 Dragon Quest VIII. This was actually my first Dragon Quest game and my first RPG. I never knew a Dragon Quest was until I played this one. Back when I was a kid I used to subscribe to the American Shonen Jump magazine which was a manga magazine full of Japanese comics that I would get monthly. This is a nostalgia trip. Usually the magazine will be bundled with a little prize such as trading cards and sometimes game demos. So during fall 2005 I got my issue Shonen Jump in the mail that had a feature on Dragon Quest VIII and it included a demo disc for the game, showcasing the first town and dungeon and I played the hell out of this demo, beating it multiple times. Eventually I got the real game and the rest was history. Now Dragon Quest VIII had a lot of big firsts for the series. It was the first new game that was released after Square Soft and the Enix Corporation melded into each other and became the mucky pace known as Square Enix. It was also the first Dragon Quest game to release in Europe. Up until this point only North America got the localized versions. They even dropped the 8 from the title there and just released it as Dragon Quest, the journey of the cursed king so as not to confuse people. DQ VIII was also the first mainline Dragon Quest game on the PlayStation 2. No you don't count. This Dragon Quest game was a huge massive enormous leaping quality or the previous entry. Dragon Quest VII for the PS1. DQ VII was a good game but it was still using retro looking sprites for all the characters and monitors and we all know that sprites are old and boring and dumb and we can do better. Enter DQ VIII featuring stunning, cell shaded 3D graphics for the first time in the series. Dragon Quest VIII looked like a playable anime. The color balance, lighting, the architecture of the world it's all amazing to look at and seriously impressive for the time. I imagine that this was Toriyama's true vision for the series when they're making it way back in the 90s but they just never had a technology to bring it to life until now. With an art style like this the game is bound to be timeless. This was a major title for the PS2 and I still think it looks miles ahead of other games that release at the same year especially running in HD with widescreen support. So it's important to know that there's different versions of Dragon Quest VIII. Three versions to be exact. There's the original version on the PS2, the mobile phone port for iOS and Android and finally the 3DS version which released almost 10 years after the original. The PS2 version is the original version of the game and what we got in the West a year after the Japanese release was kind of like a deluxe version of DQ VIII being sold in this fancy cardboard slip cover which is not very common for games at the time. So you can tell this was a premium product. Square Enix actually made a ton of improvements dust for us which is crazy when you think about it. They did things like overhauling the menu system to look more modern while the original is basically using the same menu as the original DQ games. A lot of the 8-bit spell sound effects were replaced. They added a first person camera for closely observing important details in the world. We actually got a fully orchestrated soundtrack in the game while the Japanese version only had synthesized sound and the biggest inclusion in Dragon Quest VIII by far was addition of voice acting for all of the major scenes. Yeah, the original Japanese version had no voices. They completely dubbed the Western version in English just for us and the voices are great. They're all done by professional British actors they chose and they really gave the game that European fantasy feel that it needed. You what? It gives the character so much personality. Even some of the minor NPCs are memorable because of it. You want to get rid of. Absolutely one of the best features of the game. So the PS2 version is great. But what about the others? Well, there's the mobile port and you should honestly skip that one unless it's your only option. The game is running on a phone, which means a lot of corners needed to be cut. So all those cool features like the voice acting and orchestral soundtrack are gone. It's basically just the Japanese version of the game. The graphics were toned down a bit too. So there's no more dynamic shadows anymore, which sucks. This leaves the last version. The 3DS remake of Dragon Quest 8, which released a decade after the original. I am very conflicted on his version because there's a lot of new additions they added. Like a lot. The 3DS remake has optional faster battles, which I love. There's no more random encounters. The monsters are actually roaming the field now so you can avoid them finally. They added a photo mode with literally over a hundred different photo challenges. There's new dungeons, DLC items, new costumes, and they added two new party members, Red and Mori, who you normally meet during a story. That's not to mention additional story sequences that add so much more to the overall narrative and actually make so much sense and explain a lot that the original story only implied. That is a ton of content they added. There's so many quality of life improvements such as instant alchemy, the ability to save up skill points rather than have to spend them right away, and the mini map on the bottom screen for easier navigation. It should be a no brainer that this is the best version of the game. Well, there's a few things wrong with it, unfortunately. To start, there's no orchestral soundtrack in either version of the game, even the English version. It's all midi for some reason, which really sucks because the symphonic soundtrack really adds to the atmosphere of the game. But if you're brave enough to mod your 3DS, it shouldn't be a huge problem. The game also has a bit of censorship. In the 3DS