GAME CLEAR No. 132 -- Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride

Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride (2008, DS)

Remake of: Dragon Quest V (1992, SFC)
Original Developer: Chunsoft
Original Publisher: Enix
Remake Developer: ArtePiazza
Remake Publisher: Square Enix
Clear Platform: Nintendo DSi
Clear Date: 5/5/23

The Zenith

Have you ever wanted a wife? Kids? What about a giant cat who loves you? Maybe a bunch of monsters to adventure with? If your answer to any of those questions is yes, look no further than Dragon Quest V.

My effort to play every Dragon Quest has been slow, and I expect it will continue to be, but I did manage to get through Dragon Quest V before Tears of the Kingdom came out and also before I had a bit of a personal reckoning (crisis?) regarding how much of my life I spend playing video games (what GAME CLEAR are we up to now?). Good thing, because this fifth entry raised the bar for a series I already loved.

The game is fundamentally similar to its predecessors. Many of the things I like about it are no different from the things that made I-IV great. Charming towns with cute NPCs with little problems to solve, a simple but sound battle system, and a latent sense of unease imposed by the slow drip of information about a Big Bad out there somewhere. The formula works, and there’s some comfort in knowing what you’re getting into with these games. In some ways, it feels like coming home.

The most significant mechanical difference in this game is monster recruitment. In the very beginning of the game, you rescue a sabercat who then becomes your third party member and the first who is technically a monster. A bit later on you’ll get a wagon, and then you can recruit others to your heart’s content. A significant subset of the game’s overall monster roster is recruitable, and any time you defeat one of them in battle, there will be a random chance that they will want to join the party. All you have to do is say yes, and they’ll join up – no SMT recruitment dialog bullshit. It’s absolutely critical that you at least recruit a handful because there are periods during which they will be your only party members, and what’s more, many of them are extremely good. But do you really need convincing? The monsters of Dragon Quest are all such cute little guys. Let them be your buddies.

Like Dragon Quest IV, the plot of the game is split into multiple discrete sections. Instead of splitting them among multiple protagonists, Dragon Quest V focuses its episodes on different key moments throughout the life of its singular protagonist. You follow the Hero from childhood to adulthood and fatherhood. The multigenerational scale of the quest is one I’m not accustomed to seeing play out over the course of a single game, and it makes the Hero’s duty seem all the more personal by the end.

Some of the Hero’s boyhood companions stay with him throughout his life, others are separated by circumstance, and a few are not fortunate enough to make it through all of the decades the story spans. The Hero’s trials are considerable, so the game does a nice job of engendering a sense of sentimentality for those who are able to remain by his side for the long haul.

On the other hand – and I think some of this is just me projecting personal experience onto it – there are also some moments that touch on the notion of what to do when someone important to you is gone. How do you honor them? How do you live up to the standard they set if they lived a life of magnitude and significance? In contrast, how do you forge your own path in spite of what they may have wanted for you? How do you know when to? That is, how do you confidently know and accept that someone you revered may have been wrong?

Again, it could be that these are themes I’m pulling from the game that aren’t quite there. I’m bringing my biases and life experience to the table here. But I think there has to have at least been a morsel of it for me to latch onto. Unfortunately, I still don’t have the answer to basically any of those questions. Dragon Quest V didn’t spell that out for me. But it did get me thinking about them again. Perhaps when someone is gone – when you can never speak to them again – all you can do is hope that the role they played in your life made you more like them. And maybe that will push you in the general direction of living right by them. And maybe the ways you’re different are things they loved about you or can at least forgive. It sure would be nice to have just five more minutes with them to make sure, wouldn’t it? Or maybe a nicer five minutes would just be at a ballgame. Or in the car laughing and joking. Or any once quotidian moment that isn’t anymore.

Maybe the little dragon game won’t make you think about these things. Perhaps you’ll instead just be thoroughly entertained by a rock solid RPG for 30ish hours and go about your life. That’s fine. If so, I hope you’ll tell me about a different game (or whatever) that got you thinking like this one did for me. So much of the value of a piece of art is in how people respond to it, is it not? I hope so, otherwise I sure am wasting a lot of time writing these posts.