Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride

Genre: Roleplaying Game
Developer: Chunsoft
Publisher: Square Enix
Players: 1
Retail Price: $40
Availability: Nintendo DS

It had been a while since I had delved into a good RPG (at least one I wasn’t intimately familiar with), and so the prospect of playing what many consider to be one of the best RPGs ever made was fairly exciting. I’m fairly certain I’ve played at least a little of a Dragon Quest game in the past, as I remember fighting slimes when I was younger, but those glimmers of memories were all the experience I came in with.

I quickly realized that this was an RPG in its pure, unadulterated form. As characters level up, they gain strength, luck and other standard attributes. The characters also have their own inventory, meaning that placing all your Medicinal Herbs in one basket could come back to haunt you if the wrong person gets killed in battle. Not that, uh, that happened to me. Characters can also equip armor, shields and helmets to raise defense; none of these are exactly mind-blowing revelations, but many small changes added up to a solid yet different experience from some of the games in this genre I’ve played in the past few years.

Stories that deviate from the standard formulas, no matter what the medium, I find inherently more interesting. Dragon Quest V certainly mixes things up: about three hours into the game, it suddenly took a sharp turn and tossed me 10 years into the future. Getting settled in? Good, let’s jump into the future again! Many games are referred to as ‘epic,’ but Hand of the Heavenly Bride is one of the few that can actually live up to the word’s true meaning.

Another deviation is the somewhat mixing of traditional gender roles. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that, in the first main quest, the male lead was the one casting the healing spells while the female sidekick was the one doling out the punishment. You learn attacking spells soon enough, yes, but anything that’s not ‘chicks am healers, men am smash’ gets points for originality in my book.

Generally, upon death you get to reload your last save and try again. Instead, death brings you back to the nearest church. This is a double edged sword: if you’re too low a level for an area, you can essentially throw yourself at it until you level up enough to be able to conquer it. On the other hand, death now means death. If a character dies in a battle (besides the main protagonist), they’re dead until you pay a priest to resurrect them. If you tend to die a lot — like some reviewers hypothetically do — then your supply of gold can be sapped fairly quickly.

You generally have at least a few backup characters in the event of a poorly timed death, though, since you have the ability to recruit the enemies you’re facing. Periodically, after a battle, a vanquished foe will reappear and inquire as to the possibility of joining your party. I’m of the ‘more the merrier’ philosophy, so soon I had Adam the Rotten Apple and Whacka the Brownie fighting alongside me. This is a nice feature, especially in earlier portions of the game, as your human party members have a tendency to say ‘that’s enough for me, thanks’ and leave. Nonhuman characters tend to be more… independent, though. Until they have sufficient wisdom, your orders are really only suggestions, so ‘attack Owlbear A’ could become ‘defend.’ This can get particularly annoying when your command is ‘why don’t you heal yourself, since you’re five steps from death?’ and they decide to attack instead.

The first thing I noticed when the game started was that you walk quickly. Very, very quickly. I quickly became acclimated to it, but it still bears mentioning. The other noticeable aspect of the gameplay is that while your characters are sprites, the surroundings are polygonal. Not only that, but in many places the shoulder buttons can be used to rotate the camera to see the setting from a different angle. This can be integral to solving some puzzles, which initially stumped me because I’ve become used to in-game tutorials for everything useful and have stopped reading game manuals. I’m not sure whether to be annoyed that the game didn’t adequately explain the situation or pleased that my hand wasn’t being held.

Undoubtedly frustrating was the map in the game. Many times you’d be told to go to an area, but not given any instructions as to where the place actually was. This led to some exploring, which was actually fairly fun, but random encounters whittling away at my then-low-level characters had a tendency to sour my enjoyment. Other times I’d be told exactly where to go, but the static, unlabeled map would provide no hint as to where the place was located. This probably won’t be much of an issue if you don’t mind wasting some time wandering: impatient players really need not apply, as the meandering and repeated deaths can lead to lengths of gameplay with zero story progression.

There’s enough in Hand of the Heavenly Bride that’s different, or at least that differentiates itself from ‘modern’ RPGs, to make it worthwhile to fans of the genre. Slight tweaks to the story, mechanics and gameplay provide an interesting experience that takes place across significant chunks of time and space. If you’re looking for a casual gateway-drug style game to ease you into the genre then this may not fit, but it’s not so ‘hardcore’ as to be inaccessible: if you can kill a slime, then you can play this game. Slight annoyances aside, it’s a good game made better by its portable format, and is a good example of what the DS should be used for.