Dragon Quest VIII

The eight installment of the Dragon Quest/Warrior series was finally delivered with proper timing for me to buy it. I never had an NES or SNES, so I never played I-VI, and VII came out for the playstation after the PS2 launch, and relatively soon before Final Fantasy X. I just didn't have the time, places to be, other games to play.

But now, I've stopped to enjoy the classic nature of this game. The updated anime-style graphics bring the old-school feel into this generation of games. The game is rather beautiful in its animated sort of way, and the battles are exciting and challenging. The need to level up is more prominent here than I had seen in other games, but is not terribly monotonous. It keeps the element of strategy in the game by having harder bosses than the enemies surrounding it. Each area has noticably harder enemies, so I never get to a new area and can immediately kill anything with one hit. That's a good feeling, and keeps me on my toes as I travel from place to place.

The story hails back to days of old, you are an anonymous hero with a small gang of friends. You set out on a quest that builds in difficulty and importance while gathering new members to your party. The story telling is quite nice even for this "simple" story (so far). I'm not too far into it, so maybe I'll give an update on the story once I've completed it.

Anyone who played and enjoyed RPGs in the good ol' days would really enjoy this game.