Dragon Quest 8 marked a large leap for the series in a lot of ways. Among those changes are doing away with the vocations of 6 & 7 in favor of learning spells via level like usual and introducing "skill trees" that are mostly tied to your weapon of preference. This restructures the many attack skills introduced in 6 & 7 into a more permanent and simplified form that also creates lots of replayability. The music is once again fantastic, the final boss theme being my favorite in the series to date. Party member dialogue was another major shift, moving from party chat being your main method of learning about your team to organic dialogue throughout story scenes to further flesh out your companions. Lastly, the overworld became vastly larger.

Now while all of these sound like major boons for the series, I can't say much of it wowed me the way it seemed to do for many others. I found the overworld far too big for its own good with a lot of wasted open space that makes travel an agonizing experience. Skill trees are fun but some are far stronger than others, and if you happen to realize too late that you don't like the pathway you picked, there's no fixing it or respec-ing without modding or restarting your entire save. Our cast has been given strong backstories that give you a reason to care and a good reason to join your journey, but I felt that as soon as they joined their character development stopped there and then. There's occasional banter and jokes that make for good laughs but outside of that, I felt this was one of the flattest groups in the series. An unfortunate downgrade from the joy I experienced getting to know the casts of 6 & 7.

Overall I had a good time and the improvements are objectively good for the series moving forward, but I'd be lying if I said this was the pinnacle of the series like it's often heralded to be. Oh, and the plot is kinda barebones on account of how much important lore is hidden away in random bookshelves that would've benefited greatly from being included more organically.