Post by Iyouboushi on Nov 5, 2005 16:47:55 GMT -6
So Scott sent me the link to order a demo disc, and it arrived sometime last week I believe. I've finally had the chance to sit down and play it to the end.
Graphics
The graphics are stunningly beautiful. The characters and monsters were drawn by our favorite mangaka Akira Toriyama (who we all know did DB/Z) and they were translated great into the game. They're wonderfully cell shaded that gives them an anime appearance and are very colorful. The other graphics (houses, towns, forests, dungeons, etc) are also beautiful and make the world seem to be very realistic. The downside to the characters (not so much with monsters) is that they all look very similar to a DBZ character. One character, for example, looks exactly like Trunks only with white hair instead of purple and a red cloak instead of a Capsule Corp. jacket. And it's not just main characters. There's an NPC in the first town that looks just like a skinny version of Mr. Satan. I suppose that it's because it's done by Akira Toriyama, but it leaves you wondering he's even able to draw anything else.
Gameplay
Although the demo seems fairly limited in what items you can get/use, it runs nicely. The controls were changed for American audiences and are very easy to learn, unlike the Japanese version (where just to talk to an NPC you have to bring up a menu to get to "talk", i.e. the old Dragon Quest style). Battles are well done and I especially love the skill point system (where you can allocate skill points into certain skills/traits). Looks like there will be some replayability with that alone (choosing how you want to make your characters progress). Battles are interesting and monsters will often do various things that will keep the player watching to see what's coming next (as opposed to just constantly hitting X over and over until the battle is over). So far it seems nicely done.
The World
I'm mentioning this in a seperate catagory because I wanted to point out that it's huge. Although it's not uncommon for RPGs to do this now-a-days, the world is continious, much like FFXI. It's pretty much to scale. This makes it so that there's TONS of stuff to explore, even in the demo. Also because it goes from day to night (like FFXI did) if you spend too long outside. Not the first game to do it, won't be the last, but I was shocked to find that out (the few times I had played the demo before this I never stayed outside long enough for it to happen).
Music
And here is where the game starts to lack. While the music IS beautiful, it gets pretty repetitive. My main complaint is really the battle music. It's not bad per se, but it's not great either. It doesn't get you excited to be in battles. In fact, after a few hours of it, you'll probably be looking for a CD to turn on while leveling. Hopefully the full game will have more than one regular battle tune.
The rest of the stuff will have to wait until the full game is released, as the demo doesn't really provided the entire backstory of what's going on. But you can gather that an evil wizard has unlocked something or another and cursed the king and his daughter and sealed his castle. The main character (named "Eight" in the demo) has somehow escaped this and is helping the king to try and put an end to the evil. But we'll see in the full game what the whole story is.
I highly recommend it. It's the first RPG I've played in awhile that actually made me want to rush out and buy the game immedately. Too bad it's not out yet. Oh and there's one more nice thing that SE is going to throw in with DQ8: the demo disc for FFXII! So pick up a copy of a great game and get a demo of something that has had people waiting on it for years. Sounds great to me.
Graphics
The graphics are stunningly beautiful. The characters and monsters were drawn by our favorite mangaka Akira Toriyama (who we all know did DB/Z) and they were translated great into the game. They're wonderfully cell shaded that gives them an anime appearance and are very colorful. The other graphics (houses, towns, forests, dungeons, etc) are also beautiful and make the world seem to be very realistic. The downside to the characters (not so much with monsters) is that they all look very similar to a DBZ character. One character, for example, looks exactly like Trunks only with white hair instead of purple and a red cloak instead of a Capsule Corp. jacket. And it's not just main characters. There's an NPC in the first town that looks just like a skinny version of Mr. Satan. I suppose that it's because it's done by Akira Toriyama, but it leaves you wondering he's even able to draw anything else.
Gameplay
Although the demo seems fairly limited in what items you can get/use, it runs nicely. The controls were changed for American audiences and are very easy to learn, unlike the Japanese version (where just to talk to an NPC you have to bring up a menu to get to "talk", i.e. the old Dragon Quest style). Battles are well done and I especially love the skill point system (where you can allocate skill points into certain skills/traits). Looks like there will be some replayability with that alone (choosing how you want to make your characters progress). Battles are interesting and monsters will often do various things that will keep the player watching to see what's coming next (as opposed to just constantly hitting X over and over until the battle is over). So far it seems nicely done.
The World
I'm mentioning this in a seperate catagory because I wanted to point out that it's huge. Although it's not uncommon for RPGs to do this now-a-days, the world is continious, much like FFXI. It's pretty much to scale. This makes it so that there's TONS of stuff to explore, even in the demo. Also because it goes from day to night (like FFXI did) if you spend too long outside. Not the first game to do it, won't be the last, but I was shocked to find that out (the few times I had played the demo before this I never stayed outside long enough for it to happen).
Music
And here is where the game starts to lack. While the music IS beautiful, it gets pretty repetitive. My main complaint is really the battle music. It's not bad per se, but it's not great either. It doesn't get you excited to be in battles. In fact, after a few hours of it, you'll probably be looking for a CD to turn on while leveling. Hopefully the full game will have more than one regular battle tune.
The rest of the stuff will have to wait until the full game is released, as the demo doesn't really provided the entire backstory of what's going on. But you can gather that an evil wizard has unlocked something or another and cursed the king and his daughter and sealed his castle. The main character (named "Eight" in the demo) has somehow escaped this and is helping the king to try and put an end to the evil. But we'll see in the full game what the whole story is.
I highly recommend it. It's the first RPG I've played in awhile that actually made me want to rush out and buy the game immedately. Too bad it's not out yet. Oh and there's one more nice thing that SE is going to throw in with DQ8: the demo disc for FFXII! So pick up a copy of a great game and get a demo of something that has had people waiting on it for years. Sounds great to me.