I got my DQ8 demo disc in the mail today, and I gotta say that I’m impressed. The disc comes with two modes: story and battle. Story goes through one traditional DQ quest - information gathering, story advancement, some dungeon delving, a boss showdown, wrapping up the story arc, and getting a clue on where to go next. The battle mode lets you try out 4 of the characters at higher levels so you can see what abilities you have to look forward to. As far as I can tell, they give you access to all the abilities, as long as you take the time to level your characters enough. (No save function though. :P)
The game is cel-shaded, but it looks fantastic… not overly goofy, just that light touch of goofy that fits so well into a DQ game. Remember those people who complained about DW7’s graphics being so “crappy”? Well, those people can all shut the hell up. DQ8 is a different beast entirely. All the battle motions are wonderfully animated, and the slimes are more bouncy than ever. All the characters and enemies have awesome shadow effects, that actually look like real shadows and not just blobs. The whole game has this high-quality cartoon feel, which I think strikes a great balance between realism and stylized artwork.
The interface is very smooth, easy to figure out from the get-go. It features a nice look-around mode, so you can appreciate the level of detail that goes into the surroundings. As time passes (in real time), you can look up at the twilight sky and watch the stars start to appear. It’s pretty cool.
Instead of a world map, the entire world is one big area for you to run around, not unlike the 3D Zelda games. The overworld terrain is nice and varied too, so you’ll find yourself going up on a hill to scope out your surroundings, for example. Just another nice touch that adds to the adventuring experience. And instead of boring blockish mazes for dungeons, the dungeons really LOOK like dungeons. The cave I went into was a little sparse on details, what with its really long corridors, but at least it felt like a real cave.
It looks as though there’s no more class system. Now it’s all about weapon proficiencies. After a character gains a level, they get a certain number of points to allocate to various skill sets (bound to weapon types). Increase a set enough and you learn more abilities. Characters also have a built-in charge up ability, which I found to be useful enough to warrant making it its own menu item. Oh yes, and now when there is a group of enemies of a certain type, you FINALLY get to choose which of the enemies in that group to target. Wise move, S-E.
As if the eye candy’s not enough, the ear candy is pretty sweet too. The soundtrack is typical top-notch Dragon Quest, and there are even a few bits that are reminiscent of the original DQ. The voice acting, which they use a lot in the game, is superb, some of the best I’ve heard inside a game or outside. I especially love King Trode’s voice, which sounds exactly like his froggy character should. 
Many of the characters have distinct accents, complete with appropriate slang, which goes to show how much effort went into the localization.
Speaking of localization, it seems that in spite of having a well-localized dialogue, most of the traditional items and names have been restored to their Japanese counterparts – or at least, that’s what I’m guessing they are. For instance, Babbles are Bubble Slimes, Wings of the Wyvern are Chimera Wings, and Firebal is now called Fizz. I’m not sure if I like the changes, since I feel that the Americanization of Dragon Quest early on was pretty intelligently done. (At least they did something more than just call the spells Fire1, Fire2, Fire3 :P) But I feel that the dialogue is the most important part of the translation, and that was given first-class treatment.
Check it out come November. You won’t regret it.
He also happens to be my contact at Square Enix, so praising his work inexplicably gives me a fuzzy feeling inside.
