A must play for anybody who loves rpgs!
Graphics
The graphics are cell shaded and was done by Akira Toriyami who created dragon ball. The towns are detailed and the shops and building are beautiful (or not beautiful to suit the theme of the city) and really suit the theme of each city. The characters are all detailed and when you change their equipment you can see them wearing it in combat which is pretty neat. The monsters are colorful and they all look good and the special attacks look amazing that some monsters do can do.
Game play
While the game was supposed to be a throw back rpg it does have some new features including tension where each turn you increase your tension. During your following attack it would be more powerful and if you wait till it reaches 100 your characters does a super sayan action which is pretty neat and the characters look really cool. You can also call in monsters to fight the battle for a couple of turns once you complete ranks in the monster arenas. The other new game play feature is the intimidate action which allows you to scare the monsters though you don’t earn any experience from doing so. Other then that, the time taken up from battles will be using each of your team members to attack, defend, using an ability, or to use a spell.
Other unique game play feature outside of battling:
Also a neat feature in the game is that you will also be able to use a Sabre cat to travel with and that’s pretty fun and also useful since the whole world is so huge!! You’ll also be able to use a boat which allows you to travel the seas and disembark on places you couldn’t have gone to on foot. You can also travel to places hidden which don’t have anything to do with the main story.
Value
While you could always just rush through the game and beat it within maybe 54 hours but you'll want to take the time and really enjoy the game since you could be collecting items and just riding your Sabrecat. It's like grand theft auto when you do free roam. Even though you it’s not a serious attraction its still fun in its own rights since you can do so much mayhem. Same goes for Dragon quest 8 because just traveling to places and seeing what this game has to offer is something that I enjoyed. Sure I had to go back and start from where I began doing from all that crazy traveling but it was sure fun battling and exploring the continent plus leveling up! The game also is also very lengthy since you'll be chasing Dhoulmagus from the east continent to the west. You'll be fighting him more then once too!!! They also throw in a casino to play in and get tokens in exchange for items and a monster stadium to use captured monsters in the game and use them to fight other monsters! All this really made me wonder how long it took them to make this game!
Sound
The melodies in the game are created by the Tokyo Metropolitan symphony orchestra and are pleasant that suit the part of the game you’re playing and it also has gloomy themes at some parts of the game. They all sound interesting and are beautiful at times while darker at other. In short they really were built to suit each theme of the game. The voice work was done by British folks and sound really good since the really had good expressions in their voice and it really showed how they were feeling at the time during the cut scenes especially the ones with them getting pissed at Dhoulmagus.