Goddamn this game was a chore. I’m not going to say I hated it, it was very hard to work through. The story was interesting, and in retrospect, the characters were fun, so I had that much to hold my attention, but everything else was just boring. Long dungeon crawls, slow (yet very beautiful) music, simple by-the-book RPG gameplay. Long periods of hoofing it on the world map from one locale to the next, until you can get a ship, until you can fly. It’s funny, because as I was playing other RPGs that broke from that tired mold, I was thinking about how much I missed that, and how nice it would be to play a simple, traditional RPG just like I did on the SNES and Playstation. Now I never want to play another one.
Yeah, you either want the old school or you really don’t. DQ8 was a classical old school experience. Although for a DQ, it was really easy. DQ7 was a lot more brutal.
God, Dragon Warrior VII… 120 hours spent on that to finish it and complete both bonus dungeons. But, I did it, darnit.
And I’ll never replay the game ever again. I’ve tried, I’ve tried on a few occasions, but I just can’t bring myself to even make it up to the first real dungeon.
Dragon Quest VIII, at least, I can see myself replaying, just to try a few different weapon skill combinations. I enjoyed the game quite a bit. It felt like a grind in a few places, but that didn’t bother me too much.
I’ve never been a person to grind. I hate it. I’m too impatient. if I’m not winning in a fight, it’s not because I’m too weak, it’s beacuse I’m not fighting smart enough. This game makes it too much of a hassle. I got to the ship, and promptly lost interest.
DQ7 was the first DQ game I ever played, and I never finished it; first because I had my first seizure while playing -there’s a memory to hold on to- 
and when I tried it again, a year later, I found it too boring, long and difficult.
That is why I hesitated to buy DQ8 when it came out. Eventually I did, and to my surprise, I enjoyed it a lot. I was frustrated by one or two things (the monsters were too silly and I never got to the alternate ending) but otherwise, it was one of the best playing experiences I had in years. I loved the graphics, the characters, the designs (though to say it ripped off DragonBall is an understatement- luckily I like Dragonball. 
) and the story. The Elven character in particular feels like a true Tolkienesque Elf and not one of those pointy-eared knockoffs you see in most games. And I liked the system, though I could not master all the characters’ abilities (of course I realize it wasn’t meant to be done, since the characters don’t get enough points to do so by the end of the game; most likely it’s meant to customize the characters differently on each playthrough.)
And I never had to grind. Of course, I had the guide to direct me around, and I tend to go get EVERYTHING available so usually I get the fights that I need to get the experience needed that way.
So yeah, I loved it, and I’m definitely replaying it someday.
Ripped off? They were designed by the same guy. Akira Toriyama created Dragon Ball, he has also done the character designs of every Dragon Quest game. 8 was just the first one that had good enough graphics so that the designs stuck out like a sore thumb.
Yeah, that made it hard for me to appreciate the character designs for a long time. I can’t stand DB/DBZ, and his designs are nothing more than DB characters with a different head of hair. I got over it after a while.
The guide… ahh, yes… the guide. I got a beef with that, too. I dont mind guides leaving stuff up to the player. I appreciate when they don’t follow the story (that killed my enjoyment of Chrono Cross) But this guide was little more than maps, and sidequests. Now, I really only use guides for sidequests anymore, except, there were points where I wasn’t sure where to go next, and it wasn’t always to “the next map” in the book. So I still had to do a considerable amount of wandering around. This was further confounded by the map for the trolls maze, but no direction of how to get there. Finally with the black citadel being the last map in the walkthrough, I got through that, and I’m like “Yeah, I’m done, because it was the last map in the guide” …nope. I still had to do more backtracking.
And then, even after I did beat the final boss, the game still dragged on for another hour or so.
This was the first DQ game I played since the original for the NES. It was cute to see the slimes, and hear certain sound effects after 15-some years of having played it last. And I didnt even get off the ground in that game.
I still say the main character looks way too much like Tir McDhoul from Suikoden for his own good >_>
THAT’S who he reminded me of! Tir! Thank you, that’s been bugging me for ages. (For the record, I gave him the name of Gregor. he looks like a Gregor to me.)
Holy shit, that’s true!
You guys seriously didn’t notice that at first glance? O_o
Ripped off? They were designed by the same guy. Akira Toriyama created Dragon Ball, he has also done the character designs of every Dragon Quest game. 8 was just the first one that had good enough graphics so that the designs stuck out like a sore thumb.
Oh, I knew that, Spoony. But you CAN rip off your own work, you know. I’ve played other games with Toriyama designs (Chrono Trigger, for example) and the characters didn’t look THAT blatantly DBZesque. (Wait, Didn’t CT come out before DB?) Seriously, how many of you said, “Hey, look, it’s Goku, wearing a bandana! And Bulma with red hair!” Etc, etc? C’mon, the man has a lot of design talent (I’m particularly impressed by his vehicles) he could’ve done them a LITTLE bit different, no?
