Being American and only casually into JRPGs, I had a hard time understanding the massive appeal the Dragon Quest series had in Japan. Certainly, its blue skies and friendly mass-appeal anime aesthetic was nice to look at, but both the Tales of series and the Legend of Heroes Trails games have that too, so what's the big deal?

The answer, at least for me, was iyashikei. Though in English, it's usually synonymous with "slice of life" anime, it literally means "healing genre." The calming, sometimes introspective focus of shows like Laid-Back Camp, Mushishi, or Yokohama Shopping Trip isn't just about escape, it's about catharsis. These stories have broad appeal and endure the test of time because their conflicts aren't about beating the bad guy and saving the day; they're about the common human struggles to find meaning in life, or connect with another person. It's no secret that the VTuber boom coincided with the pandemic and a time when a huge number of people were cooped up inside, wishing they were literally anywhere else. Raymond Chandler, the master of hardboiled detective fiction, once wrote that all fiction is escape. I never understood exactly how Dragon Quest fulfilled that role for generations of Japanese gamers until my wife and I watched the Dragon Quest 8 Let's Play by Takane Lui.

Lui prefaced the stream by saying she'd insisted on playing the Nintendo 3DS version, which initially seemed like an odd choice: though solutions exist for video capture and streaming on the 3DS, it's far from easy. But even from the very first moments of the game before you hit the Start button, you're flown across the sweeping vistas (shown at the top of this page), as the orchestral music swells in the background. It may get taken for granted in a world that has the Nintendo Switch and Breath of the Wild, but seeing this kind of cinematic scope and immersion in a handheld as modest as the 3DS feels ambitious.

As it turns out, that music was part of the reason she chose to take the extra step and play the portable version. Along with quality of life features like fast-forward, swapping out random encounters with enemies visible on the overworld map, it has extra characters and (in the Japanese version, at least) a fully orchestral soundtrack. It has such a massive impact on the experience that I honestly can't imagine the game without it, so it's worth checking which version has what if you plan on picking it up (or modding it.)

Now, don't get me wrong, Things definitely Happen in Dragon Quest 8. There's twists, big and small, and in typical RPG fashion, as the world gets explored, we find out exactly what's eating at our party members, or why people react to them the way they do. Sometimes it's the result of discrimination, others it's because of some past quarrel or trauma we don't know about yet, but it's always interesting character writing.
     In fact, the structure of the overall quest takes an almost episodic quality. Our heroes need to find the descendants of the sages before the villain does, and naturally journey across the kingdom to a new town full of new weirdoes. Like a lot of JRPGs, there is a tonal mix between comic relief characters whose bizarre goals need to be indulged to progress the story, and some surprisingly poignant character moments, and the stakes of innocent people being sacrificed to resurrect a dark god. The reason this LP really capture me is that despite the possibility that such heavy themes could dampen the mood, things still feel like an episodic adventure cartoon. There's also a decent amount of Lui crying at missing out on a monster's rare drop, or being one skill point shy of an upgrade, which I think anyone who's EVER played an RPG can relate to. ◆