Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King

2004

role-playing (rpg)
strategy
adventure
action
fantasy
single player

The story

Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King is the eighth installment in the Dragon Quest series, developed by Level-5 and published by Square Enix for the PlayStation 2 video game console. It was also later released for the Nintendo 3DS in 2015. It is a traditional Japanese-style role-playing game with random enemy encounters, simple turn-based combat mechanics, and management of a party consisting of four characters, each belonging to a clearly defined class. Unlike its predecessors in the series and most Japanese RPGs in general, the game features a continuous world with fairly vast landscapes and integrated towns and dungeons, as opposed to world map traveling and locations represented by icons. The game features full camera rotation and optional first-person view. Like in the previous Dragon Quest games, many objects can be interacted with; for example, barrels can be physically lifted, carried, and broken, to reveal items hidden within.

What it’s like

Cel-shaded countryside rendered in saturated, painterly colour, with sunlit meadows, dappled forest paths and sweeping vistas that roll out as the camera swings freely around a continuous overworld. Its sound is a bright orchestral score of cheerful brass and gentle strings, broken up by the chime of random encounters and the satisfying crack of a smashed barrel. Blending anime-style character design with a warm, storybook sense of wonder, it has a light, adventurous feel that suits a lazy weekend afternoon, a long train ride, or a comfort replay. The pace is unhurried: long walks between towns, a good deal of grinding, and small detours to chase hidden items, all punctuated by turn-based battles that are easy to settle into. A roguish young hero, a fiercely loyal princess, a proud horseman and a fun-loving bandit traveling together, with their friendships deepening through quiet, humorous moments. Violence is cartoonish and bloodless, with monsters defeated in puffs of light and a few darker creatures and an undead curse adding only mild menace. It suits players who want an gentle, cosy quest with plenty to explore, and fans of classic Japanese role-playing who enjoy a long, low-stakes journey.

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