"If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Wise words, and ones that the Dragon Quest series has done well to follow--until now. The latest installment of the most popular RPG series in Japan has made many changes from its old tried-and-true formula; many for the better, but more for the worse. Many formerly great RPG titles have fallen by the wayside in the "graphics revolution," sacrificing their substance for style, and unfortunately with this installment, Dragon Quest has joined them.
The most noticeable change is that of the graphical quality. While old Dragon Quest games have never been ugly, they've never sported top-of-the-line graphics, preferring to use simpler graphics to preserve the series' consistent atmosphere. In DQ8, the graphics are nothing short of spectacular, but in such a way that they don't sacrifice the atmosphere either. I've always been wary of 2D-sprites-to-3D-models transitions, especially since it's difficult to translate the artistic quality of 2D drawings to a 3D model. But the team behind DQ8 managed to pull it off masterfully. By using cell-shading techniques, all of the characters and monsters retain their same style while suffering little, a small handful of models notwithstanding. In fact, in many ways it's an improvement as now all the party members and townspeople look like their actual character designs rather than simple sprites. The character designs are also very well done in the game; DQ7's characters were somewhat ugly in my opinion, but character designer Toriyama Akira did a very good job this time around. (and is improving as an artist as well--in the past he seemed to be unable to draw that many types of people beyond a small range, but none of his characters this time around look like "clones" of his older characters) The combat animations are also more detailed; while the combat system on a fundamental level hasn't changed much, they're not strictly from a 1st-person view the whole time, and the animation of the various characters attacking is very smooth; it really looks like you're watching hand-drawn animation rather than 3D models overall. In addition, the artistic quality of the game world itself is fantastic; the environment is crafted with intricate detail, from deep forests to steep mountains to blistering deserts, you really get a great sense of your surroundings.
In the sound department, the game is a mixed bag. The score is excellent, but for some bizarre reason they decided to use synthesized music rather than the orchestra I hear they used for the Dragon Quest 5 remake. (Granted, it's excellent synthesized music, and in many cases almost sounds like real instruments) Why they chose this route baffles me, as composer Sugiyama Koichi sounds best on an orchestra. Needless to say, it still sounds great, especially the "cavern" and "tower" tracks.
Story-wise, the game is nothing to write home about, but then the Dragon Quest storylines never have been. The game follows the same sort of story pattern as previous games, with an over-arching main story and then little "vignettes," mini self-contained episodes within the story. The overarching story is that you're a soldier in the employ of the cursed king Torode, who was turned into a monster, and his daughter into a horse; you're chasing the person that cursed him around the world to defeat him and break the curse, all the while trying to stop his killing spree. Overall, the main story is weaker than previous DQ fare; while previous DQ games have had generic plots, DQ8's suffers not only from being generic but overly cliched and woefully predictable. However, a lot of the individual vignettes are well-done, so this makes up for things somewhat.
In the gameplay department, DQ8 falls flat on its face. It's in this area that the developers really dropped the ball. Gameplay-wise, DQ8 is a gigantic step back in comparison with its predecessors; in fact I would say you would have to go all the way back to Dragon Quest 2 to find a game in the series with less gameplay value. (and if you are measuring gameplay value for its time, DQ8 is the worst in the series) There are just so many things wrong with the gameplay that it's hard to list them all.
The most glaring flaw in DQ8 is its awful Skill system, which replaces the Job system used in Dragon Quest 6 and 7. The system for learning new abilities has been less gutted, and more like eviscerated. Of the 200+ skills and spells available for use in DQ7, over 120 have been axed for DQ8. While one could argue that too many of the skills in DQ7 were redundant and needed streamlining, that problem still isn't be solved as there is still a whole lot of skill redundancy in DQ8; in some cases it's even worse. (For example, there are 4 skills that have the same effect of the "Majin-Giri" skill from DQ6 and 7) Rather than eliminate the redundancy, they've simply eliminated the variety. Furthermore, they opted to include some of the less useful skills (like "Flame Slash") while omitting many of the more useful ones. (Freezing Wave, Meditate, Nio's Stand, etc) What new skills they've introduced are also for the most part pretty boring. The overwhelming majority of them are just attack skills that differ only in damage, number of targets, or bonus effects; (ie "put enemy to sleep," "stun enemy," etc) the wealth of support and miscellaneous skills that made the past few DQ games unique have been simply removed.
The way the Skill system works is as follows: Rather than have your characters take on specific jobs, they gain a handful of Skill points when they level up, which can be divided among one of four weapon skills or a fifth, non-weapon-based skill. (the five skills available differ for each character) Each skill can go to 100, and has 10 "tiers" where you can each learn a new skill. (either a new Ability or a bonus like "+5 attack points when equipping weapon type X") There are several glaring problems with this setup. To start with, the rate at which your skills raise is incredibly slow, even if you decide to concentrate all your skill points in one or two skills. Second, there's an enforced skill cap, such that the game will not allow your skills to go past a certain value based on your character's level. This means you can't max any skills until you're at level 38, (which is too bad as with a couple of exceptions, the 100-level skills are the only ones that are truly useful) but it also forces you to spend skill points in areas you don't necessarily want to, if you're concentrating on one or two skills. Also, skills are weapon-specific; for example if you're not equipping a spear you can't use the "Gale Stab" skill. This means you always have to carry multiple weapons to swap in the middle of battle if you learn more than one type of skill, which is cumbersome. But what's worse is that it makes the "Martial Arts" set of skills (which everyone has, I might add) worthless; you can't use any of them unless you're not equipping a weapon, and your attack power without a weapon is so low that you'll do less damage with high-level martial arts skills than normal attacks with a weapon you have 0 skill in. All in all, the Skill system is geared so that no matter what you do, you'll be more or less stuck using the same handful of semi-useful skills for the entire game, which is very boring.
