The Gold Saucer I felt was pretty neat, but I kinda have a personal loathing of it...along with Barret for the fact i was enjoying it until I got stuck because Barret gets me thrown in the stupid prison I can't break from, and it's because barret was trying to reveal some conspiracy with the Saucer so I kinda have a loathing of them both for that.
As for DQVIII, I just didn't get into that game all that much. I dunno, never been a major fan of the series. To me it seems like Final Fantasy gone cartoonish. And I know CT is slightly cartoonish, but only SLIGHTLY. DQ seems like a cross over of FF and Spongebob to me. Although I do like the blobs, and my old computer had some pretty impressive blob sprites before a storm wiped them out(not in a game sense, I mean an electric storm hit a line while I was working on paint and all my work was deleted). I'm thinking Crono was mad for not playing CT yet that day.
Whatever... if this arena mode is anything like the one in CC, I guess it could be decent although I found once you actually get the ForgetMeNotPot and grab a few robots, the robots make that arena waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too easy. So I figure they just shouldn't do that sort of thing. Up the difficulty some, and include some more rounds.