Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King is a role-playing video game developed by Level-5 and published by Square Enix for the PlayStation 2. It was released in Japan in 2004, in North America in 2005 and PAL regions in 2006, making it the first main series installment released in the PAL region. It is the eighth installment of the Dragon Quest series and it is the first English version of a Dragon Quest game to drop the Dragon Warrior title. A version of the game for Android and iOS was released in Japan in December 2013, and worldwide in May 2014. Dragon Quest VIII uses cel shading for the characters and scenery and is the first game in the series to have fully 3D environments and character models. The game retains most of the series' role-playing game elements, such as turn-based combat and the experience level system. Dragon Quest VIII follows the silent protagonist and his party of allies as they journey towards the goal of defeating the wicked Dhoulmagus, who cursed the kingdom of Trodain and its people. Dragon Quest VIII was a critical and commercial success, later being released under the Sony Greatest Hits brand. Gameplay In Dragon Quest VIII, the player controls the Hero in a fully three-dimensional environment. Players are able to pan the camera a full 360 degrees around the character, as well as look in a first-person perspective mode. The visual controls allow players to examine people and objects more closely than the top-down perspective of the game's predecessors. With a new fully integrated world, towns and dungeons are no longer identified by two-dimensional icons found on the world maps. Players can guide the Hero across vast landscapes to reach full-size towns and buildings. Battles are randomly occurring and turn-based. When encountering an enemy, the game switches to a battle scene with the enemies facing the party where characters from both sides take turns attacking each other. These battle scenes have visually changed dramatically from earlier games in the series, yet retain a similar text based menu system for battles. In the earlier games, battles were shown from a first-person perspective. For this installment, the battles are shown in a first-person perspective while choosing what to do, but the view then shifts to a third-person perspective with all of the members of the Hero's party shown on the screen along with the