The second biggest problem in the game is the difficulty level. Dragon Quest games have generally been known for their strategic battles; you have to fight smarter, not harder. Level building rarely got you anywhere; you had to use your skills and spells wisely to win. Not in DQ8, though; it's ridiculously easy for a DQ game. In fact it's the only DQ game in recent years where the typical "Attack, Attack, Heal, Repeat" strategy actually works. Of course, with so many of the support skills from DQ6/7 removed, there isn't a whole lot of room for the creative strategies you could use in earlier games in the first place. Buff spells are a nicety but not a necessity. (and if you do use them, the battles become so pathetically easy it's not even funny) I guess if you don't like your games to put up much of a fight this can be seen as a positive thing, but I found it annoying. This is the first DQ game I've ever made it through without having my party get unceremoniously squashed at least once.
Another flaw in the gameplay system is the Tension system. It's a new introduction to the series, whereby you can have a character "pass" his or her turn in battle to gather their strength and "increase" their Tension so that the next attack does more damage, much like the "Kiai Gather" skill of DQ6 and 7. However, the implementation makes it so that increasing your Tension is not worth it. For example, if you increase your Tension once and attack, you'll do less damage than if you just attacked twice. In order to get a return on your Tension investment, you have to increase your Tension at least three times before acting; this not only takes your character out of the battle for three turns when they could be acting, but the enemies can disrupt your Tension-gathering efforts so easily that you're usually just better off not bothering. The one saving grace to this system is that it works not just for direct attacks but for spells as well, so it can be of some use.
The world design, while aesthetically pleasing, is also not conducive to gameplay. Huge worlds are a good thing generally, but only if the world is populated with places worth exploring; this is not the case in DQ8, where you just get huge stretches of wilderness devoid of anything of note. This just artificially increases playtime by requiring a lot of pointless legwork running from one place to the other. (and since the encounter rate is very high, that boosts playtime too) Running through monster-infested wilderness for 15 minutes just to get to a treasure chest with 900 gold in it is not worth it. Mercifully, later in the game you get a mount to speed up your travel time, but it's too little, too late.
However, the gameplay isn't all bad; there are occasional moments of inspiration amongst the flaws. The dungeon design is generally quite good, with interesting, if simple, puzzles to solve. In addition, some of the quests are well-done; one particularly stands out where you have to find a specific type of enemy in a random battle and exploit one of its attacks to recharge a magic item needed to further the plot. Also, the "Alchemy Jar" system, whereby you can fuse two or three items to create a new one, is very cool. It's slightly irritating that it takes so long for a single recipe to "finish," but I can understand why the developers had to do this; otherwise it could be too easily abused as a money pump. There's also a "Monster Battle Road" system whereby you can subdue certain unique monsters and get them to fight for you in an arena. And of course, there are two Casinos there for you to play games and win prizes. One great addition is the option to "scare" enemies as well; when getting into a fight with substantially weaker monsters, you can scare them away and they'll sometimes drop treasure in their efforts to escape. This is a great alternative to having to run from weak enemies you don't want to be bothered fighting. There's also a neat "Battle Record" option where you can get an overall picture of what you've done in the game so far; how many battles you've fought, items you've found, enemies you've killed etc. (Though I strenuously object to the snotty comments King Torode makes on that screen if you take your time and don't rush through the game--that's just annoying; not everyone goes for speed runs.) And it's also nice that the traditional "bonus dungeon" you get access to after finishing the game actually contributes to the plot of the game, rather than just being artificially tacked on the way it was in DQ5, 6, and 7.
Overall, I think that Dragon Quest 8 falls into the same pitfalls that a lot of "modern" RPGs have; spending so much money/time on the presentation of the game that the rest falls by the wayside. I suspect that the primary reason for gutting the Skill/Job system was that it would be too time-consuming and/or costly to create the model animations for all the skills, (This is also why I suspect you only get 4 characters to play with) so rather than sacrifice the visual quality, they sacrificed the gameplay instead. The same thing goes for the overworld design; they probably put so much effort into the modeling and appearance of the world that they didn't have the time or resources to populate it, other than sprinkling a few treasure chests here and there. It's a shame, because it really makes the game a lot less fun that way.
Still, despite its gaping flaws, Dragon Quest 8 isn't a terrible game; it's still entertaining, and even may be an above average game, though only barely. It just doesn't live up to the standard that the series has produced until now.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
That was Ian Kelly's review. What do you think of his comments?