version, they chose to censor some violence, humiliation, and the most terrifying thing of all, thighs. A lot of the sexy outfits in the game were adjusted to be more modest for our very sensitive eyes. Although the bunny outfit actually looks even more provocative somehow with an exposed midriff. So good job, whoever did this. But by far the biggest weakness of the 3DS version is the graphics. On the 3DS, the game is running at 240p resolution and they made so many compromises just to get it running on the handheld. The graphics are horrendously bad compared to the PS2 version. It's not even close. The character models all have less detail. The colors of the world look all saturated. There's way less trees and vegetation. The clouds don't move quite like they used to. The dynamic lighting effects are just gone with no real shadows being cast by the characters and there's just overall less detail in the environments. How on earth do you make a remake of a game? And it somehow looks worse than the original. I just don't understand. Putting this game on the 3DS was the biggest mistake they made. At this point, the new 3DS was already out and it was more powerful. They literally could have made it for that. It would have looked a lot better. Heck, they could have remade it on the Vita instead. That handheld was pulling off PS2 ports perfectly. But no, they made this game on the 3DS and it looks like ass. Okay, maybe I'm being harsh. It actually looks pretty decent compared to other 3DS games. But it could have looked better. And even though the visuals aren't great, I still play it because I'm a sucker for all the new content. It can't be helped. In the end, as much as a pain is me to say it, I usually prefer playing the PS2 version because a game like this deserves to be experienced on the big screen with these kinds of amazing visuals. And it is a tough call because the added scenes and features in the 3DS version make it an absolute joy to play. So make your choice based on what's most important to you. I tend to go back and forth depending on my mood. Man, if only Square and export this game to modern consoles and PC, that would solve all of our problems. We could have the good graphics and all the features from the original with the additional content from the 3DS port making for a perfect addition. Man, that would be such a good idea. I wonder why they haven't done this yet. I mean, it's not like they've been making remakes of every single other game that they've released on the PS2 or something. And it's not like this is one of the best selling games on the PS2 or anything like that. That sure would be a genius idea though, wouldn't it? Anyway, let's talk about the game. Dragon Quest VIII is a character-driven RPG focused on the individual party members and their struggles. Here, the crew is led by the main character, a former guard of Trojan Castle. I like to call him VIII because that was his default name in the demo. He is initially joined by his companions, Yangus and King Trod. The basic story is that VIII is the only survivor of a curse that turned all of Kingdom of Trojan citizens into plants and ruined the entire kingdom, with the king being turned into a small, green, Yoda-looking creature, and his daughter, Princess Medea, turned into a horse that pulls your wagon. And this was all done by Duel Magus, a wicked gesture who infiltrated the kingdom and stole its greatest treasure. It's pretty straightforward. Trod is this stuck-up little imp who looks like someone smacked him in the face with a shovel. He's very sensitive about his appearance and rarely ever goes into town with you out of fear of being attacked for looking like a monster. But this doesn't really affect the way he acts. He still pretty much bosses the main character around like a lackey, which makes sense since you do technically work for him. And Trod's most outward character trait is his affection for his daughter, Princess Medea, aka the horse who pulls your wagon around. Yeah, the princess is the horse and she still has her intelligence after being cursed and shown to be very brave protecting her father when angry townsfolk attack him. She will be really important later on in the story. You're also accompanied by Yangus, a former bandit trying to go straight. He's sort of indebted to aid for saving his life in the past, and he's just a great character. He's a ruffian with his cockney accent being voiced by a British comedian Ricky Grover. He's very lovable and he turns into a PNG image whenever he sees King Trod appear out of nowhere. King Trod and Yangus hate each other and it's really funny to see them constantly bickering and fighting for no reason. The team is eventually joined by two more party members, Jessica and later Angelo. Jessica and Angelo have their own sort of mini arcs that prompt them to join the players party. Jessica is a powerful mage whose brother Alistair was murdered by and she has issues with her mom due to her lack of being ladylike. So she joins you to kind of escape from home and kind of go on a revenge spree. Jessica is one of my favorite characters in a whole game for two very big reasons. Her personality and her great fighting abilities. She's a very headstrong and defiant person and definitely the most mature one out of the group in more ways than one. She's also a very powerful spellcaster slash whip user and has a habit of shooting giant fireballs randomly indoors which seems like a great idea. Angelo is awesome. He's a night Templar of the Maella Abbey who has a habit for gambling and getting himself into trouble in a nearby town. He's also a ladies man with a lot of charisma getting the affection of everyone around him. Hey no need to tell the whole world. I have a certain image to maintain with my admirers. His motivation is to avenge the Abbot Francesco who is again murdered by Dolmagus for