Dragon-Quest-V

What a weekend! It started with a craving to see Inception on an IMAX screen and was filled with slime and questing. Some quick words on both. Inception I don’t think it has quite enough to supplant The Dark Knight as my favorite Nolan film, but it’s certainly up there with his best work. The less you know about Inception, the better. Seriously. I’ll have something more substantial up later, but for now I want to stay relatively spoiler free. All I’ll say is that Tom Hardy is now definitely on my radar, Ellen Page did precisely what I love in her movies without being a pretentious-seeming teen like in Juno, Joseph Gordon-Levitt was fantastic and hilarious in a role much better than in (500) Days of Summer, DiCaprio continues to impress with his post- Titanic roles, Marion Cotillard has, like Tom Hardy, become one of my new favorites, and Ken Watanabe was also fantastic, if unintelligible, in the movie. Special mention to Dileep Rao for bringing humor and eccentricity to an otherwise tiny role. His tiny quirks made Yusef a funny character to witness. ...

Dragon Quest is inexorably tied to the Japanese video game space. The series was the first big hit RPG and its core qualities, simplicity, relative ease, and lightheartedness touched that first generation and continue to bring the same degree of fondness with each installment. It is unquestionably the premiere mega-franchise of Japan. Somehow it just never caught on in the states. In the states we play Final Fantasy. ...

[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“359” caption=“Grandmaster Nimzo looks kind of like a Namekian, doesn’t he?”] [/caption] This is it, the final confrontation for Dan and his family against the forces of evil that have plagued his entire life. After a brief stop in an underworld town, Dan, Debora, Dave, and Beca all headed for Mount Zugzwang (ridiculous name for the final fortress, I know). The monsters were all at their toughest, but they were no match for the party and they quickly reached the holding place of Dan’s mother, Madalena. ...

[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“268” caption=“Don’t mean to spoil, but…”] [/caption] Roaming around the temple, I was hit by two blasts from Dan’s past. The first was running into a man among the cult who seemed to recognize me. Imagine my shock when I learned that it was Georgie, now grown into a man after being abducted by evil forces in Dan’s statue period. The funny part was that he recognized Dan as the old statue. ...

I have no idea why I’ve been sitting on this completed installment. Just remembered it was done and decided to post it this week. At the top of Talon Tower Dan, Dave, Beca, and Sancho meet up with a very familiar face. Slon the Rook, the second third of the duo that murdered Pankraz. Dan already killed Kon the Knight right before being turned into a statue, so I was on my toes worried about what might happen after Dan took out Slon. Thankfully, nothing did and I was left feeling a little relieved and gratified that I had enacted Dan’s revenge on yet another of his father’s murderers. On a whim, I decided to check in with the party to see what they had to say about the fight. ...

[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“Some of Toriyama’s famous and iconic monster designs”][/caption] There are these little moments in Dragon Quest that are so lighthearted and ridiculous in the context of the tension of the narrative that I can’t help but laugh out loud. Tasked with re-entering the fairy kingdom to find a replacement Golden Orb, I noticed a cat outside a house. I don’t often talk to the animals in RPGs, but I’m sometimes struck with the desire to do so. This time the cat actually spoke. He told Dan that he was a magician disguised as a cat trying to get access to the fairy kingdom and asked Dan not to blow his cover. It’s tiny and insignificant, but it’s the little details like this that make me love Dragon Quest V. Yuji Horii is all about the small things. ...

After yet another long hiatus in this series, we continue where we left off: Dan, his children, and Sancho are en route to the hometown of Dan’s mother, Mada, but have decided to take a few detours along the way to see some of the people Dan hadn’t seen in the eight years he was a statue. At one point Dan went into an inn in Whealbrook and had a nice chat with an old lady. Incidentally, her only line of dialog was to tell me that whenever hard times struck, she was able to get by thanks to being able to watch her daughter grow up. I wanted to laugh at how pointed the comment was, but I found myself struck by how tragic it was that Dan was denied that simple pleasure. Here was Yuji Horii reminding me that family is something worth fighting for, especially considering that Dan had next to no childhood and didn’t get to raise his own children either. ...

Wow, it’s been a long while since I’ve written one of these. I hope you guys haven’t forgotten about this. How about a quick recap to get us all up to speed. Dan is a small boy who wears a purple robe. His father, Pankraz, is a big strong man who is on the search for Dan’s mother. One day, while on a job bodyguarding Prince Harry, Pankraz is brutally murdered while protecting Dan and Harry. The kids are sold into slavery and don’t escape for ten years. Harry falls in love with Maria and leaves Dan. After Harry leaves, Dan starts searching for the legendary Zenithian gear to fight off an ancient evil. Along the way, he meets Debora and gets married. Debora becomes pregnant and gives birth to the twins David and Rebeca, but she is kidnapped shortly thereafter. Dan goes off to save her, but both he and Debora are turned into statues and sold to different families. Eight years later, Dan’s twin children finally find him and undo the curse before setting off to finish finding the Zenithian equipment and eventually find their mother. ...

Well I wrote this already once, but the internet managed to lose it thanks to some internet problems. So here we go again. When we last left Dan, his children and Sancho had just discovered his statued form face down, the world going to hell all around him. I can’t even imagine what it must have felt like for Dan to see Sancho roll up with what could only be his children eight years after their birth. ...

Life continues to be difficult for our intrepid hero, Dan. Quick recap: After killing one of his father’s murderers, Dan and his wife, Debora, were turned into living statues by another of Dan’s father’s murderers, Bishop Ladja. They were then found by treasure hunters and Dan was sold to the rather rich Porgie family. At this point, I don’t think his life could get much worse. Oh wait, how about if Dan had to spend the next eight years as a statue. That’s bad enough, but here’s the real kicker. Horii goes and twists the knife once it’s inside your heart with one simple twist. Mr. Porgie bought Dan for a reason. Dan is intended to be a good luck gift for his newborn son, Georgie. The emotional twist is that Dan is forced to watch Georgie grow up before his very eyes, in lieu of his own progeny. ...