Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King (3DS) Review - The definitive version to play?

A motley crew ready to slay some goo! [Square Enix ©, Image Source: Humble Bundle]

As any of my previous experience with writing has proved, it’s actually a lot harder to write about something in a review format when you absolutely love the product (Hence why I’m slowly putting off my Astro Bot: Rescue Mission review). I’ve probably just massively given away my opinions on Dragon Quest 8 already with that opener, but bear with me for a moment while I try to gather up everything I have to say on this game because not all of it is great. Full disclosure, I haven’t played the original PS2 version to completion so when I talk about the original version, these opinions are founded on the things I have read online by those who have played it far more than I have. Also to preface things before we go on, I started playing this game on a more casual basis earlier in the year and only sat down to commit to finishing it in the last month.

I suppose the first thing I should mention is how it was relatively easy to carry on after such a long hiatus! Many an RPG player can tell you how often times when you leave in the middle of a game such as this, you can’t quite catch back up to where you were when you return or at least not as easily. But it’s something of a testament to the game, its storytelling and the characters involved that I remembered almost exactly what I was doing the last time I played (the break was only to play other things that released).

I thoroughly loved the story of this game, even if I thought as numerous times the game was going to end a good 10-20 hours before it did. For instance defeating Dhoulmagus seemed very END worthy I thought until things carried on. Then after kicking Marcello’s ass I thought we were winding down pretty soon. Nope. Again though, not really a complaint more of a commentary on how and when we usually expect a decent story to end, but Dragon Quest 8 decided it wanted to tell a much more grandiose and in depth story and I was fully along for the ride. When the story eventually did wrap up, I was very satisfied with how it all came together. Upon further research I found out about the other endings the game held including two that could only be accessed after completing a section of the post-game. After doing so and experiencing one of these ending, I have to say that I easily prefer the original ending the game came with for the sheer excitement and sense of adventure that it gave that resonated with the rest of the game. Not to say that the other endings (let’s call them the “Ring” endings to avoid spoilers) where bad, but compared to the original endings, the “Ring” endings changed a major element of the story’s end but didn’t give them enough of a payoff afterwards. In fact, one of the “Ring” endings that I looked up on YouTube had a better payoff than the other which annoyed me most as I never would have thought the story to end that way; apart from one instance in the game that is entirely miss able nothing else leads you to think the story could go that way.

But I digress, let’s move onto the gameplay itself. Apparently the gameplay mechanics are similar among other Dragon Quest games so if you’ve played another game in the main series then you shouldn’t have any issues. I however was a newcomer to the mainline titles, having only completed the spin-offs Dragon Quest Builders (Fantastic game) and Dragon Quest Heroes (Shit game), it was very jarring for me when I went into battle for the first time after stocking up on healing items to find that those items were in my ‘Bag’ and not on my character. So I quickly learned that Dragon Quest ascribes to the old school style of RPG where you need to organise a characters items individually whether that’s equipment or usable items. This way of playing is likely to be difficult to understand if you’re new to RPGs, but anyone who has played a few RPGs before will get used to it pretty easily. Once you get a good few levels under your belt and invest the skill points in the right areas, healing items will become less and less useful as you’ll get healing spells that don’t cost that much MP (Magic Points) to use.

The main party consists of four characters; the Hero, Yangus, Jessica and Angelo. Each filling in a sort of classic RPG roles like Warrior, Tank, Black Mage and White Mage respectively. Your player character will get a good mix of both physical and magical skills so you can play them however you wish. Yangus has next to no magic abilities, his strengths lie with his attack skills but he can learn one ability that can be a real life saver (no pun intended) whereby he’ll “sacrifice” himself in order to revive the rest of the party if they’re downed. I say “sacrifice” because the moment you do that and he dies, you can simply order Angelo to revive him next turn, the only caveat as he’ll have no MP left to use magic or skills. Moving on to Jessica, she is the dedicated magic user, she can use physical attacks too but they do practically no damage. Her speciality is her magic which she uses mostly as an offensive attack but has some useful buffing magic. If you level up her… “Sex Appeal”, she’ll gain a passive ability that has the chance to stop monsters from using a turn as they become… *cough*enthralled by her “fine form” (This game is Japanese don’t forget). And lastly is Angelo, who for my run at least was my primary healer/buffer character. He has several useful physical skills but as I focused my Hero and Yangus on their strength, he became the guy who’d heal, revive and buff stats throughout the battle.

All in all, a good balance of playable characters I thought and how the game originally released back on the PS2. However the 3DS remaster boasts two additional party members; one that is gained through the story and another that you have to earn through a Pokémon style monster arena. The former is Red; those who’ve played before will know Red as the female bandit character you encounter near Pickham. You’ll encounter her again in Pirate’s Cove later in the game and in this version she will decide to join your party on your journey. The other character is Morrie, the red and green curator and champion of the Monster Arena also found near Pickham. He isn’t so easily gained however as you have to complete his monster arena challenges all the way to S rank where you’ll face Morrie in the final fight. Defeat him and he’ll also accompany you on your adventure. Now, you may notice that except for the finale, they won’t have much of an impact on the story and even then they only make brief appearances during the stories close. Other players online have expressed that they use the two new characters in place of Jessica and Angelo for their playthroughs however, I didn’t use them apart from visiting a grinding spot; not to say that the characters were bad or unusable, just that I had grown so accustomed to the original team and devised a strategy that worked well for me even through to the final encounter. My point here is that the new additions are well received in a general sense but I personally didn’t experience it.

I’ll mention briefly the post-game stuff. After beating the story you’ll unlock a new area and an additional bit of story in order to unlock the “Ring” endings mentioned earlier. The Dragovian trials, as the sequence is called, can range from being very short or very long depending on how much you wish to invest into it. Myself, I only up until the story part ended and the trial part began. From what I can gather, the only reason to carry on after this is to simply keep beating harder and harder bosses, which is fine if you’re into that kind of grind but I took what I had and ran with it.

So I need to wrap things up. Honestly, if the old RPG mood takes you and you want something with a good level of challenge and a good story, you could do worse than to check out Dragon Quest 8. It’s an older title now but with the 3DS port, it’s never been easier to play it whenever you want to. The new additions from the PS2 version are only really noticeable when they’re pointed out otherwise you might miss them. Regardless of that, it’s a good way to spend 60 hours and speaking as someone who used this as their introduction to the main series, I will definitely be visiting more titles in the Dragon Quest series. You might feel the same after finishing this game.