Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride (DS)

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I mentioned in my review of IX that I was never a big Dragon Quest Fan, but there were a couple of the games I did still really like. The one sitting at the top of the DQ mountain for me is Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride. This is going to be an interesting one to discuss because in a lot of ways I also think it has a lot of unique flaws, as well as many other issues that I have with the series in general.

The big draw of Dragon Quest V is you are playing through various stages of the main character's life. Starting he is a small child traveling with his dad in search of a Legendary Hero. Later in the game, you play as his more grown-up self, now able to read and tame monsters to join in your fight. Eventually, you even get married, have kids, and then by the game end your kids are old enough to fight alongside you. It's a journey that spans the entire life of the protagonist. This is the only RPG I can think of that takes place over the entire scope of a single character's life. It adds to the epic feel of the game.

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This is despite relatively poor story and characters, issues I have with most Dragon Quest games. Our Hero never speaks, which can work. In the end, though he just lacks character. This continues to pretty much every character in the game, so when you chose who it is that will be your wife it feels like a decision with little impact. The DS version of this game adds a third choice, Deborah, who I go with purely because she is the only one of the three who actively says you should pick her, and the other two say they are fine if you don't pick them, they understand. So Deborah feels like the only one who wants you. Her character is probably the most fully developed in the game, oddly enough, and easily has the most personality. That said, she's just an okay character.

And despite the great premise for the story taking place over the hero's life, the actual plot is pretty straightforward. You are on the search for the Legendary Hero and his legendary gear to stop some kind of evil from overtaking the world, and evil you honestly don't interact with much until the last portion of the game. The sheer uniqueness of the premise behind the story is enough to help overlook a lot of this, but it does hurt the overall experience.

The big thing that makes this one different from other Dragon Quest titles is the monster party members. Being the first in the series to do this, it's a bit of a double-edged sword. On one hand, it gives you so many options for building a party, and if you know anything about me from all my RPG reviews I love having a lot of options. It sucks that there are some blatantly bad choices, but there are more than enough good ones to make it worthwhile.

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Of course, the system is not perfect, and a big issue comes in that there appears to be no in-game way to know what monsters are recruitable. This is especially frustrating because the recruitment rates of monsters vary, and some of them are comically low. This means if you aren't using a guide, you have no way of knowing if that monster you wanted was recruitable, and even if you are you can spend hours trying to get one guy.

Are you starting to see why it is I find this a bit of a hard review to do? Everything the game does well, and for everything it does right, there is an aspect of the game that feels like it is hampering itself. Though if you want one thing that is pretty much free of any notable issues, it's the game's battle system. It's a bit slow for the first stretch of the game and doesn't kick off until you can start recruiting monsters, but the actual combat of the game is just as solid as any other Dragon Quest game. I have always loved how this series sticks true to its roots, and every game has a solid core of a combat system. Where the games vary for me is all the aspects surrounding that core, in this case, it's the monster recruitment that keeps the core formula of the combat feeling fresh.

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It's a hard game to recommend to anyone. Issues with monster recruitment can easily make the game frustrating, and if you can't get over that frustration the rest of the game isn't going to make up for that. But if you can forgive some of those frustrations more easily than others, it's a fantastic game and is a great example of the charm of an old-school RPG.

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