When comparing Spirits vs DRAGON QUEST VIII, the Slant community recommends DRAGON QUEST VIII for most people. In the question“What are the best Android games without in-app purchases/paywalls?” DRAGON QUEST VIII is ranked 43rd while Spirits is ranked 75th. The most important reason people chose DRAGON QUEST VIII is:
Instead of a class system that is found in all of the previous Dragon Quest titles where players upgrade their player through beating monsters a certain amount of time, Dragon Quest VIII uses a skill system to level up the characters and learn new skills by placing skill points earned through battle into the available skill tree, this allows for a more fine grained approach of leveling a character up.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Impressive style and quality
The artistic design of the game is quite dream-like, with hand-drawn characters and levels. Its sound design is equally impressive.
Pro Whimsical artistic style
This game is ethereal and relaxing, while at the same time engaging the player in challenging puzzles. The main character is comical, yet beautiful at the same time. It's almost like The Wisp and Lemmings had a child.
Pro Great atmosphere
Dream-like art direction with hand-drawn characters and levels, and excellent sound design.
Pro Varied, Lemmings-style puzzles
The game has interesting and often challenging puzzles, especially if you wish to complete the level perfectly, made possible with varied abilities of spirits that get introduced throughout the game.
Pro Fine grained controls over leveling each character
Instead of a class system that is found in all of the previous Dragon Quest titles where players upgrade their player through beating monsters a certain amount of time, Dragon Quest VIII uses a skill system to level up the characters and learn new skills by placing skill points earned through battle into the available skill tree, this allows for a more fine grained approach of leveling a character up.
Pro One handed gameplay design
The game plays in portrait mode to cater to the hardcore Japanese gaming audience that enjoy being able to play with one hand while commuting.
Pro Really long game
Including side quest the game can easily last over 100 hours.
Pro Classic JRPG battle system
As one would expect of a JRPG there are random battles on the map that are strictly turn based.
Cons
Con Broken on Android Marshmallow devices
Unfortunately, Spirits doesn't work with Android devices with Android 6.0 Marshmallow installed (or higher). The game simply freezes or crashes instantly while loading.
Con Slow-moving gameplay
Spirits is intended to be a slow, relaxing game, though some may not enjoy the extent of the title's slowness.
Con Removed content from North American PS2 release
Things like the original orchestrated music and voice acting that were in the original North American Playstation 2 release have been removed from the mobile version of the game. Most likely to save room.