Dragon Quest VIII - Journey of the Cursed King Review

The Dragon Quest series is pretty much the only JRPG franchise that refuses to change in order to broaden its demographic. No deep scripts, no complex character development, no changes in combat mechanics, no new monster designs, or even a change in key developers.

The overall gaming community doesn't like this, but fans of the series prefer it this way. The series never needed to change and we love it exactly as it is. Around the early 2000s, series creator Yuji Horii personally picked Level-5 to develop the eighth game in the series under his supervision after playing Dark Chronicle. It became one of the best selling games of its time and is regarded as one of the best entries in the series, and, of course, it made the JRPG gaming community aware that Level-5 was a force to be reckoned with. Let's take a look:

  

The Story:

Just like all other games in the series, the story was written by Yuji Horii. This series never had deep storytelling and it doesn't pretend to, either. An evil jester steals a magic scepter from a castle. The power of the scepter curses the castle and everyone in it. The king becomes a monster and the princess becomes a horse. The only one that escaped unscathed is one of the castle guards. The three of them give chase to this villain to try to break the curse. The plot is very simple and the characters are equally simple. It is, for all purposes, a lighthearted story with great British humor. The characters have just enough personality to be likable, except for the main character, who is silent and devoid of any character. See, this is an old school JRPG where you're supposed to pretend you're the main character. Still, it's not as good as the best DQ plots, but it works for what it does, and even then it still has its moments of greatness.

7.5/10


The Gameplay:

It's almost unnecessary to describe the gameplay. If you have any sort of familiarity with old school JRPGs, you know exactly how it goes. It's all here: Giant world map full of places to explore and things to do, tons of side quests, random battles (with a well-programmed frequency), turn-based battle system, dungeons filled with monsters and towns full of NPCs and shops.

The character development system is still the traditional Exp system, but this time around we also have a skill point system. Every time you level up, you get a certain number of points that you can distribute between your character's "weapon" stats, and make your characters better at using certain types of weapons. Let's say you give 10 points to your "Swords" stat: from now on, that character will get a bonus of +10 attack if he's equipped with a sword. Obviously, it's wise to distribute points equally to each weapon stat. We also have a tension system. The command "Psyche up" allows the player to skip a character's turn in order to build "tension", making that character's next attack stronger. By using it multiple times in succession, the character's attack will do more damage and, if you're lucky, put that character in a state of high tension, where he/she becomes incredibly strong.

Overall the gameplay is basically brilliant in its simplicity.

10/10


The Audio:

As always, the composer is Koichi Sugiyama, the godfather of gaming music. This is the first game in the series to have an orchestrated soundtrack, and it is done beautifully. All songs are memorable and create a great sense of adventure and atmosphere. The British voice acting is also very charming thanks to Level-5's trademark quirky, British sense of humor.

10/10


The Graphics:

Using the same graphics engine as Dark Chronicle, Level-5 creates a cel-shaded world that feels like a cartoon and that still looks quite appealing today. As always with this series, legendary manga artist Akira Toriyama designed characters and monsters, and that characteristic charm of his is all over this game.

10/10


Overall, Dragon Quest VIII is what I like to call a game for JRPG gamers rather than JRPG fans. If you need a deep plot with complex characters, stay away, but if you love deep character building, challenging turn based battles and rewarding exploration in a vast world, then put aside a few months in your calendar, and prepare yourself for a rich gameplay experience

Final Grade: 9.4/10

See you next review ;)

Let's talk about Dark Cloud and Dark Chronicle

In 1998, a game designer named Akihiro Hino founded a game development company with the friends that worked with him in his previous company. In order to get the company off the ground, he made a deal with Sony, who would allow him to develop for their upcoming PlayStation 2 as a second party developer under the condition that they would help him establish the company.

Level-5's first game was 2001's Dark Cloud, a dungeon crawling JRPG with combat mechanics inspired by 3D Zelda games. The game also offered a unique building system that allowed the player to rebuild towns and return its destroyed world to the way it was, or as the player wished it to be. With great gameplay and a great soundtrack by Hino's close friend Tomohito Nishiura (who would later become the head of Level-5's sound department), Dark Cloud received critical and financial sucess. The extremely thin story was there just as an excuse for the gameplay, and it's not really worth talking about. Despite being a good game today, it hasn't aged all that well, mostly because of the complete lack of story.