some reason. He also has a brother who is head of the Templar guard named Marcello and he's a real piece of work. He hates Angelo with a passion and even through the party in jail while letting a creepy menacing clown man through the front doors no problem. So I'm not really surprised that Angelo wants to leave this place. Angelo uses swords, bows, and magic to fight with. Having four main party members is probably one of the best decisions they made for this game. Previous Dragon Quest games usually had at least seven or eight party members to choose from which could honestly get to be overwhelming while DQ8 only has four in the vanilla version at least. The 3DS version adds two more but I don't count them. They honestly feel like fifth wheels. These characters were originally in the story but they added them in the remake as party members just because they clearly don't belong in the game as party members and feel so forced into the story. Standing off on the sidelines, barely interacting with anyone, sometimes adding in their unwanted opinion, and not being acknowledged by anyone awkwardly. So yeah, they don't count. The OG party is the only real DQ8 party to me. Anyway, having four party slots and four main party members means your entire focus is just on these characters and their struggles, development, and equipment. It is a very honed experience building up these characters. The DQ8 team is so iconic and they have so much chemistry with each other. If you're ever lost or don't know what to do, you have the option of consulting your party and they'll talk to you and talk to each other. Their dialogue changes everywhere you go and every time a story unfolds. Even in cutscenes, you'll find that they have lots of interactions with each other. They get into fights, make fun of each other, and just overall feel like an actual group of friends which many RPGs fail to really get down and it's nice to see it's executed so well. And I shouldn't forget to mention Munchie, Ate's mouse companion who is always sitting in his co-pocket and can be used to squeeze into tight spaces to help to crew out in different ways. Throughout most of the story, you and your friends are chasing after but he remains one step ahead of you wherever you go, taking the lives of innocents in a seemingly random manner. Dragon Quest VIII starts off really strong, allowing you to explore the town of Fairbury to look for clues and honestly it's one of the best towns in the entire game. It's actually one of the best RPG towns I've ever seen as a matter of fact. Fairbury is such a lively town it teaches you how to explore and discover early on which is the bread and butter of this game. This game is all about investigating and finding secrets and there's just so much going on in every corner of town. It's absurd. Just from exploring, you find that there's a well in the corner of town that you can climb down and at the bottom there's a treasure chest with a leather shield inside saving you from having to buy that one yourself. Some bookshelves in town have books you can read, explaining the lore of the world you're in, characters in town talk about events that occurred recently. There are some treasure chests that are locked which hints that you might want to come back later in the game when you're gonna lock them. You can raid people's cabinets and steal their things which is a very heroic thing to do. Oh look, a pot lid and we can equip it on Yangus to use as a makeshift shield. There's a lot of cool things to discover in these towns and probably the standout feature of the game is the way the game uses NPC dialogue to give hints to the player of where to go next sort of guiding the player's sense of discovery. You see there's no quest log in the game you pretty much have to pick up clues from town's people and remember them for later and this is the most organic and realistic way for adventure game to guide the players around. Early on you'll hear towns people talking about rumors regarding certain people of interest, the shopkeeper in the back of the weapon store tells you rumor about a key that can open any chest and another shopkeeper town will tell you a secret location of a recipe to make the ski but only if you go behind the counter and talk to him at the right time of day. Oh yeah this game also has a dynamic day and night cycle as time goes by the clouds in the sky move around the sun sets and it actually turns the night in real time which affects quests the kind of monsters you encounter outside of town and even the sleeping patterns of the town's people. Yeah the town's people actually go to sleep at night is that immersive? And the game keeps track of every town's person in the game they all move around depending on the time of day and reveal different tidbits which is crazy attention to detail. For example during the daytime this woman keeps complaining about her ring she lost and how she can't find it. Well at night you can hear her husband at the end talking in a sleep about how he lost the ring by dropping it in a well by the castle. Little things like these make players aware of a larger world on the outside as way later on in the game you actually do find a town with a castle and there is a well with a ring inside it that you can return to the lady. There's so much life in every town in Dragon Quest 8 and this just isn't something people talk about enough. The towns feel lived in and realistic with unique NPCs that just feel authentic they each have personalities some of them have funny things to say and a story of their own and this is just one town the game is full of towns like this and if you decide to go back to these old towns for whatever reason the NPCs actually change their dialogue based on the events that occurred later on in the game as if they expected players to go back. Every time I play this game I