I had never played a Dragon Quest game before VIII, so I wasn't sure what to expect. I had heard that it was like "older" RPGs, so that's pretty much what attracted me. I fell in love with RPGs on the SNES, so I was looking for something to help me relive those glory days. Dragon Quest VIII does that and then some. It is easily one of the best RPGs I have ever played. Now, I understand a lot of people can't get past the turn-based random battles. I myself am not such a big fan of random battles, but they didn't seem to bother me at all in DQ VIII. The battles themselves were beautifully animated and took a fair amount of strategy and forethought to win, which probably helped a lot. And the enemies themselves are very original and not too-oft recycled. Speaking of beautifully animated, the entire game is almost perfectly crafted. So much detail is poured into every town, house, room, and person that I often find myself wondering how long it took them to make this game. The music is equally as awesome, and the writing was great. RPGs don't usually make me laugh, but I found myself laughing at quite a few parts in this game. The excellent voice work helped out a lot with that. And I hear a lot of complaints that the story was kind of generic and cliche. I agree it was a little on the sterile side, but amid all of the modern RPGs I actually found it to be refreshing. Plus the alternate ending and extra level made things much better when a sadness crept over me as I neared the final boss. With a lot of modern RPGs, I find myself actively trying to make it to the end. With DQ VIII, I found myself avoiding it at all cost, taking every side mission and extra quest I could. So I ended up beating it the first time after 112 hours, and 127 after the alternate ending. I'm still working on getting all of the best weapons and making it to level 65 to get the secret power that I've heard about. And I'm still enjoying every minute of it. I haven't touched the FF XII demo yet, and I'm not sure I want to after playing DQ. I may be in for quite a disappointment.