Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Curse King: 3DS

I don’t write about games very often, I have to say. I used to be quite an avid gamer, from playing Sonic the Hedgehog when I was small through to things like Tomb Raider, Devil May Cry and GTA. Gaming has had a huge impact on my life – Lara Croft was my idol growing up. I think I played every game in the franchise except for Angel of Death, and I can’t even remember why that was.

When I was at school I remember asking my parents for a Playstation 2. They would pay for it, and then I would pay them back week by week from my job at the hairdressers until it was paid off. There’s two reasons why I wanted this game console… Tomb Raider: Legend, and Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King.

I’d spent ages playing on a PS1 demo disk for both those games. In retrospect the Tomb Raider one was far too easy, but I was so excited to be back with my hero I didn’t care so much. The Dragon Quest game, if I remember rightly, was limited to about an hours worth of play. Everything about this game sucked me in – the colours, the cartoon graphics, the music and the story. When I first started playing I thought an hour would be a long time to play, but it wasn’t! I hadn’t gone anywhere and my time was up!

So my parents agreed to the plan and I could have a Playstation 2 with the two games I wanted. To be fair, I could probably have lived my entire PS2 life just playing those two games. I got more – like Devil May Cry – great memories of sharing that game with my brother whilst we listed to Red Hot Chilli Peppers ‘By the Way’ on repeat, and decided that ‘Tear’ definitely had something to do with DMC because of the line ‘devil may cry, devil may care’ which is in the game. Sort of. ‘Devils Never Cry was the name of Dantes shop – he changes it at the end for Trish to ‘Devil May Cry’. It was the little things.

Anyway, I digress.

Dragon Quest VIII is the game that not only introduced me to the Dragon Quest series – I have several of them on the DS now – it opened up to me a world of intense gameplay that could go on for hours and hours. In that original game save I sunk over 200 hours. In another 45, and another about 40. I restarted a few times, but I couldn’t get away from my original hero, whom I named Alyss. [Because, it was totally me in that game, yeah? And I was what… 14? 15?] Dragon Quest sucked me into it’s world in a way that Final Fantasy never could.

Fast forward a few years, a DS, 3DS, a PS3 [Tomb Raider made me buy this] and a PS4 [Tomb Raider and Dragon Quest Heroes made me buy this… can you sense a theme here?] later… and we have the re-release of Dragon Quest on the 3DS. Now, I know this game came out quite some time ago… but I’m an adult with actual bills to pay, so I only got it a few months ago. I played some, then put it aside and did something else. Probably knitting.

Well… I finished the main part of the game yesterday. I have absolutely loved being back in the heroes world [yeah, this time he was called Kialtho, but again, why not??]. The world was just as immersive as I remember, and I am aware that I haven’t even come close to completing the game in it’s entirety, I just wanted to gush about it a little bit!

As I came close to the finish, I have spent some time online wondering what other people had to say about it. Most people seemed sore on two core issues: redesigning Jessica’s outfits so that they were more ‘conservative’, and other censoring issues like a scene where Marcello uses magic to free himself rather than stab himself like he did in the original version, and the music. (There’s a guy out there that’s completed the game on a speed run in just 8:40. That’s insane!)

On both these topics I have this to say: it had been such a long time since I had played the game that I didn’t notice. The music sounded as awesome as it did before, and it is one of the things that kept me in the game. I’m sure if you played them comparatively you would notice a difference, but I didn’t. And in regards to the censorship – they lowered the rating of the game for an all ages game. I believe the original was PEGI 12 so it makes sense that they’ve made a few changes.

I loved, and I mean loved, the new content. And that you could get Morrie and Red as playable characters too. Although, I was a little sad to replace Yangus ‘legendary bandit turned hero’ with Red, but she did sort of nerf him. Her attacks were awesome. I’ve maxed out her Fans and Rougery skills and am working up the Blades one. I’m sure I should have done blades first, but I’m happy with how it’s been. With Morrie I got him a little later than the rest so he’s currently my lowest powered character and as such I haven’t used him all that much. That being said his Claws and Passion are making great progress.

I still have a long way to go before I can complete the final two dungeons, but that second one makes it sound like its going to be worth levelling up to the max. That will be my next challenge!

I’ll write about my knitting [two blogs to come on that front] and my book [so nearly finished!] soon. But for now, it’s back to the NaNo train.

Happy gaming,

Kialtho

Day Eeeight in the Big Brother House…

Say the title in the northern accent of the narrator of Big Brother – that’s what I’m trying to emulate.. and failing, no doubt.

Yesterday’s blog was full of typo’s, but I can’t be bothered to go back and edit it. I was tired, and lost my ability to really function. Ironically, it was my day off, so naturally I was more tired than when I worked haha.

I had a mishap today about having a driving lesson as well, I thought I’d booked one, but had booked it for Friday, which I can’t make because of that work thing. The good side to this is that my plan to save as much money as possible this month is sort of working, despite having to shell out £180 on glasses yesterday. But I’m fairly happy with where I am at the moment – I will claw my way out of this overdraft! I will!

So, this is the 8th day of consecutive blogging. Bored yet? I like it, although I do feel a little Big Brother-ish in the fact that I’m relaying the days events as they happen.

I finished Harry Potter Lego, well the main storyline. I wish it had gone on for longer, I’m really disappointed with it in that respect. But going back over the levels to unlock other characters is cool, I suppose, just a bit tedious. And some of the abilities that you can unlock and bit (Red Brick abilities, they’re called) mean that my Stud count goes through the roof almost instantly, which adds to the boredom of the game in a way because it’s not a challenge to do anything. Saying that, it’s probably like a 7+ age limit… so it can’t be too challenging. I’m still disappointed with it.

The next game on my list is Dragon Quest IX, which is something I’m really looking forwards to as Dragon Quest VIII is one of my favourite games, and the DS re-releases of the earlier games are also pretty cool. They also tend to have massively complex, and long, storylines to keep me occupied for a while (haha).

It was (un)officially confirmed to me today that I’m not just going to be the FS Supervisor, but site Supervisor today. My manager injured herself loading money into our change fund (it’s a giant time locked safe type-thing). I felt like a right old mum-sy type person as I administered her first aid (ice, water +plaster! Lol, go me!) I locked her in the back office for a bit, away from the other staff and the customers because she was being really loud, and swearing and I’m sure the customers don’t really want to be hearing that. She was pretty loud though, so they probably did. But, I made the effort. I couldn’t help but LOL a lot at her pain though, just because I didn’t know what other reaction to give.

Anyways, I took over filling up the change fund – something my previous manager would never have allowed – and she said that I’ll be able to do it all on my own in the near future when I’m the supervisor. WOOT.

She’s been training me up loads lately, like taking me through all the paperwork, showing me how to do the invoices, cash audits, FS paperwork… lots of stuff!

The thing is, it’s alright her showing me how to do all this stuff, but when she goes on holiday next week, our ASM won’t let me do those things – because she was like our previous manager, and doesn’t know how to accept the help when it’s offered to her. And it frustrates me, especially when I know how to do it now. So do I do all this work, knowing that I know how to do it, or just let it build up on her, and suffer the consequences afterwards? Perhaps I need to talk to my manager about it…

/blog.