Dragon Warrior

The two best role-playing games I have ever played were Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior. These two games for Nintendo started me down the path of loving role-playing games. While the Final Fantasy series continued to be released in the US, Dragon Warrior (or Dragon Quest) seem to be just for Japan. Well, after years and years of waiting, Dragon Quest VIII has been released in the US for PS2. I have had a chance now to put in about 15 hours of game time, and I am impressed. First of all, I have been waiting a very long time for a good turned based RPG game. Even the final fantasies didn't do true turned based anymore. So far, this game seem to be a dream come true; I love it! The 3D environment is great! Graphics are stunning, the music is full symphonic, the world has very little load times and hardly any loading is needed anyway. The world is huge. I can wander around for hours exploring the world. So many places to go, treasures hidden everywhere, and the monsters are pretty neat. They are all very happy monsters, but that turned out good, because then my daughter enjoys watching it, and doesn't complain when I play. The characters are customizable, meaning they can follow different specialties depending how you distribute their skill points. Lots of items and you can make your own by combining certain items. And the voice over is done very well. The English is not broken and the story is pretty sound. Also the characters have accents depending on where they are from. Plus, the game is just fun, fun, fun! You can see more screen shots of actual gameplay on the picture archive.