Like many other gamers in the good old US of A, I have never played a Dragon Quest game. They seldom make much of a splash here, even on the rare occasion when they do manage to struggle ashore. On the other hand, this franchise is huge in Japan. Well Square Enix seems determined that gamers here will notice the latest Dragon Quest game, Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King. Not only have they given players a top-notch role-playing game that is highly approachable even by the RPG novice, but they have also included an exclusive playable demo of the upcoming Final Fantasy XII that should tempt even the most skeptical hardcore RPG fan to pick up this game and try it … and they will not be disappointed.

In Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King, you play the sole unscathed survivor of a horrendous curse. The magical jester Dholmagus has broken the seal that held in check a scepter of great power. Now the kingdom you lived in has been choked by thorny vines and time has stopped. The king has been turned into a toad-like monster and his daughter, Medea, is horse-faced. Well, actually she is all horse. As the story opens you, the king, the princess and your faithful manservant Yangus are on the road hunting for Dholmagus to force him to lift the curse. As you journey farther in this strange land you will gain even more allies while you follow Dholmagus on his path of destruction.

Truth be told, the story is pretty generic – all standard sword and sorcery. It is the classic RPG story at its most basic. You will not be telling your friends about it even a day after it’s over. While you are playing it is clever enough with some nice bits of humor, but for the most part it is disposable.

What you will be telling your friends about is the presentation. DQ8 is absolutely beautiful. From the well-detailed environments that seem to go on forever to the enormous list of weird monsters you’ll fight in your quest, they all look good. Your own characters are very well drawn and it won’t take long for you to start caring about each one of them. The only place the visuals are a letdown is in the town folk that inhabit the villages. I swear it felt like there were maybe ten villager character models in the whole game and they just kept changing roles depending on the settlement you visited. That aside, it all looks pretty terrific.

From an audio point of view things are equally rosy. The music consists of soaring orchestral music that gives the action a rather epic feel. The voiceover work was outstanding too. Be prepared though, the accents are all British, as is the spelling in the captions. The sound effects are rather generic, but for this type of game that is not such a big deal.

The gameplay is in many ways a very traditional Japanese turn-based RPG. As you wander the world the land looks mostly empty. But then out of nowhere you will be confronted by a monster or group of monsters. There is no way to avoid these confrontations since you can’t actually see the monsters before you blunder into them. Once contact is made, you then have a quick choice to make. You can fight, attempt to flee or attempt to intimidate the opposing force into fleeing.

Should you choose to fight, you take turns hacking and casting spells at each other until you either kill all the monsters or they kill everyone in your party. Unlike the recent Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, there is no maneuvering for position in these battles. Your characters line up against the opposing force and then both sides flail at each other. Victory means you gain experience points and gold to improve your questing party. Losing means a quick trip back to the last save point. Also unlike Fire Emblem, the loss of characters in battle does not mean they are gone for good. Carry the bodies back to one of the temples (that of course means at least one member of the party must survive to reach a temple) and the clerics can resurrect fallen comrades for a nominal fee. As an added incentive to not get your entire party wiped out, the trip back to the last save point after a catastrophic failure will cost you half the gold you’ve collected.

There are some occasions where a more powerful beastie is actually on the map and can be seen. Often the player can avoid these creatures, but other times the beastie stands right in the path of where you need to go and there is no choice but to fight if you want to go forward. While some of the wandering, random monsters can be nasty, the ones you actually see are worse. Rule of thumb: if you can see it and avoid it, do so. The experience and gold gained can come at a very high price indeed with these critters.

As you make your way around the world, only your own hero character is visible on the screen. This lack of an entourage is a little disconcerting at times. But since on one of the rare occasions I actually had a visible person following me he got stuck on a villager and I had to go back and free him, it is probably just as well that you’re not running around with a bunch of non-player characters in tow. They show up quickly enough when you get into battle.

I guess what really puts this game above other RPGs out there is the ease of play. The game starts the player with two characters to manage and then adds more as the game goes on. The leveling up of your characters is so easy and so intuitive that you’ll wonder why it often feels so obtuse in other RPGs. The spell casting is easy and painless. Everything works just as you imagine it might. Even in a fantasy world, everything seems to work logically. And while sometimes identifying what to do next be a bit foggy, the game seems to gently guide you back in the right direction. It is an RPG that I would highly recommend to people wanting to try an RPG for the first time.