Just finished Dragon Quest V
Overall impression, it was a very good game. Unfortunately I played it too soon after DQIV, so I couldn’t get the full enjoyment out of it. They were just too similar, both looks and content-wise. I felt more like I was playing some extension to DQIV than like I was playing a completely new game. It’s a bit sad, because I was trying to get Dragon Quest V out of the way so I could enjoy DQVI when it came out next week, but now I don’t dare buy it. I know for sure I’ll be bored stiff.
I guess part of the reason Dragon Quest games sell so well in Japan is because they don’t come out so often. So you play one, enjoy it, and then when after a year or two you feel like playing it again, a new one comes out and you play that too. Similar character designs, similar storylines, similar soundtracks, almost identical gameplay, rinse, repeat. Of course you might get unlucky and hit a clunker like DQIX, but if you’re a fan you might get some enjoyment out of that anyway.
So anyway, I had a pretty good time with DQV. I would have had an even better time if I’d waited a while to play it, but there’s no use crying over spilled milk. Or at least I want to think I would have, because I was rather dissatisfied with the way the story played out this time. I spent the whole game just doing what I was told, over and over again. Silent protagonists almost always come across as laidback pushovers, but even among them I have never met a hero as sheep-like and as passive as Dragon Quest V‘s protagonist. I named him Mouse on a whim, little knowing how completely right I would be.
Fine, in the beginning he’s a kid and he doesn’t have much say as his dad drags him from place to place. Bianca says let’s go beat some ghosts, he follows. His dad goes to Coburg, he follows. He ends up as a slave for 10 years. Someone sets him free. Harry wants to go to Coburg, so he goes to Coburg. Then I completely forget what happens until I landed in Mostroferrato. Some guy wants me to marry his daughter and gives me fetch quests. Like a sheep I run off and do them, then I have my pick of three girls I don’t like and don’t want to marry. When I heard “Hand of the Heavenly Bride”, I thought for a second I might get to actually woo somebody. In any case a slug like Mouse would have just messed things up anyway.
So I married fat, bossy Debora and had twins (named Micki and Free, thus betraying my age). Uncle says he’s the new king, Mouse is like “okay”. Uncle tells him to go do a quest, he’s like “Okay.” Debora gets kidnapped. At that point I really, really wanted to leave her kidnapped. I mean, the babies were saved, and I don’t believe for a second that they’re in love or anything. Screw her. But the game says go save her, so I go save her. Then I spend 8 years as a stone statue and somehow manage to have more personality doing so than in the entire game up to that point, etc, etc etc…
As you can tell from the summary, I wasn’t excited for a second over anything I had to do in the game because it didn’t feel like I was doing it of my own volition. I mean, you never do anything of your own volition in jRPGs anyway, but the better ones manage to convince you that this is what you’d want to be doing if you really were in the game. That you’d do it anyway even if no NPC told you to. Throughout Dragon Quest V, however, it’s clear that you’re always following other people’s wishes and orders. You don’t have any desires of your own. I don’t even think you have a mind, you’re an automaton. I can’t get into a story like that, especially when bad things just keep happening to you at every step of the way. Not to mention some parts of the game were things I’d done already, like finding and protecting the legendary hero, collecting the Zenithian equipment and working my way over to Zenithia.
Hmm? But I said I enjoyed the game, didn’t I? I did, I did, but it was despite the story, not because of it. The localization team left the team conversations in, so I had a good time talking things over with my children every time I spoke to an NPC or went to a new location. It really helped flesh out the characters and the game world. I actually feel cheated now that they took those things out of DQIV. The team also toned the accents down as well. Every characters and NPC was intelligible, even though Sancho got really tiresome with all his “ees” and “eet”. If I had to complain, I’d say that I still don’t agree with their policy of making the villains speak in broken English. I don’t know how they spoke in the original Japanese, but I do know for a fact that it’s impossible to take a bad guy seriously when he’s speaking like a “token foreigner” comedy show reject. They don’t sound intelligent, and usually the less intelligent a villain is, the less threatening you find him.
Apart from all that, I also enjoyed having lots of money for the first time in any DQ game ever (okay I’ve only ever played three of them, but my point stands). You see, I lucked out really early at the casino in Fortuna and got a number of Metal King Swords. After that I just made sure I used monsters that could equip that sword (a slime knight and a slime for most of the game, later got a golem) and I didn’t have to spend a single penny on weapons for the entire game. Plus since the best defense is a good offense, I rarely bothered to upgrade my armor. I had 130,000 in the bank with nothing to spend it on at the end of the game, lol. And I had a ton of unsold armor in my bag, including two Flowing Dresses, two Magical Shields and two sets of Flame Armour. Of course, having the most powerful sword in the game on three of your characters just a few hours in means that most enemies aren’t going to put up a fight. I even beat the bonus boss in 28 turns on my first try. Broken game was broken, bwahahaha!
I thought I would enjoy recruiting monsters a little more, but it turned out you don’t really “recruit” them, per se. You just beat the tar 
out of enough of them until one of them decides to join you. It might have been better if they’d included ways of increasing the likelihood of them joining you, maybe with special items or abilities. As it was, getting one of every recruitable monster would have been an incredible waste of time. Most of them are pretty useless and take forever to level up. Besides, you can only take 8 party members with you, so most of the monsters will spend their time locked up in Monty’s pen anyway. A cute addition to the game, but not that useful.
The addition I did enjoy was T’n’T, a gigantic board game that really pulled me in. It’s a bit like snake and ladders mixed with a little D&D and a little Monopoly (the way you keep getting fined) mixed with a little blood from a very sadistic devil. I haven’t been so into a minigame since I played Triple Triad all those years ago. I was actually disappointed when I got lucky on two of those boards and finished them in one try. There’s still the Estark board to try and finish, though. That’ll probably take me weeks, at the rate I’m going.
I also enjoyed the knick-knackatory, which is just a museum where you put special items on display. I’m not much of a collector, but there are only about 30 of those things and they are pretty easy to find as you play through the game, so I had a good time collecting, cleaning and displaying them. No rewards except bragging rights and 500g, but the game was linear enough that I enjoyed the little diversions from the main story.
So, that’s that for Dragon Quest V. I mentioned a little while ago that I was going to give Shiren the Wanderer a try. I did, and I did get killed like I thought I would, but I’m not quite satisfied yet. There’s a difference between getting killed because you didn’t stand a chance and getting killed because “Ah, I could totally have taken that guy!” I want to get to the “didn’t stand a chance” point before I give up. If you don’t hear from me for a while, that’s what I’ll be working on. Oh, and Saga 3 too, can’t forget that.
