Dragon Quest VIII Journey of the Cursed King

The game looks and sounds great! The soundtrack is amazing. Those who've only played the demo need to know that the music has been completely revamped for the full release. The symphonic version of the music is beautiful.

The visuals are gorgeous. The cell-shading anime-like style is beautiful to look at. The brightly coloured, beautifully rendered graphics are full of plenty of little details. You're not going to get breath taking photo realism here, but the visuals are very consistent in their quality. The actual game play looks every bit as good as the cut scenes.

As this is an old school style roleplayer I fully expected to be hoping right onto the level up treadmill. However there is so much to do and explore in the overworld areas that this was never a concern. The leveling up ends up happening while you're busy just exploring and attempting to hunt down all of the hidden extras.

The overworld is huge! The game does a good job of limiting you from just wandering endlessly, while still maintaining the feel of a wide open world.

The world is beautiful to look at and utterly engaging. Time passes from day to night. The sun and the moon rise and set. The (gorgeous!) stars come out to light up the night time sky. You encounter different, more difficult, monsters based on the time of day. For example, some notorious monsters only show up at night time. The towns folk also have different things to say based on whether it is day or night.

The game play is simple and intuitive. The menus were clean and easy to work with. Movement both in town and on the overworld map is fluid. You have complete control over the camera angles at all times.

The monsters are great to look at and consistently amusing. If the storyline is the standard save-the-kingdom-from-the-evil-mage fare, the game makes up for it by having some rather unique characters. The characterisation and character interaction is great. Some very amusing stuff here. The plot is fairly linear, but the amount of side quests, and the wide open feel to the world, help nix the feeling of being dragged along. There is a vein of humour running throughout the game that I think most players, of all ages, will enjoy.

This is definitely one of the best RPGs I've played in a LONG time. Pick it up, you won't be disappointed.

Well almost 20 years later we've hit the latestest and, in my opinion greatest, Dragon Quest 8(has since returned to it's original name). This is it's first game for the PS2 and it's first in full 3d.

Everything about this game is great, from graphics to chalenges. With enough winks and nudges to nostalgic gamers and inovation for new gamers to keep everyone happy.

With voice acting and cell shading the characters come to life better than any animated cartoons on television. This game is a deffinate must buy.