always discover something new I didn't know about before it's like all the towns and cities in the game are connected to each other and every NPC is aware of a world on the outside sometimes you find characters referencing events and people from other towns when you visit them too it really makes DQ 8's world feel like a real world with history and connections and consistency I always feel compelled to talk to every character in the towns and explore every house just to find a hint or some tidbit of lore fleshing out the world of Dragon Quest 8 it's phenomenal how much attention goes into these little details this franchise just knocks it out of the park with its towns and people it's one of Dragon Quest's greatest strengths for its storytelling and it is just highlighted in the first town so strongly but the game really shines when you leave town and go outside here's whoever introduced the Dragon Quest 8's vast overworld with hills trails and trees to explore this game has an amazing adventure atmosphere that just begs you to explore there's this excellent majestic soundtrack for when you roam in the countryside and it's really great with the orchestral theme there's roads hidden pathways and it all feels so seamless there's also cows on the side and when you talk to them you get a bottle of fresh milk all packaged up like like the cow just hands you the bottle like it's the grocery store or something finding your way is simple there's signposts telling you what's ahead and you have a map with topography to kind of analyze and figure out where to go it's really nice having a system of discovery like this when most games nowadays are obsessed with giving you mini maps and flashing markers telling you where to go it's almost like the game is letting you get lost and find your own way and if you decide to go off the beaten path there's plenty to discover like treasure chests dungeons and towns the UI overall is very minimalistic all you have is a compass a map and your wits it's all about using these few tools you're given to get lost and find your way around game developers are just now realizing how refreshing this feeling is with newer open world games toning down the UI to put a focus on the world and the atmosphere around you and this world has atmosphere this game is a true open world adventure where you travel an entire world every mountain and cottage you see off into the distance you can actually go to and there's secrets all around maybe you get to a waterfall cave and notice a hut on top of it so you decide to venture around and discover a mysterious old man living there who asked you to find his toolkit it's this kind of moment to moment discovery and adventure that really sells the experience for me on the overall we also run into these enemy encounters random or roaming depending on the version you're playing and the monsters of dq8 are just amazingly expressive and super creative we all know dragon quest monsters are great but dq8 introduced some really good ones we've got a fencing fox with a little hat and cape he looks like puss in boots there's a gorilla that looks like one of those Kipling monkey keychains a chain nine who throws these spike dog collars at you just a lot of great designs but let's talk about how we beat up these creatures now dq8 is turn based and in the ps2 version it's honestly a little bit slow because of all the flashy animations which makes me appreciate that 3ds is fast battling all the more for the most part your typical dragon quest combat system you attack defend, use magic abilities and items but what's new is you can psych up which takes us to turn to sort of boost your attack power and you can keep psyching up until you get to a state of high tension to deal a huge amount of damage which is strategic for bosses I just love turn based combat it's strategic, it's fun anyone can pick it up and get good at it and it can be very challenging when it wants to be plus the game lets you live out your fantasies of fighting hipsters in the street you'll run to a lot of monsters and get plenty of practice fighting and leveling up when traveling from town to town which brings us to the leveling system dragon quest 8's progression system is based on skill points which is new for the series and very simple and easy to grasp basically each character has five different skill sets three different weapons one unarmed and one personality skill set hero has courage yangus has humanity angel has charisma and jessica has sex appeal every time you level up you have a chance of getting some skill points that you can use to upgrade each set which will reward your character with additional abilities for battle and on the field leveling up any of these skill sets unlocks you some very useful abilities such as the underpants stance or the puff puff which allows jessica to seduce the enemies usually my go-to is focusing on just one weapon for most of the game while putting enough into a special skill to get whatever moves you want for aid, swords and spears of grade yangus does really well with axes and sights jessica is best equipped with whips and angelo should use bows it's a really simple system that anyone could grasp but it works well and it's really fun leveling up characters in ways that suit your play style a bit into the game you unlock the alchemy pod which allows players to combine two or three items to create a new item using a recipe recipes can be found in books or from talking to people or you could just google them like a cheater yeah you don't actually need to find a recipe in the game to make something if you already know the recipe nothing is stopping you from just making things if you know how to you could also just blindly guess and come across something it's honestly great that they give you this kind of freedom to experiment around maybe on a second playthrough you