Actually, this should be at the past tense, but it still fits the theme I suppose.
Dragon Quest needs little introduction. In Japan it was banned from being sold on weekdays due to causing a high rate of absenteeism at work and school, due to the flood of people going to buy and play it. The strong bonds between the 3 main creators of the series made it flourish. I can't say if it was the first game of the RPG genre, but it definitely set the bar for the later games, and each game tried to improve upon it.
Dragon Quest 8 : The Journey of the Cursed King is the latest installment of the series. It graced the Playstation 2 in November 2004 for Japan. USA received a futher enhanced version a full year later, with added contents like voice acting and extra animations (the famous Super Sayian-like High Tension). It was also the first game of the series to grave Europe, which is kinda odd in itself, considering Enix had dropped the US side of ports but kept Europe open for most of the SNES+PS1 era. The only difference is that Dragon Quest is unnumbered in Europe, which led to subtitling all of the new releases.
The game itself, I'm not sure I can properly put it into words. In my opinion, this game was probably the best RPG for the lifetime of the Playstation 2. Sure, there was some great ones, like Final Fantasy X, XII, Kingdom Hearts and Xenosaga, all were pretty and fun. But I don't know, Dragon Quest had something else, which is really a matter of taste and opinion in the end.
First of all, the music. The Playstation 2's ability to play music is nothing short of superb. Thanks to the quality that a DVD can hold, the soundtrack was well done and fitting from the begining to the end. It places you in the ambience of the world, the dungeon or the city perfectly.
Secondly, the world map. As far as RPGs are concerned, I noticed that the PS2 had a very odd pattern. Where as the NES, SNES and even PS1 RPGs all had the roaming world map, most of the PS2 went for other kinds, such as Final Fantasy X and XII that have a traced route on a general map, teleport points to move around, otherwise walking between points. That style is not bad mind you, in fact it's more realistic in a way that you need to physically move around.
But other games completly gave up any kind of roaming, such as Kingdom Hearts or Suikoden III. What was a staple of a map with the ability to enter town was now a thing of the past. In that aspect, I admire Dragon Quest 8's method. Without going with the 'everything is on scale' of Final Fantasy XII, the world was huge and gorgeous, colorful and with plenty of nooks and crannies to peek into, wether it's around a tree or atop a small hill.
The villages looked 'on scale' from a distance, but still were in a different area per say, which required loading, which is closer to the original world map systems. The characters are are scale with the surrounding world, and it feels huge to move around on foot. The world map also scales down when using different methods of traveling, like on foot or flying, yet everything looks the same, just perfect. Plus you can see very far away in the distance while traveling, making it very realistic in that aspect.
Of course, being drawn by Akira Toriyama, the entire world and the characters have a distinct cartoony look. In fact the game was made in cell-shade, which from my understanding is a method of using 2D drawings on minimalistic skeletons, instead of being a fully 3D skeleton like Final Fantasy XII for example. The result is more cartoony, but somehow more detailed as well, which fits Akira's style perfectly in my opinion. And it fits Dragon Quest's style just as well.
Storywise, it was very interesting to follow. The generic 'save the world' quest, but not quite either. There's more involved as the quest starts with the only goal to uncurse the king and the princess. But obviously it won't be so easy, will it?
The battles are elegantly made, the first Dragon Quest to actually let you see your characters in battle in fact. All of the previous games used the 'first person view' of the fight where you'd see only the monsters. This time you can see your characters doing their attacks, spells and special abilities, and even lean over tiredly when low on HP. Monsters received the same attention with various animations for their attacks.
All in all, this was an extremely good addition to my collection, and one I would suggest to anyone that enjoys RPGs. It's not terribly hard, not terribly long (50-60 hours), pure Dragon Quest style with some very humorous scenes and dialogs. A good balance of everything that brings it to the top of my list of PS2 RPGs.
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