The court jester of the kingdom of Trodain, Dhoulmagus, was responsible for stealing a powerful magical scepter that was kept hidden beneath the royal castle. Dhoulmagus used the power of the scepter to bring a curse upon the kingdom and its people, as well as transform King Trode into a troll and the princess into a horse. He also used this power to destroy the palace. The king, the princess, a former bandit named Yangus, and a few other travelers set out from the castle with the lone surviving member of the castle guard in order to find the villainous jester and discover a method to lift the curse.
Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King is a traditional role-playing game in the Japanese style. It features random encounters with enemies, straightforward turn-based combat mechanics, and the management of a party consisting of four characters, each of whom belongs to a class that is explicitly defined. The game, unlike its predecessors in the series and the majority of Japanese role-playing games in general, features a continuous world with fairly vast landscapes and integrated towns and dungeons. This is in contrast to its predecessors, which featured world map travel and locations represented by icons. The camera may be rotated 360 degrees, and there is also an option to play in first-person view. Many different objects can be interacted with, just like in the previous Dragon Quest games. For instance, barrels can be physically lifted, carried, and busted apart in order to expose goods that are concealed within them.
In addition to experience points, the player also obtains skill points from combat. These skill points can be manually allotted by the player into a category of their choosing from among all of the available skill categories. These categories consist of three distinct types of weapons, hand-to-hand combat, and a discipline that is specific to each individual character. After investing the necessary number of skill points into a specific category, the correspondent character is able to learn a new ability or become more adept with the chosen weapon. The Alchemy Pot feature gives players the ability to collect recipes and combine existing materials in order to produce new ones.
The original Japanese version of the game has been updated in a number of ways for the worldwide release of the game. These changes include the addition of voice acting, a graphical menu, symphonic music, and flashier effects.