might remember some recipes from before and be able to make some high level equipment early that's a lot of freedom they give you as soon as you get the alchemy pod you'll already have enough materials for a new whip or jessica and a thief scheme allowing you to go back and open any chest you miss which is a great setup the alchemy pod lets you make stronger medicinal herbs and consumables any kind of weapon and armor you can think of accessories and you can even make a different kinds of cheese for munchie using the fresh milk combined with something extra for an added effect so this game's main structure boils down to the player visiting new towns and meeting new characters of problems that intertwine with your own quest prompting you to help them you finish your side stories find out where your mark is headed and soon you're on the road again fighting danger and resting wherever possible and this is a common feeling you'll have that have an adventurer roaming around from town to town sleeping where you can constantly on the move it's a cool vibe you get you might have to help a depressed king see his deceased wife one last time or find a legendary jewel for a female bandit just to get closer to your goal this will usually result in some dungeon dive where you traverse a cave or tower with some admittedly creative puzzles that actually get you thinking three dimensionally followed by a boss fight some of these bosses are great there's a guy named Don Mole who's a giant fat mole with sunglasses and a southern accent who sings and you need to get a magical harp back from him that he stole the bosses in the game are often challenging and require a lot of critical thinking to beat and many of these story locations can be tackled in different order due to the open world nature of the game especially when you unlock your own ship which can sail and dock anywhere it becomes a true non-linear open world adventure game at this point and it's not just all fighting in the game there's plenty of downtime to be had and lots of distractions along the way a major one being the monster battling arena on the way to the town of Pickham you'll run to this weird Italian guy named Mori he asks you to find infamous monsters to recruit so he can watch animals fight for his amusement it's pretty easy finding them since it gives you memos clearly indicating where they each located and you can find them roam in the area you find these monsters, you beat the shit out of them and then they willingly join you out of respect for you yeah you don't cram them into a little ball and kidnap them from their habitat against their will they actually choose to follow you, isn't that nice? after that you get to join the monster arena there's different ranks to monster battling and it's all about making your way to the top you can even summon your monster teams outside of the arena which is cool this world has many things to do there's a guy named Dodgy Dave who tasks you with making different things they offer me pot for money there's mini medals all over the place to collect which you can trade in for prizes you can adopt a pet saber cat to ride around faster there's some optional dungeons for you to die with unique bosses and you can also check out the bunny girl show in the basement at the back of red hotel at night man what a bunch of sick freaks oh merciful goddess pardon my sin come on up there's plenty for everyone just look at the size of them someone tell that moron to get down in front I can't see the stage oh this one isn't jealous at all I'll give Dragon Quest Day one thing it's very realistic I don't think a medieval fantasy world would actually exist without a place like this for the locals to go to let's see what the bartender has to say oh so the slot machine to the right of the flower box is loose oh yeah there's a casino in the game there's actually two one to pick them and one in backer at at the casino there's slot machines roulette and a bingo game you can play the main draw here is the prizes there's a handful of prizes you can redeem with casino tokens that you can't get elsewhere you can get the falcon blade a sword that attacks twice in one turn for 10 000 tokens and the liquid metal armor which is one of the best armors in the game for 50 000 tokens so yes your crippling gambling addiction is finally useful for helping save the world for once one of the major locations you go to when you start exploring the world is the kingdom of argonia where you meet princess midi as a ranged fiance prince charmless it's charmelee let me tell you something they have created the worst NPC in any video game ever with this one this guy is the worst most unlikeable most punchable douchebag i've ever seen i've never seen a video game character so hateable aside from this fat piece of shit he is absolutely the worst dragon quest character ever at this point you and your party need to get the magic mirror which is the royal treasure of argonia and in exchange king clavius wants you to escort his son through the royal initiation which requires him to kill an argon lizard and present its heart as proof of his worthiness to the throne oh he's worthier right worth even ass whooping indeed i am you uneducated buckkin the problem is he's a cowardly piece of crap who keeps running away from every fight when he's not doing exactly one damage forcing you to do it yourself he's also a rude cruel little brat who thinks he's better than everyone else just because he's a prince even his father is sick of him by now every time you defeat an argon lizard he's not satisfied with the size of the heart and makes you fight another until you get a giant one and in the end he just ends up buying a heart from the supermarket which means you just wasted all the time hunting lizards for nothing just a completely unlikable character and i gotta give it to