Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King
December 2,2005 - For a long, long time, the Dragon Warrior series has been a mainstay in Japan.  In fact, despite what many people believe, Final Fantasy VII is not the best selling game over there on the PlayStation, it’s actually Dragon Warrior VII–which is also one of the few that made it over here. The RPG market is pretty crowded on the PS2, and very few games have managed to push aside the lot and make a niche for themselves in its five year life span.  Square-Enix believes that now, more than ever, they can carve that niche for their Dragon Quest (Warrior) series.  Given the quality of the gameplay, presentation, and overall charm of the eighth game in the series, we’re pretty certain that with this game, they’re going to be able to do just that.

A Wizard named Dhoulmagus (don’t ask) has stolen a special scepter and then cast a curse on the Kingdom it was from and thus changed the King into a toad.  You play the game as a guard named Eight who is going to become the hero of this enchanted Kingdom.  You, the King, and a rotund axe-wielding fellow named Yangus set out on the trail of Dhoulmagus to save the day.  Unfortunately, if you couldn’t already tell by the synopsis, the story in and of itself isn’t all that great.  Don’t expect some epic Hollywood-styled glorified quest that you’d find in a Final Fantasy game.  This game is a classic-styled RPG.  Imagine if Final Fantasy never took the jump from VI to VII in 1997, that’s what you would have here.  Dragon Quest VII: Journey of the Cursed King is one of the best throwback RPGs to come out in many years.

The combat in the game is pretty straight forward, just as you’d expect from a game like this.  The one thing that you’ll want to know before charging into this game is that it’s for more experienced role-playing gamers of this nature.  It’s a tough game, in fact, many of the random encounters you’ll face are going to be more challenging than the majority of the bosses you’ve faced in other games.  This is one of the hardest RPGs in years.  To put it into perspective, if you handled Xenogears okay, then you’ll be fine here, otherwise you may want to rent it first to test the waters because it certainly can be a little overwhelming to newcomers.  Each character you have in Dragon Quest VIII has their specific purpose and their own style of combat.  You’ll come to learn their strengths and weaknesses very fast, considering there are so few main characters.  You’ll meet up with Jessica, the magic user, and Angelo, the Knight, pretty quick on your adventure.  So coupled with Eight and Yangus, you should be able to get through the battles for the most part as long as you know their strengths and weaknesses.

To be honest, the combat isn’t really all that impressive.  As said before, Dragon Quest VIII is a really archaic RPG that reminds you this is the way a current generation RPG would play if Final Fantasy VII never came out–which is pretty cool.  The one problem that comes because of this is that Dragon Quest feels limited in comparison to a gaggle of RPGs already on the PS2.  In the essence of core combat, it doesn’t feel nearly as fleshed out as it could have been.  And even though it’s archaic it still seems like they could have added some depth to the combat without sacrificing that old-school style.  There’s the basic melee attacks, the magic attacks, the spells, and all the rest of the attacks that you’ve come to know and love in every other RPG ever made.  Thankfully, though, the style that it’s all presented in is done very well.

Like many other RPGs before it, there are abilities that you will learn throughout your journey.  You’ll gain ability points by fighting monsters throughout the game and then you spend them at your leisure when you want to learn a new move.  It is important to constantly be one step ahead of the enemies in terms of difficulty or else you will get trounced in boss fights and even random encounters.  You can spend points on weapon-based skills as well, this will keep you more powerful than your foes, too.  One skill that is more interesting than not is Jessica’s “sex appeal.”  This will make her able to charm the foes and they won’t even bother attacking, they’ll just gaze at her while your other characters pummel them into oblivion.

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