onsdag 24 maj 2017

Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King 3DS

It's finally here!

I already gone through what I thought of the story back in 2012 when I played the PS2 original. Reading through the cliff notes I wrote back then I still feel the same 5 years later. The story is cliched, but it is so well executed. Without problem I spent upwards 100 hours on this game... again. I even enjoyed the grinding for tokens, gold and exp which are the time sinks, but I found the improvements in this game made it even more fun. A difference from the original is that you actually sees the monster on the maps and therefor really can make the grinds more effective. Hunting gold? Travel to Neos and run after the gold golems and don't bother with any other monster. Exp? First grinding spot is the ruined abbey for metal slimes, than Trodain Castle for Liquid Metal Slimes and lastly Dragon Graveyard for the Metal King Slimes. The tokens is still a grind of save when winning, reset when losing, but it felt faster... maybe due to them allowing one to speed up that segment. No joke, I grinded my character so high that they went above level 80 before beating the final boss for the first time, then rolling over the extra bosses I didn't stand a chance against back in 2012 so I even got the special ending.

Everones here... even those who weren't in the original

So what's new beside non-random encounters? Well, as the picture show you got 2 "new" characters, the lady smuggler Red who is an old friend of Yangus and Morrie, the owner of the MONSTROUS PIT... I mean Monster Arena. And it's not until you get them that I realised they gotta have made new voiced dialogue since I couldn't tell until then since I thought it was the same voice cast which is true, except for Jessica and I can't hear that unless I play the clips side by side. There is certain changes in the story as well. One I noticed on my own which is the cutscene where David is forced by his master to eat dog-food. They cut that and instead makes the dog intimidate him. The other I couldn't recall and found when researching on the differences and that is Marcello stabbing himself when the staff of Trodain tried to possess him. In this version he uses magic as the final act. Then they added things like a short scene with Medea meeting the main character and Dhoulmagus killing master Rhylus and an extra dungeon where you fight a boss battle with... Othello as it says on the screen. I actually have problem seeing what's new and whats old. They also made it possible to marry Jessica at the end, I don't know how and I feel that the story is so nice toward the main pairing I have a hard time changing that. Although Jessica is the better looking one, and as King Clavius says, she got the Va-Va-Voom.

I really gotta get Dragon Quest Heroes

I know some people complained on the small censuring on certain costumes and so, but I stumbled upon mentioning that it could be due to changes in what the rating allowed if it's gonna keep the same as last time. I don't really care about it. Other changes was a change in colours as it's more brighter and not as detailed, but it doesn't look as washed out in the screenshots I've watched. Then we have the alchemy recipes. Someone else mentioned what I suspected, they changed what the recipes are. The original did force you to guess certain ingredients based on a little in hint while here it states every single ingredient. I don't know if I like it or not. Overall it's still the best Dragon Quest game and playing it again I couldn't stop and the further I played the more I couldn't stop thinking about it. This might be one of those games I just have to play again and again due to being one of the easiest to grasp as well as the most player friendly. Really, knowing which skills is necessary after 2 playthroughs made it much easier when grinding. For example spears trumps swords even though sword usually are the hero's weapon (due to have a critical hit attack that you really need against metal king slimes so maybe it would be a good low-level run to not use spears, but swords?).

I can't stop loving the accent!

What isn't that great? First of the camera controls doesn't work that well. It's probably due to the New 3DS plastic pin feeling rather wonky. Then there was some glitches like liquid slimes clipping through the floor at one part of Trodain Castle. Also, even when I can see how many skill points unlock which ability, there's no description showing why "Zoom" is a must for a newcomer, being the series teleport spell. Also, the voice acting of Angelo still grates on me when he almost whispers his line, but when he actually puts emotion behind his words I can feel it. I also think I become more used to it since it's the same voice as Alvis from Xenoblade Chronicles. I think I heard Dixons voice character as well. Also two points in the story really confused me over the direction I was supposed to go. One was the Pirate cave which I knew I was supposed to find and it gave me a memory from when I played the game the first time. They never tell you there's a cave there? Or is Red supposed to tell you since she ends up there as well? But why would I go look for Red? Then it was hunting down the flying Leopold. I didn't recall anywhere where to find the dark leaf to find him? I wondered around the Lord High Priest place for a while until I remember that I picked it up by accident since I don't think anyone actually told you about it and the only reason I ended up there was gaining the power of flight and being able to go to this isolated town. Mostly nitpicks and still an enjoyable game. So lets see what I have in my backlog... boy, still a lot of RPG:s to go. Better get grinding.

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