them for making a character so hateable because that was definitely their intention poor medea having to marry this guy and speaking of medea i just want to mention how heartwarming her relationship with the main character is in this game i mean she's a horse for most of the game but throughout the story she's still seen as being as courageous as her friends you start to get to know her more as the game progresses though when you go to sleep at the end after different story sequences she'll actually talk to you in your dreams through some astral projection here she has a bit of a heart to heart with eight every now and then revealing some previous history between her and the protagonist as well as their feelings for each other and there's always a song playing call over the sorrow which fits the dreamy longing feeling of the scene so well and these sequences you really get to learn more about her personality and they really help to show the love that the two share for each other they're honestly really great together and the added scenes in a 3ds version of the game showing how they met and how age started working at the castle only further cement that feeling even though the main character doesn't talk you can somehow understand his feelings for her just from his actions and everyone else's dialogue alone they reveal so much about her as the game goes on which makes sense because the game really is all about her if you think about it she's even in the logo if you look closely it is just so sad that you know she's gonna have to marry that asshole charmless in the end because of a promise her grandparents made it's overall a very sad and well done subplot in the game and only further motivates the player to hurry up and free her of the curse after meeting and helping many people across the journey gaining new abilities and honing in another target you eventually do face off against do make us an epic battle deep in the dark ruins and he's pretty tough too with a monstrous demon form and just when you think you've defeated him and that the game is finally over the true story has only just begun it turns out there's a greater evil behind the treasure trodding castle the god bird scepter there actually has an immortal ancient evil being inside of it that was controlling do make us and controls anyone wielding scepter and his plan is to free himself by using the scepter to kill all seven descendants of the original stages who sealed them away years ago with Rylas Alistar and Aber Francisco being the three of them did you get all that see this is where everything in the game comes together and all the mysteries surrounding the treasure finally starts to make sense and it is up to the player to get to the remaining stages before the evil dude to protect them though it doesn't always work out that well let me tell you this game is really sad and depressing at times there's so much regret and tragedy related to the last few stages you visit these character interactions are so well written and easy to relate to that you feel the loss that these characters have to go through I honestly think that this is one of the most depressing dragon quest games it gets to be a little too much at times the cheery adventure atmosphere that you've gotten used to up until this point starts to get a whole lot darker when you get near to the end game and have to experience more sad stories towards the end every event in the game just makes sense and you'll find that you have to backtrack to earlier parts of the game where certain details that you just can pay attention to have way more significance than they let on and I love the game for that how it uses the world it created to tell a cohesive story the party eventually finds a god bird named Empyrea who flies into the heart of darkness where you experience one of the creepiest dungeons in the series and find raptor and the lord of darkness the evil being behind everything though his first form is incredibly wimpy and silly looking like this is the lord of darkness and his voice is the best part just listen to this I've been waiting for you what you're so ridiculous sounding this is the final villain you should not have much trouble with this weirdo at least until he grows a triple chin and evil goatee looking like a purple Gabriel Egliseus now this is an actual threat at first you won't even be able to scratch raptor and when he's the embodiment of type 4 diabetes you have to use the god bird sector like 7 moves in a row to summon the souls of the sages of old just to be able to weaken him which is pretty tedious at first takes at least 10 minutes then the real fight begins and it'll take a lot of skill and determination to beat him but by this point you'll probably be such a high level that you'll have omni heal and kazing for multiple characters that'll let you consistently heal everyone and revive anyone who falls immediately I honestly had the party AI on and just kept periodically hitting the X button on the controller while eating a sandwich and I eventually beat him this is a very difficult game if you haven't noticed when you defeat raptor and the curse finally breaks and princess medea and trode are for turn to the former selves in a very heartwarming scene although trode berry looks any different than before he's just not green anymore but he's still like two feet tall and has the exact same face which I think is hilarious and even the characters notice this and it's funny because he was always so conscious about his appearance when he always just looked like a little troll medea however that's a sight for sore eyes she's finally a human again and now she can marry her fat fiancee at last yay also the curse on the whole kingdom goes away and everyone who's turning to a plan gets turned back and of course this call is for an obligatory celebration feast scene where we get