In Dragon Quest VIII, each character can dump skill points into five different categories that are unique to the character-putting points into weapons or unarmed combat can earn you stat boosts, and characters also have more wide-ranging categories like “Courage” or “Humanity” that confer a range of bonuses and abilities. In both of those previous games, any character could master any job and learn any skill, even if some characters had base stats that were better suited for some jobs than for others. The class systems of Dragon Quest VI and VII are also gone, replaced by a skill point system that feels less flexible but also makes characters feel more distinct from one another.
#DRAGON QUEST VIII MAP PS2#
Voice acting in the PS2 era could be hit-or-miss (the cringeworthy Final Fantasy X is infamously awkward), but the main cast here is pretty good even if NPCs and monsters are still spotty.įurther Reading Review: Dragon Quest VII is for people who already love Dragon Quest Yangus, the reformed bandit with a heart of gold, and Jessica, the magic-using heiress with comically gratuitous fashion sense, are both franchise highlights, and the voice acting makes them all the more endearing. The paint-by-numbers story is made more entertaining by a fun and memorable cast of characters. With your king and his daughter-transformed into a Yoda-esque monster and a horse, respectively-in tow, you follow the jester from town to town, make new friends who join your party, and take him down, avenging your personal vendetta and saving the world in the process. You’re a bandana-wearing, silent male protagonist who used to be a guard at a castle until an evil jester rolled in, stole a magical staff, and wrecked up the place. The story is standard fare, with none of the inventive flair of some of the series’ earlier entries. But it’s still a great take on the traditional JRPG If you’ve ever heard the orchestrated versions, it’s hard to go back to the imitation version.
But most damagingly, the game’s lovely orchestrated score, which elevated all of the game’s tracks and was originally introduced specifically for the North American PS2 release, has been replaced with a collection of regular ol’ MIDIs. That nice graphical menu from the PS2 version is also gone, replaced by Dragon Quest’s familiar-but-archaic white-on-black text menus-this would’ve been an easy fit for the touch screen, which is used almost exclusively to provide party information during battles and maps when you’re running around in the world. A side-by-side comparison also shows how some colors have been changed and brightened and how a little detail has been lost on character models, though these things are less noticeable on the 3DS’ screen (worth noting: there don’t appear to be any graphical differences between gameplay on the standard 3DS and the New Nintendo 3DS, though the latter’s right analog nub can be used to control the camera if you’re playing on that system). It’s not a bad-looking game given the system that it’s on, but aliasing, pop-in, and low-res textures (especially on distant objects) are all easily noticeable. But the 3DS version looks the same or slightly worse aside from being rejiggered to fit on the 3DS’ screen.
#DRAGON QUEST VIII MAP PS3#
It's a game that cries out for the HD remaster treatment, maybe something along the lines of what Final Fantasy X and X-2 got on the PS3 and PS4. The original Dragon Quest VII was ugly even for a PlayStation game Dragon Quest VIII remains one of the most visually impressive things on the PlayStation 2.
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While turn-based random encounters and exploration remained, the game introduced a sprawling open world, full 3D character models and monsters, a revamped graphical menu, and (in the US) a fully orchestrated score along with voice acting for cutscenes.
To date, the PS2 version of Dragon Quest VIII is still probably the most presentationally pleasing installment of the historically antiquated series.
The end result is a game that holds together better than Dragon Quest VII overall but falls somewhat short of being a definitive version of Dragon Quest VIII. Rather than being a ground-up redesign of the game as Dragon Quest VII was, VIII is more or less a straight port of the PS2 original with a few changes stacked on top. The 3DS version of Dragon Quest VIII, released in the US today, is different. Square Enix used the extra power to give all the games a shiny new coat of paint in addition to the streamlined gameplay and new content. Up until now, all of those remakes have been upgrades from the originals-the DS was more powerful than the NES and the SNES, and the 3DS is more powerful than the original PlayStation. Square Enix has been re-releasing Dragon Quest games on the DS and 3DS for a decade now, if you can believe it-beginning with 2007’s Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen, the developer has released five remade mainline DQ games for Nintendo’s dual-screened handhelds (plus Dragon Quest IX, a new title first released on the DS).
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