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Feb 26 2008

Dragon Quest VIII, over two years later

Posted by: Paul in Dragon Quest VIII, tags: ,

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.

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3 Responses to “Dragon Quest VIII, over two years later”
  1. Kevin Grey says: February 27th, 2008 at 12:31 pm

    How easy was it to get back into? I think I stopped somewhere around 40 hours in and I, too, would like to continue someday but I find with RPGs that I forget way too much if I’m away from them for more than a month.

  2. Paul says: February 27th, 2008 at 2:28 pm

    Actually not difficult at all. Pressing Start lets you talk to your group and they’ll basically tell you where you need to go and what you should be doing next. The beauty of DQ8 is it isn’t a particularly story-heavy game so once you know where to go, a 3 minute story review from Wikipedia should be enough to get back on track.

  3. Kevin Grey says: February 27th, 2008 at 3:51 pm

    I forgot all about the Start thing. That’s a great idea! I wish more games would do things like that. IIRC, Xenosaga 3 had a summary of your current objective when you did your initial load for each play session, which I thought was a great idea and I’d like to see more RPGs do stuff like that.

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