Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King

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 Japan in 2004 and in North America in 2005. A nameless hero sets out with the cursed King Trode, turned into a troll, and his daughter Medea, turned into a horse, to hunt down the jester Dhoulmagus who cursed their kingdom.

It was the first Dragon Quest with a fully 3D world, drawn in cel-shaded graphics from Akira Toriyama’s designs, with turn-based battles, an alchemy pot for combining items and a large open world to explore on foot and later by ship and in flight. The North American release added voice acting and an orchestral score. It is one of the best-selling games on the PS2 and was later ported to phones and the Nintendo 3DS.

A native PC port made by static recompilation runs the North American PS2 release on Windows, macOS and Linux.