Dragon Quest VIII

[Link Antilles]

I'm really loving this game so far. Sure, it doesn't bring much new to the table, but it does pretty much everything right. I'm completely digging the game's wonderful presentation. It has a simple, but engaging story with a lot of (it seems) charming and amusing characters (and monsters) to meet. -And the game's beautiful graphics and musical score just compliment this whole package. The voice acting, in my opinion, isn't half-bad either (heck of a lot better than Baten Kaitos and Tales of Symphonia).


Oh, and did I mention I love how the game feels like a great throwback to the classic days of yore?


Btw, what did everyone think of the Final Fantasy XII demo? Personally, I'm a lot more interested than before, but that battle system is really throwing me off.

[Nate]

Huzzah! *brings his LJ rant over here*

On the FFXII demo - It has the absolute WORST combat system I've ever seen. I mean, did they TRY to make it suck? Did they sit around in the planning room and say, "Gee, I wonder how we can make the worst combat system ever seen in an RPG?" They must have, because there's no other freakin' excuse for this. Actually, that isn't a good excuse either, but at least if that were the case I could say "Good job."

Ugh. Ugh ugh ugh. Words cannot express how utterly disgusted I am by that game. Good thing I've never been a Final Fantasy fanboy, because I would probably be sobbing my eyes out at how horrible this piece of garbage is.

However, on the other hand, Dragon Quest VIII totally rocks. Except the voice acting. :\ Everyone has very obviously faked (and faked BADLY, I might add) British accents. Except the fortune-teller's daughter. She has a very obviously faked Russian accent that's bad. Bleh. I turned off the voices in that game, because they're so bad. I'm surprised that Squenix couldn't pull out good voices for this. They did good on FFX-2 (as bad as the game was, it at least had good voices) and the voices on Star Ocean 3 were quite good. Kingdom Hearts had stellar voice acting. What happened with Dragon Quest? And it's not like this is an obscure game series, either.

I'm hoping there will be some interesting plot twists in the game. I really don't want it to be the whole "We're chasing a powerful bad guy who's always one step ahead." I'll accept it if I must, but I'd still like to have a whole lot more to the game than that.

At any rate, this is an EXCELLENT RPG, and I'd say it's a definite must purchase for any fan of the genre.

On another note, how far are you? I just now got Jessica in my party and have gotten to that Abby where the Templars are.

[Link Antilles]

Heh, I'm waiting for Final Fantasy XII to be delayed again, because of the coming fan back-lash on the battle system.

As for the voice acting on DQ VIII, I dunno, I never took it as anything serious. Maybe that's way I don't cut it off. I think the stereotypical faked accents fit, because of the over all tone of the game and the Dragon Ball-looking characters. Anyways, maybe I’m the only one who gets a kick out of it.

[Nate]

Eh, I know it isn't meant to be serious. And goofy as it is, I do kinda like the King and Yangus' voices. I think it was Valentina and Jessica's voices that finally made me turn them off.

[Link Antilles]

Ah, yes, I can see that. Ironically, maybe, I will eventually turn the voices off, but the I can't see the voices getting on my nerves near as much as Tales of S, Baten, and Dark Cloud 2.

[desperado]

What type of battle system is dragon quest viii? Depending on the battle system type I may go out and play it.

[Nate]

Regular old fashioned turn-based, like always.

*huggles DQ8 for being good and stabs FF12 for sucking*

[Tommy]

Darn, I just made a thread on this exact game that went unnoticed and sank like the Titanic two weeks ago.

What`s FFXII`s battle system like? I heard they put a new twist on it. Aparently this twist wasn`t good.

Is the view 1st person in this game like the past? I know you can see thecharacter attack but do you see them when you select your turn?

[Nate]

FFXII's battle system is, well...

It goes like this. You can see the bad guys from far away. There's no "cut scene" to a battle though. It's real time, so as soon as the bad guy sees you, it's on. You then go to the menu and pick an action for your character, and then a little bar starts to fill up. When the bar is full, you perform the action. Then you open the menu again (yes, you have to press a button to open the menu, it does not automatically appear). By the way, your other two party members are computer controlled. You actually can switch between party members on the fly, but since menus don't open automatically, you have to manually select the other party members, open the menu, and choose the action...and since the computer will usually have started an action by that time, it has to cancel that action and then RESTART the bar from the beginning before your action is performed.

Gah. *stabs repeatedly*

Oh, and the battle system in DQ8 is not 1st person view anymore. It's more like most traditional RPGs now in that you see your character actually attacking/casting the spell. The only time you have a 1st person view is when you are selecting your character's actions at the beginning of the round.

[Tommy]

Something tells me they will be redoing the battle engine to FFXII...or they won`t. If Japan didn`t like the demo it probably will be redone.

[Nate]

If they don't, something tells me that this may be the first FF game that has poor sales.

[Tommy]

Yeah, I know. This was supposed to be an FF game! The only way this game can get away with anything is if they rename if it having nothing to do with Final Fantasy.

[Rogie]

This is the first RPG in a LONG time that I have been excited about. I wasn't even excited about DQ8 at first, until I got interested and read about it and found out that the world is fairly free-roaming. I've been in an adventuring mood lately, so I'm thinking that DQ8 will satisfy that a little.

Oh, and I'm getting it for Christmas. The only non-portable game I'm asking for. Now that's odd for me.