Two years later, Level-5 created a spiritual sucessor called Dark Chronicle, for which Sony gave them more creative freedom and a bigger budget. It took what worked in the first game and expanded upon it, fixed most of the flaws, and added a more developed story. This is the game we're taking a look at today:

  

 

The Story:

This game tells the story of Max, a young man who lives in a huge city called Palm Brinks. No one is allowed to leave for reasons unknown to the inhabitants. Max, who dreams of going out to the world to find his lost mother, manages to get out one day. After that, he realizes the cruel truth: The world is now an empty wasteland. Shortly after that, he meets Monica, a girl from a hundred years in the future, who has come to Max's time on a quest to prevent all this from ever happening. Both of them join forces to stop the one responsible for this and restore the world to it's former state.
The story is very good, with a good amount of heartfelt moments and great payoffs to each subplot.
It is not without its flaws though. Max is a great character, but Monica barely gets any development. She has enough personality to make her likable, but she needed some backstory. The biggest strength of the story, however, is the characters you meet throughout the game's eight chapters. Most of them are quite charming and have really good stories of their own to tell.

It is a story with its share of problems, but what works really works. Also, since it's Level-5's first attempt at actual storytelling, I think it deserves a bit of slack..

7.5/10


The Gameplay

Dark Chronicle is a dungeon crawling JRPG, so most of the time, you will be battling monsters in a dungeon. The combat is very reminiscent of 3D Zelda games. It all takes place in real time and you can lock on to enemies, but you have only two primary means of attack: A short-ranged weapon and a long-ranged weapon. Each enemy is weak against one of them, so it's up to you to figure out what to use. Combat also involves guarding and dodging against incoming attacks and using one of three battle items to heal yourself or do damage. Both Max and Monica have their own alternate ways of attacking. Max has a robot that you can build yourself, with various weapons. It is very effective against machine monsters and required for a later boss battle, so I recommend putting work into it. Monica can turn into monsters and communicate with them to find stuff, and you can also level up your monster forms for alternate ways to fight. After you finish off all monsters in a dungeon floor, you can play a minigame reminiscent of Mario Golf that can grant you rare items. Outside the dungeons is where you will find more variety. You can take pictures of anything you find and use them as ideas in an invention system. Through this system, Max can invent various items like an aquarium that allows you to breed fish, which you can catch yourself in the fishing mechanic that becomes available when you get a rod. There also various NPCs in Palm Brinks, each with their own side-quests.

But, of course, we have to talk about the most unique feature of Dark Chronicle: World Rebuilding. In order to create a better future for everyone, you need to use the Georama system to repopulate the world. In dungeons, you can find Geostones, which give you information on what to do to rebuild civilization and how to make town buildings, trees etc.  Following a list of tasks, you need to create cities and bring people from Palm Brinks to them in order to restart the chain of time for that place. Do that and you can change the future and find out how much of an impact you're having on history.

The only real problem I have with the gameplay is that the dungeons have way too many floors. Aside from golf, combat is the only thing you will do in them, so the dungeons can feel drawn out.

Overall though, the gameplay is fantastic, mostly thanks to the big amount of variety.

9.5/10


The Audio

Level-5's musical guru, Tomohito Nishiura, made the music. Even back in his early career, he already had his trademark style more than formed. The accordion tunes coupled with strings create a great atmosphere and do a great job of enhancing the story. The vocal song "Time is Changing" sung by Barbara Cohen is quite soothing and really catchy. The voice acting is also pretty good, especially for its time.

9/10

The Graphics

As usual with Level-5, we have cel-shaded graphics that create an animated movie feel. The animations are pretty good and there's full lip-syncing. There's also quite a lot of attention to detail, like Monica's hair and Max's necklace moving realistically depending on their motions during gameplay and cutscenes. Character design is also quite charming and very reminiscent of fairy tale characters.


9/10


Overall, Dark Chronicle is a beautiful gem that offers a unique take on the genre that is still unlike anything else and remains one of the best games on the console.

