Yuji-Horii

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 ...