Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King is a role-playing game developed by Level-5 and published by Square Enix for the PlayStation 2. Released in 2004, it departs from traditional RPG designs by featuring a seamless open world, allowing for exploration of interconnected towns and dungeons. Players engage in turn-based combat with a party of four characters, each with distinct classes. The game includes interactive environments and a fully rotatable camera.
Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King is the eighth installment in the Dragon Quest series, developed by Level-5 and published by Square Enix for the PlayStation 2 video game console. It was also later released for the Nintendo 3DS in 2015.
It is a traditional Japanese-style role-playing game with random enemy encounters, simple turn-based combat mechanics, and management of a party consisting of four characters, each belonging to a clearly defined class. Unlike its predecessors in the series and most Japanese RPGs in general, the game features a continuous world with fairly vast landscapes and integrated towns and dungeons, as opposed to world map traveling and locations represented by icons. The game features full camera rotation and optional first-person view.
Like in the previous Dragon Quest games, many objects can be interacted with; for example, barrels can be physically lifted, carried, and broken, to reveal items hidden within.