[Phenom]

"Cast Full Life" (or was that full cure? lol) Forgot what DQ8 uses in terms for bringing folks back to life.

Anyway, last time I had this game, I didn't give it much of a chance because I had just got done beating Final Fantasy 8. And jumped right into Chrono Cross, only to be disappointed. (To be fair, I didn't give CC a fair chance either) As much as I love FF8, it turned out that FF8 wore me out with rpg's in general for quite some time, because I had gotten rid of all of my games that I had at that point. (SMT: Nocturne, Kingdom Hearts 2, Rogue Galaxy.. etc) Another reason that I sort of got rid of it (them.. DQ8 and SMT) was because I couldn't find a decent walkthrough, and I was pretty much lost with what to do, and didn't feel like exploring. (Yea, I know, why did I even bother buying them in the first place, right? lol)

In any case, I've had a huge craving to play Dragon Quest 8 again after playing Chrono Trigger. I've always been a fan of Akira Toriyama's artwork (when it's consistent lol) And I'm glad I picked this game up again because I'm loving every bit of it. I'm about 30 hours in (majority of it is from just letting the game sit there while on the net reading a walkthrough >_>) and I'm just now getting pass Ascantha. My party is between the levels of 16-20. (Also, most of my time has been spent on level grinding.)

I'm diggin the fact that there skills in the game that you have to learn instead of acquiring materia and whatnot. Because, with materia, I was always selfish and giving the best stuff to Cloud. Although, I've never really had a problem with level grinding, it's actually worth levelling your characters up.

As I said, I've always liked Akira's artwork, and I like the cell-shaded look. I also like the characters, outside of Trode. I find him to be annoying, but not as annoying as other characters in other games of the genre. (Sora, Fayt, Tidus)

The voice work is really good. And the music, while it's nothing memorable, it's not bad either. If anything, it's taking a bit for it to grow onto me since I've never really sat down to listen to the type of music in this.

Like majority of the other games, I've not payed much attention to the story lol. While this game brought nothing new to the table, it did however, expand on what was already done, and made it better. This is the best rpg on the ps2 IMO. (I definately didn't care for FFX and Sora killed any good moments that was in the KH series)

By the way, any tips on using the alchemy pot? I've already made an enhanced boomerang, but that's pretty much it. Anything I should try at this point of the game? (In terms of making new weapons and armor that is)