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The Lowdown
Pros: Great story, true character development, massive graphical upgrade
Cons: Stale RPG mechanics, players must spend a lot of time leveling up
 Purchase
at Play-Asia
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While the Dragon Quest (also known as Dragon Warrior)
franchise is less known than Final Fantasy outside of Japan, in Japan it
is more popular than Final Fantasy. Dragon Quest V was one of the best
of the series. It was the first Dragon Quest on Super Nintendo and it
sold millions of copies. Many fans of the series revere number five as
the best of the series. So it isn't too much of a surprise that Square
Enix chose to remake Dragon Quest V for Sony's Playstation 2.In
Dragon Quest you play as a self-named hero (for the purpose of the
review he will be named hero) as he grows up. The game starts at the
hero's birth where his father, Papas, is suggesting names for the hero
and finally agrees with his wife to call the hero whatever you picked.
The story quickly flashes to a young version of the hero on a boat
awaking from a dream on a quest to the village of Santa Rosa. At first
the story progresses slowly, it doesn't present a lot of mystery or even
place you in a life or death struggle. The story is really about the
hero growing up. Throughout the story the hero will grow from childhood
to adulthood and eventually become a parent himself. Watching the hero
mature is what Dragon Quest V is all about.
Although sitting around and just waiting for the hero to mature would
be a pretty boring game. The adventure does progress with the hero doing
the typical RPG stuff like go through dungeons and battle slimes, many
slimes. Typically, the game's format is something will happen in the
story, which prompts the hero to enter a dungeon/cave/castle. The
dungeons are traditional RPG dungeons. You see the hero from a top down
perspective and move him through the maze. While navigating the hero you
will run into a number of different monsters. At the start of the game
you'll be fighting rats, bugs and of course slimes. Later on you'll
battle larger monsters like dragons and giant slimes.
The battle system remains almost the same compared to the original.
It is largely menu and text based, just like the NES versions of Dragon
Warrior. At the beginning of a battle you're given the chance to pick
what you want your characters to do. You can pick choose to attack, use
magic or run in the basic menu. Once you select their commands the
battle will begin. Speed determines which character or enemy attacks at
which time, no active time battle here. Attacks are graphically
displayed and text accompanies the attack explain what happened. The
battling effects aren't spectacular. None of your characters run out and
hit the enemies and the spell effects aren't as flashy as in a Final
Fantasy game. You continue to choose commands until you either win the
battle, lose or run away. The game does have the option to assign
characters preset strategies like playing the role of a hero or focusing
on physical attacks if you don't want to control your characters. Just
like any RPG you'll gain experience points and gold for winning a fight.
There are no skill points so leveling your character up is the only way
to gain new spells. The Dragon Quest series has always been infamously
known for making players spend time leveling up. Dragon Quest V is no
exception to this rule. If you want to actually complete this game more
time is spent battling random monsters than doing anything else.
Hardcore RPG fans may enjoy the "challenge" of leveling up, but the
general gamer will find that there is too much challenge. Most of the
battles lack strategy beyond the rocks-paper-scissors RPG strategy
where you cast lighting on water based enemies and fire on ice based
enemies. Also there is no character customization, which would have been
a nice addition.
To counter the lack of character customization Square Enix did tweak
the combat system a little. For instance you can have four players in
the same party instead of three. This is a good addition since it allows
a little more diversity in your party than the original had. Later on in
the game you will obtain a caravan where you can hold other characters
that aren't in your fighting party. The caravan allows you to switch
characters in and out to alter your party. Dragon Quest V was also the
first game in the series to start monster catching. Catching monsters
was one of the games challenges. Monsters that are caught can also be
used to battle. Often monsters have different and even unique abilities
compared to other characters, which make them compliment a party.
Dragon Quest V had some amazing graphic designers.
Akira Toriyama (best known for Dragon Ball Z)
handled the character design . The original graphics were sprite
based and featured an artistic style of its own. The style that the
designers always went for was cute looking cartoonish monsters. Instead
of realistic graphics Dragon Quest always seemed to have an animated
flare to it. The remake of Dragon Quest V manages to capture the style
of the original. Instead of replacing the game with new graphics, the
original artwork was transformed into polygons. The result is a fairly
well done version of the game, even if doesn't have the same technical
merits of other Playstation 2 games.
Dragon Quest V's original score was kept intact with an orchestral
upgrade instead of the MIDI music found in the SNES version. The tunes
are rich, albeit classical audio. The soundtrack does its job in many
places during the story scenes. The battle tune is pretty good too, even
though it isn't as captivating as some of the other songs in the game.
One surprise was that there wasn't any voice acting included in the game.
It would have been a nice compliment to the story.
The game has a decent amount of play time like all RPGs. After you
beat it you can still play the casino mini game or try to capture all of
the monsters. You can also replay the game to make different choices as
your character grows up, which can also affect the story. Though many
players, after going though all of the dungeons and all of the fighting,
won't opt to do so. Dragon Quest V was designed with the hardcore RPGer
in mind. If you aren't a fan of the genre Dragon Quest V won't appeal to
you. Even younger RPGers will find it frustrating to enjoy Dragon Quest
V because you'll see one too many slimes before the story picks up.
However, for those gamers that take on this game will find the true
reward in progressing through the story.
Not import friendly in the least bit. Not only are all the menus in
the game are in Japanese, the game is largely menu based. You'll have to
navigate menu to menu just to progress through a battle. The best part
of the game, the story is also all in Japanese. Which means without a
deep understanding of the language you'll miss out on the core of the
game.
US Bound?
Even though the Dragon Warrior series hasn't fared as well in
America as it does in Japan the recent merger between Square and Enix
makes a US release highly probable.
Overall
Dragon Quest V has all of the hallmarks of an RPG, a
great story, character development and lots of monsters to fight.
However, the traditional RPG stance that this game has will turn many
gamers away from it.
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