Still, I must admit I had some fun playing spot-the-DBZ-character in the game. Like having Mr. Satan (Hercule) as the seer, hee hee. 
Oh, I forgot to mention, I liked the voice acting in this game a lot, and I normally hate it when they do British accents in games. However here they added a good touch of medievalism to the story.
Really? News to me. I always thought the act of ripping off as taking someone else’s work and passing it as your own. In this case I don’t see it as ripping off, rather being pretty lazy.
And while I might say that the Hero does resemble Goku (especially at 100 tension), I don’t see the resemblance between Jessica and Bulma. I can’t think of any point in the DB timeline when she had large pigtails like that, anyway. The far more obvious one is Angelo, who is Trunks cosplaying as Dante.
It’s not like Akira Toriyama has that many designs for humans. He has about five or six templates he copy-pastes with pallet swaps and different haircuts. Look at… well, every OTHER game he’s ever designed for. Off the top of my head, Magus was a Goku SSJ3 pallet swap while Lucca was just a grown Arale.
And btw, the localization was done in Britain, by actual British people, which is why you might have enjoyed it more.
Blimey O’ Riley! Love a Duck! Stone the Crows! Still, no skin of me nose, eh guv?
This game has got something that I don’t see in many games these days: Charm.
I’ve replayed it about four times. Well, three times full, still on my fourth one… a year and a half ago, heh… I did manage to do a bare handed run, was…tricky.
The skill point playthrough was another replayable function I crazed over. Raising Angelo on all swords for the first time (with the 13 in Charisma, of course) was a fucking blast when I saw how hard hitting of a character he could be with a decent sword.
The music made me look more into Koichi Sugiyama. I did a oral presentation on him and the other three Game Music Godfathers (Kondo, Uematsu, Kanno (gotMother, mind)) [Hip Tanaka should’ve been mentioned, my bad] and came to appreciate the old codger. In his late 60s, mabye early 70s now, and still conducting/composing music. And he was the FIRST game composer to record his compositions with a full orchestra. THEN the first game composer to give a concert featuring his game music. That classic Sugiyama feel present throughout all the games, those trademark chromatic runs, the ever prevailent Dragon Quest March… Without Koichi… just think about it… [/end hype]
Grinding wasn’t a problem with me either. An hour or so in the secret Metal Slime area right outside the Royal Hunting Grounds, and I only have to worry about crawling through dungeons only to get from point A to point B. Other than that, champs fight at night. Fuck daytime battles.
The feel of the game and the progression of the story makes me want to stop playing WoW during my dead time and pick it back up again. It’s all about the charm.
I lessthanthree DQ8 and will defend it to the grave.
I gotta admit the british slang was classic. The VA for the most part was good, it was the voices themselves that really got to me (Trode and Rhapthorne’s in particular)
The VA and script were AWESOME. One of my favorite moments in the game was an optional one, its when you’re in the Russian snowy town towards the end and there is this guy in the church who REALLY likes this nun and Angelo gives him a pep talk as to how to approach the girl, but making a huge religious allegory out of it. That was EXCELLENT. It was so fitting for his playboy character too.
Spoony: Speaking of Tension, I don’t think I ever got any of the characters to Level 100 in the game. In fact, in general I avoided using Tension; My characters had a tendency to get killed if I spent too long “charging” them up.
Seraphim: Magus always looked more like Piccolo to me (but with hair!)
Cid: I had no idea the game was dubbed in Britain. I wonder why they did that? Still, it was a nice touch.
Kagato: Yeah, Charm is the operating word here. I’ve played far more complex games, but they don’t always have such a likable cast. (Even the Cursed King, for all his bitching, grew on me after a while. ) 
I don’t think I fully mastered any of the character’s unique skill sets (I certainly didn’t get Gigaslash for the Hero) because I tended to spread the points around, to make sure they didn’t lack necessary abilities such as healing. However for my next playtrough I will try specializing instead and see how I do.
Sin: Indeed, the story had some genuinely moving moments (the resolution of the Mourning King’s plotline was my favorite) and the dialogue supported them effectively (excellent translation btw.)
It’s worth building up the Hero’s tension to 100 just once to see it. Well, technically it’s worth it for the attack power too, but he seriously goes SSJ, like, with the hair and everything. Oddly enough, I’m pretty sure I’ve seen JP screens where he hit 100 tension and he DIDN’T look any different. I wonder if it was something added to the NA release?
I’m reminded of that one edited picture Zero once showed me, of the Hero at max tension with the dialogue box edited to say ‘Eight’s Tension increases to 9000!’.