Dragon Quest VIII
by Square-Enix
for PlayStation2B+

Popular publisher Square-Enix's only major game release for this winter is a surprise translation of an installment in a long-running Japanese role-playing series in which select few titles make it to US shores. The Dragon Quest series, also released under the moniker Dragon Warrior, sports traditional role-playing gameplay combined with a very lengthy story and unnecessarily deep character customization. Dragon Quest VIII should be fairly accessible to the average game player, but still suffers from some problems.

The story, which should be the focal point of any typical role-playing game, is surprisingly hackneyed and underwhelming here. For about the first half of the game, you spend most of your time guiding a silent protagonist and his animated cohorts through town after town, always one step behind the evil forces you hope to thwart. Only towards the game's end do you realize that there is something bigger to achieve, but even this revelation fails to move Dragon Quest VIII from the happy-go-lucky mood that overpowers its bulk. Annoyingly, your goals are always stymied by a series of unnecessary side quests serving in part to extend the story, but seemingly getting in the way of your ultimate goal.

The gameplay itself is hard to complain about. It ignores most conventions of the past 10 years, instead immersing you in a time when every RPG was turn-based, slow text details the events, and selecting commands was the most exciting thing to happen in the battle. It actually brought me back to a past when I had the free time to finish a 65-hour game.

Not everything about this game is bad. It is remarkably polished with lots of things to do. The battles are sometimes challenging, and the animated style of Akira Toriyama is flawlessly brought to the world of 3-D along with some very well-done British voice acting. At the end of the game, however, I couldn't help but feel I had spent much more time playing than I should have, and achieved far less than I had expected. Barring the slow progress, slow battles and the hilariously over-orchestrated soundtrack, I did not hate the game, but unless there is more diversity in future installments, the Dragon Quest series might as well be considered damaged goods.