Ah Dragon Quest. What RPG gamer DOESN’T like that series? One of the most influential RPG series ever, and also one of the most popular. This is a remake of the fifth game in the series. It was originally released on the Super Famicom in Japan, and eventually got a PS2 re-release(with upgraded graphics!) in Japan as well. This is the first time the game comes out in English (yeah, I know there’s unofficial translations, I played those too), and it’s completely revamped.

Is the DS version any good? Read on and see what I have to say about it!

Looks and sounds
This game is part of the 3 remakes SE are making of Dragon Quest games: 4, 5 and 6. I have played the DS version of 4 and am pretty excited for DQVI. But there I go and see this game suffers from Star Ocean PSP remakes syndrome. Remember how I mentioned in my Star Ocean: Second Evolution review that the graphic and gameplay engine in both Star Ocean remakes were exactly the same? Well they’ve done it again. Square Enix used the exact same graphic engine from the DQIV remake in the DQV remake. There’s pretty much no change at all between both of them, other than character sprites. The environment is in 3D (it looks fine, not the best 3D ever but it does the job) and the characters/monsters/whatever are 2D sprites (completely revamped from the SNES version). That’s all fine, but was it too much to ask for the games to not use the exact same engine? Really?

Well, the graphics look fine, there’s a good variety of locales and such. Not exactly as good as the PS2 remake of the same game(which, judging from videos, looks pretty damn good), but still good enough. It just feels like they could’ve done more than that.

The game sounds fine. The music is what you’d expect from a Dragon Quest game. The rest of the sounds are the same as in the DQIV remake but that’s to be expected.

Story (minor spoilers)
I quite like the story here. It takes a different approach than any previous Dragon Quest game, or any previous RPG for that matter, and very few games did something like this. One of the things I really like here is that you go through the whole life of the character you control. You see his birth, then you go through a few adventures during his childhood(when he’s around 5-7 years old), then you do stuff 10 years later, then you get married, have kids, and continue your adventure with wife and kids in tow. 

The story itself is not too bad. Other original thing though: You don’t control the hero. You just control… some guy who’s had an unlucky childhood. After trying to save a Prince and being stopped by a mage of sorts, your father dies protecting you, and you and the Prince are taken as slaves. As your father dies, you are told your mom is still alive and you are tasked to finding her. 10 years later, you’re still a slave, building a temple of sorts. You help another slave and you escape the slave camps or whatever and you go back to places you’ve already been. In your Father’s hometown you find a sword and are told that you need to find the legendary hero who can wield the sword. And that hero is obviously not you as the sword drains your energy when you try using it(and you can’t actually equip it). The rest of the game centers around trying to find the magical equipment for the Legendary Hero and finding said hero, getting married and getting kids on the way (who obviously join your party).

Overall I really like the way they take on the story. It’s different from the usual “You have to save the world” tale, or at least a different take on it. It’s original and pretty interesting. The only thing that could’ve been done better is the characters, I feel they could be a lot more interesting.

Gameplay
This game follows the exact same gameplay as the SNES version. Which is pretty much the same gameplay as with the NES games. It’s as basic as an RPG can be.

In battle you get the usual “Attack, Magic, Item, Defense” choices, nothing special here. Targeting is like the previous title. Instead of targeting particular enemies, you target groups. Let’s say you get in a battle with 2 slimes and 2 dragons, you’ll target either the 2 slimes or the 2 dragons and you can’t choose exactly which one you want to target. You want to hit the dragon on the right? Just hope the game decides it’s the one you hit. It’s kinda annoying, but it still works. There’s weapons that target entire groups (there’s 7 slimes in your way? just hit them all with a whip!) or even all the enemies.

The one new element here is the monster “capturing”. It works almost exactly as it does in the Dragon Quest Monster games. After buying a wagon, you can capture monsters. That’s done by… hoping they join you after beating them in battle. There’s a limit to the number of monsters you can have, and that limit changes depending on the number of human characters you have in your party. But, in general, monsters seem more powerful. The difference is that they’re a bit more limited to what they can equip than human characters.

Otherwise, we’ll there’s not THAT much to do. Talk to people in towns for hints at where to go next, advance the story, go to casinos with simple mini-games (including the board game where you can find treasure and fight monsters, finding good stuff if you get to the end), and go through dungeons, which are mostly big caves and castles that you need to traverse to get to the big boss fight. There’s rarely any puzzles to do, and if there are they’re quite simple. There’s also a few sidequests.

Overall
Dragon Quest is one of the essential RPG series out there, and the series of remakes is a pretty good idea, moreso for American DQ fans that never got to play 5 and 6(coming sometime this year, probably). This one offers a relatively original story, the monster capturing is fun as it enables you to build a team as you want it (you CAN go through the game without that though, it’s optional) and the gameplay is simple yet fun.

A good pick if you want a good RPG on the DS. I’m a bit annoyed that SE just reused the same graphics and gameplay engine for this one like they did with the Star Ocean remakes, but it’s a good entry anyways… let’s hope they won’t do that with the third Dragon Quest remake…

jobocan Games, Review