Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King review

You don't mention the grueling hours of leveling using the boring combat system, or the treks through dungeons that take hours due to an almost constant stream of random encounters.

Perhaps he wasn't bothered by that?

Long-time Dragon Quest fans--such as myself--aren't always bothered by that because it's often one of the things that made the series so endearing to us in the first place. In my opinion, Dragon Quest was and is one of the finest RPG franchises around precisely because it forces the reader to work for the next story sequence (though I do wish they'd tone down the story a bit; I've never been one for extensive plot in my video games).

Yeah. None of those things have ever bothered me about a Dragon Quest game. There might be a lot of fights, but they're all fast-paced, so it never really has ever felt to me like I'm being drowned in a deluge of combat. If anything, I wish there was a bit more complexity to the average fight. In DQ VIII, you get a ton of abilities, spells, etc., but (with the exception of a couple of bosses), I scarcely used any of them other than the heal spells and the occasional buff/debuff spell.

All I can say is that I'd far rather play a DQ game than many of today's more story-driven ones where you have to wade through massive amounts of cutscenes just to get to a simple, linear dungeon.....that leads to more cutscenes. To my perspective, it's somewhat confusing as to how people get so enamoured with games like the Metal Gear Solids of the world, as, to me, all that interactive gameplay stuff takes second fiddle to watching one cutscene.....and then another...and another. When I reviewed MGS 3: Subsistence, it got a 9 primarily due to the inclusion of the MSX Metal Gears. MGS 3 itself.....I'd have rated it a 6 or so. Very great graphics and all, but the game itself just didn't interest me as much as it should have because my enjoyment of the stealth and all that kept getting disrupted by constant jabbering.

Just goes to show that different people have different likes and dislikes as to what they look for in a game.

To my perspective, it's somewhat confusing as to how people get so enamoured with games like the Metal Gear Solids of the world

Thank you, O.D. I thought I was the only one who wasn't going to give MGS 4 a perfect score.

As far as the battles in DQ, they could have been a lot worse. At least Dragon Quest is straightforward with them, and didn't opt to try and re-vamp the fighting system by adding useless aspects like a list of elements that eventually fade and render your attacks useless I.E. Magna Carte. Or a shitty cross between real-time and turn-based combat, like... well Magna Carte.

Dragon Quest thankfully kept it simple and left it up to one button, and that makes it far easier to tolerate the amount of enemies.

Have you ever read my review of MGS4, True?

or the treks through dungeons that take hours due to an almost constant stream of random encounters.

There is a way to relieve the pain some: the Hero has a skill to reduce the encounter rate (Holy Protection I think it'll be called) so you can explore dungeons more easily and keep your MP for the inevitable end-of-dungeon boss. Experience thus missed out on can be compensated for by using Yangus' Whistle skill (force an immediate encounter) when in a suitable area for monster hunting.

Of course, even so, DQ as a series is encounter heavy. I don't mind so much, but then every time I fire up a DQ, I know precisely what I'm getting myself into.