are tedious to get through.
Some bosses can prove to be difficult forcing the player to train their party on weaker monsters which can take forever if the monsters are too weak and give little to no experience points.
The music in the game is essentially the same tracks that were used for the original NES Dragon Warrior games except the creators enhanced the tracks to make the game more interesting.
Although the game can be tedious at times, overall this game has a wonderful battle system, awesome music, good graphics, and an epic storyline. Dragonquest VIII deserves a nine out of ten.