When comparing 80 Days vs DRAGON QUEST VIII, the Slant community recommends 80 Days for most people. In the question“What are the best Android games without in-app purchases/paywalls?” 80 Days is ranked 26th while DRAGON QUEST VIII is ranked 43rd. The most important reason people chose 80 Days is:
The way the game plays out there are many story options that will be triggered due to previous choices in the game. Being that it branches out like this it will take many playthroughs to experience all of the stories options.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Branching story that will take multiple playthroughs to experience it all
The way the game plays out there are many story options that will be triggered due to previous choices in the game. Being that it branches out like this it will take many playthroughs to experience all of the stories options.
Pro Heavily focused on reading
Pretty much a visual novel, 80 Days should interest anyone who enjoys reading and makes for a great introduction to the visual novel genre due to it being spearheaded by a big name in text adventure fiction, Jon Ingold.
Pro Supports portrait and landscape play
80 Days allows for the user to play in portrait or landscape, making for a good game across tablets and phones.
Pro Does not need internet connection to be played
80 Days does not need the device it is being played on to be connected to the internet to be played, which makes for a good game during air travel as well as other places where one does not have an internet connection.
Pro Stylish design based on Jules Verne
With the Steampunk motif and the way that the game transitions, users can see that a lot of style and imagination was used in the creation of the game. Being that it is based off of Jules Verne's novel "Around the World in 80 Days", fans of the author should find a lot to like here and those new to the author should be able to find something they like being that it is an established classic.
Pro Uncovered routes stay uncovered on next replay
Once completing a playthrough the routes that were uncovered will stay uncovered for the next playthrough, thus helping the player chart better courses the more they play the game.
Pro Very replayable
With the vast swath of options in 80 Days players will be hard pressed to replay the same scenarios more than once.
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 Single playthrough is short
Lasting about 2 hours a single playthrough is pretty short, though with all the branching story triggers there is plenty of reason to play over and over again.
Con Unintuitive user interface
The inventory system in the game can be hard to understand at first and it can be difficult to control the scrolling of text in some areas.
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.