Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride

"Far from perfect, but improved nonetheless"

Dragon Quest V, the fifth installment in one of the most highly acclaimed RPG series, was originally released in 1992 and never made it outside of Japan. Although iconic in it's native country, the DQ series has never found as much success elsewhere. Despite this, the rest of the world is now able to experience the Zenithian trilogy through brand new Nintendo DS remakes of the original three games. DQV introduced a few unique features into a rather generic series and while some were positive, there were also a few that seemed like a step backwards. DQV:HotHB, the remake of the SNES game, is superior in every way to the original version, unfortunately it still missed some of the key aspects that should have been improved.

Story: 6/10
DQV is one of the first games (or perhaps THE first standard RPG) to introduce an unusual but interesting method of storytelling that looks at the world over the course of a few decades through the eyes of the main character during three distinct generations. The player embarks on a quest to save the world that encompasses not only himself, but his entire family from father to son. The player begins the game as a child where he learns several harsh truths about the nature of loss and develops friendships that last throughout his entire life. After several events, the game fast forwards and covers the main character's journey as a drifter who searches for his own purpose in the world. The final generation ties the game together as all of the searching from the initial generations comes together and the answers are revealed, culminating into a final struggle against an ancient evil. Sounds pretty interesting, doesn't it? Unfortunately, the premise is quite spectacular but the execution is border line terrible.

For a series that is regarded as "heavily story based" there is very little actual story in the game. After completing a lengthy dungeon, the player is generally treated to a few lines of dialogue that are rather drab or uninteresting, usually getting straight to the point without developing anything. The only time that you actually see something happen are during the four to five major events of the whole game. The characters themselves are boring and underdeveloped, usually just there and along for the ride on the main character's self imposed quest to save the world from the cartoon villains that talk like halfwits. I read all of the intellectual babble in the books on the shelves in game (many of which are "uninteresting" even to the developers) and I smashed the "B" button throughout towns and dungeons just to be rewarded with "..." half the time or some useless comment about something obvious, what's the point? Ultimately, the silent hero that can never actually make a choice (every single choice in the game is fixed and will be repeated endlessly until you choose the "right" answer), the horrible presentation of a storyline and the lack of any real character development leads to a good idea being presented terribly.

Graphics: 8.5/10
When DQV was originally released on the SNES, the game featured pretty terrible graphics for it's time, barely a step up from DQIV, the only real improvement was in the upgraded colors. Surprisingly, the graphics of the remake are a significant improvement and fit the style of the series very well. The graphical style used in these remakes was first introduced in DQ7 and then highly refined to not only meet the standards of current portable gaming, but to far surpass what the PSX had presented all those years ago. The environments of the game are very vivid and detailed and are clearly the high point of the visuals.

All enemies in the game are fully animated and alive in battle and just about every attack or spell has some kind of colorful and detailed graphic to go along with it. Although the graphics are basically identical to the remake of DQIV, added into this remake are even a few mini cut scenes that often depict events of a greater scale, one such example of this is when a rather massive boss is released from confinement and is seen from the top of the upper screen to the very bottom of the lower screen. Nothing in this game is ground breaking, but all of the visuals are above average, a great effort that will hopefully only get better when the remake of DQVI is released.

Gameplay: 8/10
Playing through DQV is mostly about exploring dungeons, levelling up and spending ridiculous amounts of money on a single piece of armor. The distinctive feature of DQV is the ability to befriend, collect and train the very same monsters that you fight around the world in an attempt to harness their abilities for your own cause. At the end of each fight, if a monster is recruitable, there is a chance that it will join your party assuming you were able to kill it before it runs away. Creating a unique party out of several different monsters is actually really fun and most of them have their own skill sets, strengths and weaknesses to contribute. Perhaps the biggest problem with the system is that most monsters are very rare and it takes a long time to convince even basic monsters to join your group. The whole idea is great, if only the recruiting system had been less luck based, it would have been much better.

In addition to the standard RPG elements, DQV contains a plethora of mini games and events to distract the player from the inevitable tedium of grinding and dungeon crawling. Winning prizes from the casino, tnt board, tombola game and the monster arena can be a time consuming but fun investment that yields some spectacular prizes. In addition to these games are the collecting of mini medals and knick knacks. Mini medals are commonly found throughout the game and can be traded for some of the rarest pieces of equipment and knick knacks are collectibles that can be displayed in a castle. The addition of a nearly bottomless portable storage bag and a fourth character slot are some of the remake only features that greatly increased the playability aspect of the game.

Music/Sound Effects: 4.5/10
A simple few words describes my thoughts about this, crash and burn basically. Most of the music in DQV is either unmemorable or just plain boring. From the overworld map theme to the battle theme to the dungeon theme, almost everything is bland. It's actually quite bad how similar the DS remake sounds to a console as ancient as the SNES, I almost felt as if they barely even remade the songs. The DQIV remake was full of vivid and varied tunes that seemed to change chapter by chapter to reflect the new journeys of the characters, definitely not true of DQV. From the very beginning to the very end you're basically listening to the same old handful of boring songs, to the point where I was pretty much just playing with the sound off and watching TV at times. Despite the atrocity of the sound track, the sound effects are pretty crisp and detailed, similarly to how they were in DQIV, not much has changed though, it would've been nice to have gotten a bit more variety.

Challenge: 6/10
The difficulty of DQV after the first third of the game is largely based on which monsters you're able to catch, which can be problematic due to the luck based nature of recruiting them. Although it is extremely unlikely to go through the game without catching a monster, I have gone through a large part of the mid game with just two monsters. This problem is rectified somewhat in the last third of the game due to the sudden influx of mandatory human characters, but half of the compulsory characters are only useful in particular situations and not in general. Sudden spikes of difficulty are common throughout the game and feel unexpected and awkward, usually causing unnecessary frustration, especially when the following area of the game has easier encounters then the previous for no reason.

Replayability: 3/10
There is very little reason to replay DQV truth be told, almost everything in the game can be completed in one playthrough. Although there are three choices for the hero's bride, two are almost exact clones of each other and only the new DS specific addition has unique characteristics. If you think it's really worth it to replay such a linear game just to use one different character that has very limited use as it is, be my guest, but I can't recommend it.

Final Words
DQV certainly has it's own interesting and unique features, with better execution, perhaps the game could have soared above what it actually was presented as. You tend to either love or hate the game, an avid RPG fan would probably have a decent time with the game and it is worth a purchase, but don't expect to get much more out of it then a single play through of 30 hours or 40 hours depending on your tolerance for post game content.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 04/08/09

Game Release: Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride (US, 02/16/09)