Sorry, you can only have one daughter in the game…

After only having it for a week, I managed to beat DQV. It took about 25 or so hours. Overall, I would rank the overall experience of this game somewhat lower than my experience in DQIV.

DQV’s story is pretty standard as far as Dragon Quest games go. More or less, there’s this big evil dude that is resurrected/brought into the human world/causing havoc and you, as the hero, needs to stop him. V is a little different than the others in how it builds up to final fight thought, with more of a focus on the hero’s life than preview games.

The game has three main sections of the story, each corresponding with the a certain section of the hero’s life. The prologue tells the story of the hero’s early childhood and gives you background for the main story. The middle part is where the bulk of the story is, where you get married and have children as well as start on your epic quest, whilst the last part is where you finally finish everything with your family by your side.

Don’t worry about spoilers in the previous paragraph, you can pretty much tell that from looking at the cover of the box (which gives you a nice picture of a potential wife and a potential set of children,) and the box where it shows the hero of the kid. I think the website pretty much says the same thing. The so-called ‘Lifestyle’ choice is most likely the main draw of the game (even though all choices are more or less the same, story-wise.)

Besides what was mentioned above, the game is more or less the same as DQIV, gameplay wise. It’s a lot less character development focus than IV, since you’re just with your monster pals for a big portion of the game, although IV didn’t have a lot either since they took out party-talk in the Western release, which this game thankfully has.

One of my complaints about the game is that it gets way too easy in the end. I beat the last boss on my first try, with all of my characters at almost full health. One character died during the battle (the hero,) was revived the next turn with no problems. The only time anyone else got close to dying was because of ‘desperate attacks’ that some DQ enemies have, which would leave any of my characters with less than 30 or so HP. This is reason why I personally enjoy DQIV more than this title, even though this one has the better story.

This is mainly due to the uber-abusing item known as the sage’s stone. I remember this being in DQIV, but I don’t remember it being as good as it is in DQV. Maybe I’m wrong and was stupid for not using it in the previous game, but in this game, the breathe attacks near the endgame were more of a blessing since they could almost be fully healed if you had insulate attacked and used a sage’s stone right after each attack.

That being said, the game is a lot harder than DQIV in the beginning. In the beginning of the game, your party roster is somewhat lacking (it takes a while before you can actually recruit monsters.) Some of the early bosses can be quite brutal. There’s even a short section where the hero is all alone and there are random enemies that can cause paralysis, which results in annihilation if all party members fall under paralysis. Overall, though, I believe it’s the easier game, being reminded of the final boss battles in DQIV (and the second to last secret boss, man that was a toughie!)

The battle music is a bit worse than IV, but the dungeon music is better, I think, but who cares? It’s Sugiyama; everything’s good, anyway. Even though I don’t think the game as a whole is quite as good as DQIV, I can’t think that anyone who likes JRPGs would hate this game.

Look forward to something about 7th Dragon soon. I’m pretty far in the game, so I’ll probably start writing something, hopefully in a way more timely fashion than this.