Final Grade: 9/10

It's been years since this game came out, and fans still hold out hope for a third game. There are fansites, forums and a facebook dedicated to make Level-5 aware of how much they want it. Me? I would definitely be interested in a third game, but Level-5's following games would prove even better than Dark Chronicle, so at this point anything they make will be fine with me, as I know it will be amazing.

Professor Layton Retrospective - The Miracle Mask

Following Specter's Call, Level-5 started development on the next game in the series. It started out as another DS game, but after looking at a developer kit of the Nintendo 3DS, Akihiro Hino decided to order development to start over from scratch to take full advantage of the new console's capabilities.
The result is Miracle Mask, the first of the 2 Layton games on the platform. Let's take a look:

The Story:

One day, the Professor receives a letter from Angela Ledore, a woman he went to high school with.
In it, she asks for help. Her city, Monte D'Or, is being attacked by an individual known as the Masked Gentleman, who apparently can perform terrible miracles. Layton, Luke and Emmy arrive at Monte D'Or just in time to see the Masked Gentleman turn half the people in the City Plaza into stone. It's up to the Professor to figure out who is this man and what is he after. The story is as expected absolutely engaging. In this game we get to see Layton's past in detail and how he became the perfect gentleman we all know and love. It's got tragedy, humor and intrigue all the way through, culminating into a heartwarming climax that you would have to be very bitter not to love. The "Episodes" menu from Specter's Call returns with extra cutscenes that further develop the story and the characters, and this time they all get unlocked as you go through the story.

Overall it's yet another wonderful tale of mystery that will engage you like few stories in games can.

10/10


The Gameplay:

Taking advantage of the capabilities of the 3DS, the game now gives you a new control scheme to explore the 3D environments. This time, you have an actual cursor, like in a point and click adventure game that you drag around by using the touch screen. It allows for 3D investigation that wouldn't be possible in the 2D areas of previous games. Another noteworthy aspect of the gameplay is the added variety. At certain times in the game, you will encounter certain different gameplay styles according to what makes sense in the context of the story. I would like to mention the Zelda-like dungeon with 6 floors where you see things from a top-down perspective and solve puzzles reminiscent of Nintendo's action-adventure series. Aside from this, though, it's the same deal we all know already: Numerous puzzles that will test your brain in various ways.

Overall, the gameplay does a fantastic job of complimenting the story, having variety and staying true to what made this series what it is.

10/10



The Audio:

Once again Tomohito Nishiura gives us a wonderful soundtrack that gives the world of the game great atmosphere, complements the emotional moments of the plot and just has you humming to it.
The voice acting is as always absolutely stellar.

10/10


The Graphics:

Taking advantage of the capabilities of the 3DS, the whole world of Layton is now a fully 3D cel-shaded environment. The characters also now have 3D models, and in some cutscenes are actually fully animated. Some people dislike this and prefer the visual consistency between FMVs and the 2D ingame visuals of previous games. Me personally, I appreciate that Level-5 is trying to fully use the capabilities of the system. The use of 3D is pretty superficial, as it doesn't compliment the gameplay like in other 3DS titles and is just for visual spectacle. It should be noted, however, that this game was a launch title in Japan, and since the artists didn't have any basis to follow, I think they can be forgiven.

9/10

Overall the first 3D entry in the series is an excellent chapter that brings a welcome breath of fresh air into the series while still staying true to what makes it special.

Final Grade: 10/10


It was without a doubt a pleasure to play through the titles of this series back to back, and now the wait for the final chapter of the saga, Azran Legacy, begins. See you next review ;)

Professor Layton Retrospective - The Specter's Call

After the masterpiece that was Lost Future, it would be extremely hard to live up to expectations with another sequel. So Level-5 decided to somewhat start over with a trilogy of prequels that will oficially be complete at the end of this year. It begins with The Specter's Call, which is now chronlogically the first game in the series.. Let's take a look:

The Story:

Back when Layton had no apprentices or assistants, he received a letter from a college friend about a giant specter terrorizing the city he lives in. After being joined by his new assistant Emmy Altava, who was appointed by the Dean of his university without his knowledge, Layton hurries to help his friend. As always, the story is fantastic, full of mystery and heart. One noteworthy addition in this game is the episodes feature, which allow you to unlock certain optional cutscenes that develop the new characters and some old ones. Most of them are unlocked through the main story, but if you want to watch them all you're gonna have to solve all 155 puzzles to unlock the optional ones. It's worth it though. Of course it wouldn't be a Layton story if it didn't end with an emotionally powerful ending right? Even though this one isn't as powerful as the ending of Lost Future, it's still a fantastic ending that makes all the hard work worth it. The characters are also great. Right from the get go, Emmy proves herself a charismatic addition to the main cast and the new villain is a serious threat to our heroes.

Overall it's a fantastic story with great characters.

9.5/10


The Gameplay:

The gameplay is exactly what we expect from the series. It's full of cleverly crafted puzzles for you to solve, puzzle minigames to complete and objects to collect. The city in this game is the biggest in the series yet, so this game introduces various methods to quickly travel to certain places.

Overall, the gameplay keeps the same level of quality that was reached in Lost Future.

10/10


The Audio:

Tomohito Nishiura gives us yet another brilliant soundtrack full of excellent tunes. The ending theme in particular is one of the best in the series. The voice acting is once again sublime and every actor puts their all into giving a great performance.

10/10


The Graphics:

Keeping the exact same art style and sprite animation style from the previous game, the game keeps all of the charm that's a trademark of the series. If it ain't broken, don't fix it.

10/10


Overall Specter's Call is a brilliant game that starts off the prequel trilogy with great momentum.


Final Grade: 10/10

Join me next time when we move to the 3DS where Level-5 mixes things up with Miracle Mask. See ya then ;)

Professor Layton Retrospective - The Lost Future

After two hits in a row, the first Layton trilogy comes to an end with "The Lost Future". It is currently the last game in the series chronologically, as the new, ongoing trilogy is a prequel series. It ties all the loose ends of every sub-plot that started in "Curious Village" while telling its own story. Let's take a look:

The Story:

The professor and Luke receive a letter from someone claiming to be Luke himself from ten years in the future. In it, he requests the professor's assistance to stop the future version of Layton, who has apparently became a mob boss, rendering police useless, and now rules London.
The story is once again fantastic. The time travel aspect is handled in a brilliant way to the point that it creates no plotholes at all, thanks to a specific plot point that prevents that possibility.
The characters are also quite great. We get some character development for old characters, including the main duo, and the new characters are all charismatic and interesting. As Layton tradition demands, it all builds up into an emotionally powerful climax, and this one is even better than the previous one.

Overall, it's a fantastic story with fantastic characters.

10/10


The Gameplay:

This game perfects the formula that was already established in the previous two games. The puzzles are as clever and creative as ever, and all of them use the touch screen brilliantly. The puzzle mini-games are also better this time around, especially one where you have to lead a car through a course that resembles SEGA's "Chu-Chu Rocket". There's also the addition of a Super Hint added to the three hint system from the previous games, which pretty much tells you the answer to the puzzle at the cost of two hint coins.

Overall, the gameplay is the Layton formula perfected.

10/10


The Audio:

Tomohito Nishiura once again did the music and it's once again charming thanks to the European flavor the accordion gives it. I don't find this soundtrack to be quite as catchy as previous ones, but the brilliant composition more than makes for it, as it always fits the context of every situation. The track for the Puzzle Battles in particular is fantastic. The voice acting is once again brilliant. Christopher Miller, in particular, gives a standout performance as Layton.

9.5/10


The Graphics:

Just as in previous entries, the game uses 2D animated sprites to achieve a hand drawn look. The FMVs are, as always, very well made and help the cinematic feel a lot, and character design is still full of variety and charm.

10/10


Overall, The first Layton trilogy stands as one of the greatest ever in any entertainment medium. Each game is better than the last, and it tells an overall brilliant plot.