a slideshow of still pngs with this ridiculous confetti filter over looking like windows movie maker it's like they ran out of money in the budget at the end and said hey screw it let's use this fancy new program microsoft paying to be done with this and so the day is saved and everyone goes about their lives then we fast forward a few months and eight is already the captain of the world guard for his bravery and rescuing the kingdom but he also has to escort medea to his novella cathedral on her wedding day to prince fatso and you can tell it's making him upset even though he doesn't say anything the other party members pretty much spelled out how he's feeling so you go to her room to escort her outside to the carriage but not before raiding her underwear drawer of course he's a hero after all now here's where it gets interesting dragon quest eight actually has multiple endings depending on certain requirements that are met in the standard ending the crew goes to the church with medea and sadly find out that they can't attend the wedding because fatboy won't allow any commoners to attend so the following morning after staying at the inn yangus clears away for eight to crash the wedding only to find that she's already escaped with king trode who finally grew a spine decided he wouldn't let traumas marry medea the dude was literally about to let a guy who almost gave him a lashing marry his own daughter could have spoke up sooner if i'm being honest eight and medea have their little ending together where they run away into the distance and traumas is finally confronted by his father by lying to pass the initiation the group splits up in the end and you have a happy ending which is where the post game begins the post game explains so much about the journey that was hinted at for so long it basically brings you back to the right before fighting rapthorne except the world is slightly different this time as there's a new area we can visit caledrogovian sanctuary which changes the trajectory here the party discovers a village full of elf-like dragon people known as the dragovians and we find out that eight is actually one of them who's cast away as a child so the main character of dragon quest eight is actually part dragon and his whole time munchie was actually eight's dragovian grandfather in disguise looking over him which explains why munchie was so intelligent his name is chen mui oh i get it it's like an anagram of munchie that's clever yeah wow there's such a development looking back there were actually so many signs pointing to this that i'm surprised i didn't realize it sooner this game is very very good at foreshadowing it doesn't so subtly that playing it a second time you notice so many things you didn't notice before anyway the crew is tasked with completing the dragovian trials by the lord of the dragovians and after passing the trials you find out the truth from chen mui that eight's father was actually king clavius's older brother who fell in love with the dragovian princess and munchie is extremely racist so he naturally objected and they both died of a broken heart or some shit i don't even know but what this really means is that eight is actually their rightful heir to the throne of argonia and he's charmos's cousin what this dude is your cousin are you kidding me i must take after his mom so chen mui gives you your father's argon ring which is proof of your royal lineage and when you refight the raptor and boss and get through all the events all over again this time you're able to visit clavius the night before the wedding and show him the ring he naturally gets pretty mad at you for trying to usurp the throne and tells you to go away however the following morning during the wedding he changes his mind i have reconsidered you are the rightful groom so in the end eight and medea actually get married and we have a happy ending between the two i love this ending dragon quest eight is like a fairy tale in video game form and this is the perfect ending for a game like that it's so nice to see medea saved by eight and the two of them getting to be together finally and almost makes you cry doesn't it well don't cry yet there's actually a third ending in the 3ds version when you present the ring to clavius at night and tell him that you don't like medea he'll assume that there's someone else you like and in the morning instead of medea showing up for the wedding it's jessica what so yeah in the 3ds port they made a new ending where you marry jessica just because obviously over the years people prefer jessica as the best dragon quest waifu and the dq team knows it which is why they added this to the game in this ending jessica is wearing medea's wedding dress which she uh certainly fills in and it makes that she loves you and medea is there wishing you well no hard feelings this ending also has more dialogue and his overall way longer and more detail in the other endings which is why i kind of like it the most plus i like jessica a lot so i don't mind this one bit it really shows you how much of an rpg this is because they allow you to make a choice of who you want to marry in the end because you spend about as much time with jessica as you do medea's and some people will rather marry jessica so i give them props for adding to this ending to the game whatever ending you choose they're all good in their own ways and they close off the game nicely and that's it that's dragon quest 8 there's a reason they're resonated with audiences at the time and made so many people become fans of the series to me it is hands down the best rpg of the playstation 2 era and an adventure that just doesn't get old i hope you enjoyed my retrospective on dragon quest 8 and what it means to me tell me your dragon quest 8 story in the comments too i'd really like to hear them thanks for watching and i'll see you next time