Exit Light, Enter Night

Well, Dragon Quest VIII finally managed to surprise me today.  It took some doing but I got my butt in gear and started playing this beast again.  After beating the hell out of Evil Jessica (read, Frieza with a rack) and going through Dr. Zhivago Dragon Quest Edition, I managed to find a nifty little dungeon full of aquatic freaks and Aquaman-wannabes. 


It all wound up being very enjoyable, and fairly profitable in-game.  It was capped off wonderfully with a fight against a boisterous ghost pirate that obviously had a complete blast fighting my party.  Then I wound up setting said to an obstensibly unreachable island chock full of palm trees, friendly natives, and more absurdly cheerful monsters to mulch.


Then some mystical shenanigans ensued, and wound up in this parallel plane where just about everything is black-and-white.  Imagine a greyscale version of just about anything, then take that image and ramp up the contrast like crazy.  That's how dark everything is here; the places, the things, the monsters, even the people look like they're made out of living ink.  Contrast this with some things (mostly water features, torch flames, and treasure chests) still in their original vibrant hues, and it's actually pretty unsettling.  Some of the monsters actually look scary when rendered this way.  It actually works really well overall, and is a wonderful touch of eldritch weirdness to things.


On top of this, I've found some really fun and useful 'gimmick' skills and weapons.  In most RPGs, trying to do anything except straight up lots of damage is usually impractical or outright suicidal.  In others, breaking out the status effects and debuffs is the only way to survive.  DQ8 seems to have found a happy medium, with things that give extra effects that prove useful here and there.  They tend to be more of a happy bonus then a dramatic game-changer, but they're nice.  Small stuff like a sword that returns a small amount of dealt damage as health (and skills using the sword keep this effect) that you can upgrade using the craft system to near-endgame stats, plus unlike most effects like that, undead don't reverse the drain (which is why Final Fantasy's Blood Sword usually sucks).  Or a passive charm effect that actually goes off frequently, even on very dangerous mooks (but no bosses), or mass debuffs and insta-kill moves that are both economical and functional.


There's this sense of polish, and well, craftsmanship to just about everything. They've taken the basic JRPG formula that the original Dragon Quest pioneered and just kept adding new layers.  It's still an old-school style grindfest right out the Nintendo days, but with Playstation 2-era production values and sensibilities layered on, making this game very much a happy marriage of both.  Even better, since Dragon Quest has a major sense of tradition, Square Enix didn't try to reinvent the wheel like just about any other RPG franchise from the PS1 forward.  It makes for a really fun ride for the old-school RPG fan.  The Harvest Never Rests, after all.