Final Grade: 10/10


Next time, we take a look at Level-5's attempt at pulling off what George Lucas couldn't: Create a great trilogy of prequels. See ya then ;)

Professor Layton Retrospective: The Eternal Diva

Four days before the 3rd Professor Layton game came out, The first movie installment of the franchise was released in Europe. It was made by Level-5 themselves in collaboration with P.A Works, the company that makes the FMVs for the games. Loved by fans, this is one of those rare good video game movies. The movie takes place after Specter's Call and before The Miracle Mask, let's take a look:

The Script:

Professor Layton receives a letter from Janice, a former student of his who's an opera singer. In it she informs the professor that a young girl claims to be a reincarnation of a dead friend of hers. It's up to the Professor and Luke to solve this mystery. The story is great, as it retains the family friendly but emotionally deep themes that the series is known for. The characters are also very interesting and likable, especially Janice. The script does a fantastic job of being a 1:1 translation of the games into movie format. It sucessfully blends puzzle-solving and adventure without making it feel forced.

Overall it's a fantastic script.

9/10

The Direction:

The direction of the movie is great. The movie deals character moments with great care, action scenes are stylish and epic in scope, and comedy is very well timed. It's incredibly easy to be swept by Layton's lovable world.

9/10

The Audio:

Just like in the games, we have Tomohito Nishiura in charge of the soundtrack. For the first time a Layton story is enhanced by a full orchestra instead of DS synths and it sounds phenomenal. Hearing the series trademark tunes fully orchestrated is a real treat for fans, and the new tracks are equally catchy and effective. The voice acting is, as expected, truly brilliant.

10/10

The Animation:

P.A Works bring the work they do for the games into the big screen and it looks great. All the characters look and move just like in the games, which will please fans. The only problem is the integration of the CG. For the most part it looks fine, but sometimes a cg vehicle can clash with the hand-drawn style.

8.5/10


Overall, Level-5's first venture into the movie business is a smashing sucess. It's touching, it's incredibly fun, the characters are just as lovable as they are in the games and it sucessfully blends all the elements that make the games great into one tight package.

Final Grade: 9/10


Join me next time when we go back to the games for the last game of the first Layton trilogy: The Lost Future. See you then ;)

Professor Layton Retrospective: The Pandora's Box

Curious Village sold 5 million units worldwide and was loved by critics and gamers alike. The Layton character became Level-5's mascot and the franchise is now the company's flagship series.
Since it was originally planned as a trilogy, Team Layton started work on the second game right away: Pandora's Box. Let's take a look:

The Story:

After receiving a letter from Layton's mentor Dr. Schrader about the Pandora's Box, he and Luke travel to his home to find more about it. To their surprise, they find Dr. Schrader dead and the box stolen. It's up to them to solve this mystery, which goes way deeper than they can imagine.
The story is phenomenal, it gets more and more interesting the more you progress through the game, and as in the first game, it all builds up to a wonderfully emotional climax. All the new characters are very interesting and memorable, and the returning ones are just as charming as ever.

Overall it's a wonderful story with great characters.

9/10

The Gameplay:

This game takes the gameplay from Curious Village and refines it. We still solve puzzles to advance in the story, but now there are puzzle-like mini-games like assembling a camera that gives you 9 "Find the differences in both images" challenges and for convenience we now have the ability to take notes during puzzles. Aside from that the gameplay is pretty much the same because well, if it ain't broken don't fix it.

9/10

The Audio:

Tomohito Nishiura returns to score the game, giving us one of the best DS soundtracks ever made. The music is still very accordion-driven and always fits the mood of the situation. Emotional tunes, atmospheric tunes, Ominous tunes, it's all here. The voice acting is again brilliant especially in the climax, and this time there's more voiced in-game cutscenes instead of just the first one like in the first game.

10/10

The Graphics:

The handmade look from the first game returns and is more detailed this time, with more animations and more detailed backgrounds. There are also twice more FMVs than the first game, which helps the story experience a lot. Character design is also like in the first game, and there's alot more variety this time around.

10/10


Overall, Pandora's Box is an excellent sequel that expands on everything the first game did. It's a brilliant game that any DS owner should own.

Final Grade: 9.5/10


Next time we'll do something different: We'll take a look at the first movie in the series: Eternal Diva. See you then ;)