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Dragon Quest VIII There’s a moment in Dragon Quest VIII when it all comes together. A moment when it finally clicks and you realise that it’s not just an exercise in dressing up an old game in a new set of clothes, but a worthwhile experience in its own right.
That moment will be different for each player. For me, it was running around a corner and coming out from mountains and fields onto a stretch of beach, a deep blue ocean panning out to the horizon. It was both breathtaking and, after having been stuck in amongst those mountains and fields for some hours, liberating.
There will also come a moment in Dragon Quest VIII when it all falls apart, when the game’s obstinate nature and limited, outdated mechanics conspire to frustrate you to the point of giving up.
At heart, this is an old game. It sticks to Japanese RPG rules painstakingly – rules that were first put into effect some twenty or so years ago. Rules like a complete cipher of a hero who gathers a team of three comrades around him in his quest to save a kingdom. A number of “towns” – some consisting of as few as three houses – linked together by a sprawling overworld map. Random, turn-based battles in which the good guys and bad guys line up and face off against each other.
The new clothes? The first is a stunning graphical style that makes each and every 3D character look like a hand-drawn cartoon. The success with which Akira Toriyama’s character designs have been realised is sure to make this game a graphical benchmark. While it’s relatively easy to produce a three-dimensional model that looks like a piece of hand-drawn art when viewed from the same angle as that piece of art, the trick that Factor 5’s artists have pulled off here is to provide models that look like the original sketches regardless of where the player places the camera.
Add to this an environment that becomes more impressive the more of it you explore. Once you’re allowed the freedom of the overworld map, you’ll find it impossible not to embark on your own journeys of discovery. You see a mountain miles away in the distance and run to it, climb it purely so that you can get to the top and look out over the world below you, and see other landmarks to travel to. Too many RPGs either forget the joy that can be found in simple exploration, or fail to provide a world that you want to explore.
Dragon Quest VIII’s second great innovation is its English-language soundtrack – one of the most impressive and considerate translations heard in any game to date. European voices are far more appropriate for the fairytale setting of the game than the more common imposition of American accents (along with the obligatory “ass-kicking”s that tend to accompany them) in games of this type. Voices here are almost always entirely suitable for the characters, with the decision to turn Yangus into a cockney (and have him voiced by an actual live cockney, rather than Dick van Dyke) being particularly fitting.
There’s one of two things happening here. DQVIII is either a farewell song to a dying style of game, commemorating its passing with the ultimate expression of that style, or it’s an attempt to reinvigorate it. Recent years have seen the JRPG evolve in ever more complex ways, mutating the traditional battle system into something more demanding (Shin Megami Tensei), providing bottomless depth to their options for customisation (Disgaea and others from the Nippon Ichi stable) or taking side quests and turning them into their games’ raison d’etre (Atelier Iris, where the item creation system provides and deserves endless hours of investigation). DQVIII, in comparison, is a bare-bones title.
It’s a blessing and a curse. For a while, the simplicity of the battle and character development systems feels like a breath of fresh air, despite being as old as the hills. There’s no having to worry about distributing stat point upgrades when a character increases their level, as almost all upgrades are predetermined. You don’t have to spend ages thinking about the tactics you’ll deploy in a fight, or try and remember a complicated strength/weakness chart in order to take enemies down. Attack, charge, use magic or defend – those are your choices in a fight and, as such, battles pass swiftly and don’t overstay their welcome.
Usually. The problem with this is that large chunks of the game are far too easy. You can go for hours without coming close to a defeat. Great, until you reach a point in the game with under-developed characters. In terms of your stats, you're there too early, earlier than the designers intended. And because the battle system is so basic, there’s no room for intelligent thought on the part of the player. You can’t go into a fight against a relatively high-level boss with a weak team and hope that you’ll be able to win through tactical means, because there aren’t any tactics to deploy. Brute strength wins through, every time, which leaves you with no choice but to go out into the overworld and start farming for experience points through hundreds of random battles. Of course this is made even more of a chore because the battle system is so retarded that there’s no enjoyment to be gained from fighting for the sake of it.
More modern JRPGs can often feature horrific jumps in difficulty, but they win out by providing you with other means of gaining experience levels – side-quests, weapon development, room for tactical thought. DQVIII’s fights are fun while you’re breezing through them, but fall apart as soon as you reach one that you’re unable to beat first time.
If you can stick it out, if you can find the time and energy required to trudge through the grind required by these (few, but harsh) jumps in difficulty, then this is still a game with some remarkable sights to show you. The storyline is one big cliché, it’s true, but as soon as you accept this fact – as soon as you admit that sometimes all you want is to be told, to take part in a simple fairy tale – you find that it doesn’t matter. And it has its moments – the tale of Baumren's Bell manages to be heart-breaking, poetic and subtle, a welcome respite from derring-do and large-scale heroism that’ll stay in the memory for some time.
Effectively, by sticking so closely to the structure of the games it pays homage to, DQVIII falls foul of the same problems that often blighted them. The past has many things to teach us, many things that are still relevant today, but there are others that should stay there. DQVIII’s failure is that it neglects to distinguish between them.
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