Sometimes you just get a sudden craving. There we were, sitting on a train, pondering the age old question of whether a shark would beat a tiger in a fight, when we were suddenly filled with the urge to tackle the problems of a smaller, more Japanese world in a good old fashioned Role Playing Game.
SPOnG has always loved that awe-inspiring feeling of being fully immersed in a land full of heroes, wizards, convenient inns to rest in and constant poxy random combat. Those all night sessions trying to learn one more spell or find one more shield. It used to make this particular reviewer’s wife laugh (or drive her mad, I forget which) that a man of a certain age could wake in the middle of the night shouting “You can walk through the fountain, of course!” And if I was a man of a certain age then, imagine how old I am now? Well, early 40's, as it happens, and to the constant amazement of my teenage son, still able to rotate my thumbs enough to occasionally beat him at Mario Kart. We digress.
The trouble is of course that, as you get older, you end up having to play your games in bite-size chunks: racing, shooting and devil-may-crying through a variety of more or less satisfying linear narratives. After last Christmas, when an unexpectedly imaginative relative bought your author a copy of Ico, I was captivated; and on finishing it, desperate to feel once again that complete absorption in a game, where a part of your brain is always working on the next problem even as you are paying the bill in Sainsbury's or shouting at the ref at Selhurst Park.
So, after some quick verbal research which consisted of a phonecall to a mate who lent me Magna Carta, I pulled the curtains and prepared to immerse myself in the warm and soothing comfort of an RPG. An hour later, the curtains were open again. Magna Carta was simply too much too soon. It looks fantastic but the fight training in the tutorial was asking me to use more buttons than I had fingers. I nearly called the cat in at one stage to sellotape her paw to the R1 button. This was no good. I wanted something completely different - a game I could jump into and learn on the job. Thank the gaming gods then for Dragon Quest – Journey of the Cursed King.
Although it was never as popular here as The Final Fantasy series, even someone who wouldn’t know what sex Zelda was will be aware of what a phenomenon Dragon Quest is in Japan. Indeed, legend has it that new games in the series can’t be released on a weekday, after the third one caused massive absenteeism from work and schools all over the country. The series laid down the ground rules for many RPG staples like sub-quests and mini-games and has influenced just about every designer since it first appeared way back in the 1980s.
Dragon Quest VIII has to be one of the most immediately accessible role-playing games SPOnG has ever played. There is a four-line cut-scene at the beginning and with no further ado, you’re away and playing. Unfortunately, there are lengthier cut-scenes later on, but unusually they are quite watchable because you literally only find out the reasons for playing the game as the story unfolds for the characters. You discover why the king has been turned into a goblin and his daughter into a horse; why they have teamed up with a chubby cockney brigand, and you the nameless hero (in our case, the uncooly-named Dad).
Naturally, with Journey of the Cursed King being a Japanese role playing game, it turns out that your quest is to find the most powerful wizard ever and save the world from his wrath. Duh! But for once, you only find this out in increments, and hey, who wants to play a game where you have to find a good wizard to magically do your ironing? Accessibility is also helped by the dubbing of the voices into British accents and a jaunty soundtrack that veers from the sort of music they used to play over naturist films in the 1950’s (we imagine) to genuinely moving string pieces when sad things happen; and be prepared, friends - sad things may happen.
Cfan 4 Jul 2011 13:38