Dragon-Quest-V

After last week’s cliffhanger I’m sure that it’s pretty easy to guess that Dan’s wife, Debora has been kidnapped. Way less predictable, the infants were left unharmed and within the walls of the castle. It initially seemed odd to me that such a mistake would be made by the villains, but then again, traveling or abducting someone with infants in tow seems a lot harder and like it might be easier to get noticed. Also obvious was the chancellor’s involvement in the plot. Yuji Horii’s narrative stance on traitors seems to be a bit on the disapproving side, as the monsters double-crossed the chancellor and left him for dead in a rural cathedral. His last moments were spent begging the hero for forgiveness. ...

If you couldn’t already guess, a midwife/doctor type confirmed that Debora was not only pregnant, but quite far along. It brings up the tricky point of time in these video games. What seemed like hours traveling around the world map in my control must have been nine months, because Deb is apparently ready to pop. It makes sense, considering the scale of the map and the modes of transportation, but without an outright statement of “Nine Months Later” (too obvious), I find myself pulled out of the narrative a bit. Speaking of getting pulled out of his narrative, Dan is summoned down to see King Albert, prematurely ending the joyous discovery. ...

It doesn’t take a genius to guess that Debora’s probably pregnant. I may have mentioned this before, but at any point in Dragon Quest V, the player can choose to have the main character chat with the members of his party. Dan spoke with Debora and she all but confirmed her impending motherhood with a “You know…I might be…never mind, let’s go.” Further travels to Gotha are marked with few noteworthy events. Now that Dan is rather close to Gotha, he hears from the populace about the king Panrkaz whose travels took him away from his kingdom for near twelve years now. No one seems to know he’s dead. Dan’s mother even makes an appearance in some of the dialogue as some townspeople remark on Dan’s resemblance to Madalena. The recently married Dan is also offered marriage advice by some of the NPCs he speaks with, just to hammer home that family theme. ...

I like being surprised by a narrative. Too often, especially when it comes to video games, it’s always the same predictable plot twists and points. This was a point where Dan, the player, and Dan, the character, were both stunned at a convention being broken. It seems that Dan is most definitely not the hero of legend. The Zenithian helmet doesn’t fit Dan and Cleohatra is not willing to just loan it to him with the hopes that he’ll eventually run into the hero of legend. She sends Dan off to his previously unknown hometown of Gotha with the intent to track down the leads that Pankraz was following. ...

There’s a rather interesting mechanic in play with Dragon Quest V and, while it wasn’t pioneered in Dragon Quest V, I think that it fits in well with the family theme of DQV. After Dan became an adult, he acquires a horse named Dusty and a wagon. This wagon holds the hero’s excess party when he doesn’t have them in the fighting party. The end result is that Dan has the fighting party and a backup party present in battles. He can swap fighters whenever he needs to within any battle that the wagon is present in. The wagon, logically, is only present in outdoor battles or battles in locations where a wagon would fit in the corridors with you. ...

As if to drive home the need for a companion, Dan is now left completely alone on his quest thanks to Harry’s departure. This next part of the game features Dan coming in contact with his childhood sabrecat pet Leo, but this part of the game is, quite frankly, dull to me, despite the themes of friendship and family, since Leo is has been dutifully searching for Dan and joins his team only once he is shown Bianca’s ribbon. ...

Pankraz is dead. Madalena is alive. Prince Harry and Dan are still in Ladja’s clutches. What sinister plan does he have for the poor boys? The story continues ten years later. Dan and Harry were sold into slavery and have been spending the past ten years building a temple for some cult. At this point I started to realize that Dan’s life pretty much sucks. Harry fills Dan in on the details of the past ten years and it seems that it’s been pretty bleak. The guards all seem to imply that once the temple is completed (soon) there will be a slave massacre. Still, Dan and Harry don’t make much trouble…until Maria gets herself in trouble with some of the guards. Dan and Harry have too much honor to allow her to be abused, so they get into a scuffle with the guards and end up killing them. It turns out that one of the other, nicer guards is Maria’s brother and he knows that death for all three slaves will be the inevitable result of Dan and Harry’s insubordination, so he allows Dan, Harry, and Maria to escape from the temple in a barrel. ...

When we last left Dan and Pankraz, they had just showed up in Coburg to be bodyguards for Prince Henry. It seems there’s some strife within the castle, as the king has two heirs and the queen clearly favors one son over the other. It’s some serious Jacob and Esau-type stuff and an example of a family gone horribly wrong. The princes are either apathetic (Wilbur) or total jerkfaces (Harry), but it doesn’t really matter anyway, we’ve gotta guard Harry after all. ...

When we last left off, young Dan had arrived on land in Littlehaven after dreaming that his father was a king. Exciting! Except Pankraz seems to just be a wanderer, but a well-respected guy. Almost everyone Dan can talk to seems to think that Pankraz is the finest specimen of a man they’ve ever met and that he’s bound to grow up to be as great as his old man. As Dan continued to wander around, he eventually found his way outside of the city and onto the world map. Here he got into his first random encounter with monsters! Before Dan even has a chance to get worried, Pankraz shows up to save the day and WRECK SOME MONSTERS. Holy cow, Pankraz is a tough guy. Nothing seems to faze him and he mows through monsters with ease. If Dan starts to dip in HP, Pankraz will heal him up. He takes control and walks Dan back over to his hometown, Whealbrook. ...

Like I said I might do before, here’s a rundown of a game I’m playing to try and encourage me to make significant progress. Unfortunately, even if there were commercial DS capture devices available, I don’t really have the cash to spare for them anyway, so we’ll start our look in with words and I might snap some ugly iPhone shots if I really want to hurt your eyes. As a final warning, I’m going to be getting into plot points. Leave if you don’t want to read SPOILERS ...