What often makes or breaks an RPG for me is its characters, and the characters are probably what I’ll remember most about Dragon Quest VIII’s fun fairytale adventure. The main party and companions are a fun bunch of misfits that are developed well throughout the game, connected through common struggles, loyalty, friendship, and even a sweet romance.

Individual areas of the game often have their own little vignettes with the locals, and these have some memorable characters too. The story does a great job using both major and minor character arcs with parallel situations to reinforce its themes, particularly shining when dealing with grief and regret through the recurring use of spirits, ghosts, and other apparitions.

One standout early section in this vein sends the heroes off in search of a way to reunite a depressed king with his long-lost wife for a final farewell. It’s an unexpectedly magical little quest culminating in a lovely reunion between the two that highlights the game’s great music, writing, and simple but effective cutscene direction. Even with the downgraded audiovisual presentation of the 3DS version, the art, score, and sound convey a lot of emotion and character.

Combat here is solid stuff, well-balanced to be simple but still strategic. Most enemy mobs can be handled with pretty simple tactics, particularly early on, but bosses definitely test your preparedness and ability to manage buffs/debuffs and other mechanics. I like how each character has a basic role, but also different things they can do for your team in different situations. I hit a couple rough and sudden difficulty spikes that required me to go grind a bunch, but most of the game is fine if you just fight what you run into.

I think one place where the game could be nicer mechanically is the skill system, which despite not locking you into a “class” feels a bit too rigid and linear. I would have preferred more of a branching, flexible skill/perk tree approach that doesn’t lock essential skills behind committing dozens of levels into one linear path with no way to respec. Any kind of “multiclassing” is also clunky to execute in combat, as you have to switch weapons to change which skills are available.

There’s a pretty deliberate pacing to this game that could definitely be off-putting to some. The main story goes pretty significant chunks of time feeling like an endless string of errands in conveniently adjacent towns. Combat also can be a bit slow as tougher bosses can lock you into a cycle of endlessly reviving/healing/buffing with their tendency to delete healthbars and remove all buffs and bonuses. Those fights encourage a sort of boring, conservative playstyle (at least as far as I could figure out) but are still satisfying to overcome.

Overall it’s a game that achieves greatness piece by piece through generally solid execution of everything, rather than necessarily blowing me away in one or two particular aspects. I think it’s one of the best games on 3DS and a very solid entrypoint to this series that gets across its classic appeal in a slightly more modern context.