For some reason, DQ8 makes me want to explore. I spent an hour last night just wandering around the countryside. I activated the spell that makes weaker monsters avoid you so it was an hour without fighting. Just Ratch (that’s what I call him - Ratch) walking around, looking at stuff. I found a couple of chests laying around and I opened them. I found a structure of some kind on a steep hill. I can’t figure out how to get to it but I’m certain that I’ll wind up there. I sailed a bit. Mostly I just wanted to see stuff.

And that’s the beautiful thing about this game - there’s lots of stuff to see if you want to. Or you can just follow the main plot and stay focused. Insert Credit’s review sums it up quite well:

Dragon Quest VIII’s world map is a hero. It is large, and wide, and persistent. It does not let you go. There are paths to take from each town to the next, and there are countless things that catch your eye and pull you off the path and into a little grove where you’re then killed by gorillas with clubs. Sometimes you find a river emptying into the ocean from a continent you can’t access; you sail up the river between a few fjords, and there, carved into the side of the rock, are the letters “C-A-S-I-N-O.” Inside is, well, a casino. Sometimes you might be an hour into a foot-voyage from one town to its neighboring castle, only to encounter a special monster that can be killed for bounty-hunting purposes. You fight him, are significantly weakened in the process, and then continue on, only to find that you can get up the mountainside the way you’d though you could. Eventually, you find an alternate route up, only to be told at the gates that you look suspicious and aren’t welcome. Nearly out of magic points with which to heal yourself, you’re stuck in the middle of nowhere. It’s at these helpless moments that the game feels like a brilliant piece of work.

 

The instruction manual warns you, on page one, “Try not to get lost.” It is not chiding you about your poor sense of direction. It is sincerely warning you that this game is staggering in its scope.

I couldn’t agree more. It’s quite clear that the developers lovingly crafted this place to play. One of my favorite things to do the last couple of days is to roam around looking for Infamous Monsters to fight. You never quite know where you’ll find one so you have to go looking for them. When I do see one off in the distance, I’m happy to see him but I’m also happy just exploring and seeing what’s out there.

I bought Dragon Quest VIII within a week or two of its release. I had never really played a Dragon Quest game before, with the exception of the first one which I did finish. I was excited for DQ8 and tore into it as soon as I got it and played compulsively for about 20 hours. That seemed like a long time to me until I realized that I was not even halfway through the game. Maybe not even a quarter of the way through. Other games came along and I let DQ8 sit on the shelf for two years.

But the thing is, I wanted to play it. I found myself thinking about it from time to time. I wondered where the story was going to go. I’d remember a dungeon or some of the enemies and I’d really want to get back to it. So when I rearranged my gaming area so I could have easy access to my Sony Wega CRT, I hooked my PS2 up right away and began playing once again. That was roughly two weeks ago and I’m now over 40 hours into DQ8. We just made it to Orkutsk if that tells you where I am in the game.

And I’m completely hooked at this point. The game is so polished, so beautiful, so streamlined and fun that I can’t see stopping until I finish the game.

This blog was wandering aimlessly out there, hampered by my lack of knowledge and fear that I would inadvertently do something to mess up the htaccess cron sql admin type-thingy and set fire to my website. I’d made the decision originally to do a Fantastico install of Wordpress instead of just taking the time to figure out how to do it manually and I was chafing under my slavery to the Fantastico gods. I also (and shamefully) didn’t know how to properly back up my website. Because of all this, I moved my content over to RPG Replay and had thoughts of just continuing it there. RPG Replay is fine but it never really seemed like my own place so this weekend I decided to take control of the situation.

I completely reset everything on my website and figured out how to do a fresh Wordpress install all by myself. You might be surprised to know that it really wasn’t that difficult. I found a theme I (mostly) like and I can keep the cool candle graphic that I like so much. The current theme does seem prone to give me errors so I may switch it if I can’t figure out what’s going on. I’ve decided to leave my original blog content over at RPG Replay except for my reviews, which I liked so I moved them over here.

It remains to be seen what I end up doing with this site. I still want to play through the major Playstation 1 RPG’s but I’m also working my way through some more recent RPG’s and I’ll probably write about them too. My current addiction? I’m over 40 hours into Dragon Quest VIII. I’ll write more about that later.

Edit: I settled on a theme I really like. It took awhile but I found that Mandigo does just about everything I want and gives me lots of options to work with. And it seems to be very stable and looks amazing.