The best Dragon Quest I've ever played.

It's easy to look at the Dragon Quest series and figure that if you've played one, you've played them all. Who could really blame you? After all, there's more than enough similarities that pop up between each game, always intentional, and while the storylines never connect, there's always carry over monsters, items, and general gameplay elements between all 8 games. That said is there any real worth to revisiting a game that was released in the series quite a while back, even if it has seen a few small changes on the DS?

With Dragon Quest V, at least, I'd say there definitely is. My personal experience with the DQ series started with Dragon Warrior on the NES, but didn't really pick up again until Dragon Quest 7 on the PS1 and Dragon Quest 8 on the PS2. I tackled the remake/port of Dragon Quest IV on DS in a review for this site, which I definitely enjoyed, but Dragon Quest V feels like a pretty big step above IV for me, and in all honesty, I've enjoyed this far more than I did the overly lengthy exploits of 7, or the character driven elements of 8.

What sets V apart from the rest though? Well, let's start with the storyline. Dragon Quest V begins by introducing you to the literal birth of your character, another nameless entry into the series (that you'll name obviously), born to a King and Queen in some far off country. The birth is successful and the mother is apparently suffering from some complications. Ok, so here we're not looking at something we haven't seen before in an RPG, and I think early on our preconception of where the story is going feels pretty spot on. However, shortly after this the game jumps ahead a few years, where you're now a small child traveling around with your father Pankraz, who is no longer the king for currently unknown reasons. Even this isn't a stretch for RPG land, but the thing that struck me as particularly cool about this section of the game is setting up connections with other characters that you'll end up visiting much later in the timeline, even bonding or teaming-up with them for future events. It's a really great way of setting up the entire life for you character, while at the same time getting in some baby-steps for the combat and exploration that the game is going to require of you. The other thing I enjoyed, and it's a pretty minimal thing to get a kick out of, was traveling from city to city with your dad, which is handled automatically. You follow behind him, but can still get into random encounters, of which your dad will usually handle in one hit. However, if you get any damage during combat, he'll stop to heal you back up before setting off again. It's not much, I know, but it's a neat little detail that added to the whole character development side of things for me.

Once you get past the childhood section of the game, you really start to take a bite out of the world, with your Hero somewhat grown up, and with more and more of the world available for you to explore outside of the single continent that you've been on for a while. There's even a few females to court and possibly marry, adding a little bit of replay value to the game to see the different outcomes available depending on who you choose. Along with that, the game also features the ability to team up with monsters that you've previously encountered and have them join your group permanently, allowing you to switch out your line-up with anyone that's already joined up with you. They all end up with their own names (which you can rename of course), and as they level up they'll gain new abilities and what not, just like the story-based characters. There's a lot of monsters that you can potentially gain for your side, and hardcore players will be able to waste quite a bit of time trying to collect every single one (yes, you can even get Metal Slimes). Along with that, all the monsters can be fully equipped with weapons and armor, just like any other character. The other nice feature of having a large group of monsters on board is that if you have one group of four that dies during a fight, another group of 4 (or less if you only have a few) will hop in to take over, upping your chances of pulling out a win in a more difficult encounter.

Combat is pretty much like every Dragon Quest game out there, and really I didn't see anything that stood out to me when compared to the other titles in the series. The monsters will tend to have a mind of their own for a little while until you start to level them up a bit, so they'll sometimes defend when you want them to attack, or they'll randomly attack the wrong enemy, but they're not too troublesome to use early on. I was happy to see that everyone gains experience whether they're in the active party or not, so if you decide to switch out a character or two later on you won't be punished by having to grind up their levels to come close to matching the rest of the party.

Also, the difficulty curve of Dragon Quest V doesn't seem to be too steep. I rarely found a spot where I needed to grind, and if I did need to grind it was pretty much just for a couple levels. Also, since combat against basic enemies is pretty quick, and loading is a complete non-issue with the game, grinding didn't exactly feel like a chore, and if nothing else it helped me to build up a bit more bank to outfit all the monsters I had in my possession. A few boss battles will provide some challenge, and require a bit of tactics when it comes to special skills and magic, but I think that even a beginner could jump into this game and figure it out enough to get by and enjoy themselves.

The DS controls don't really play any part within the main game outside of a couple mini-games you can optionally encounter, so you'll be playing the majority of the time with the D-Pad and face buttons, which works just fine here. It's nice to be able to pan the camera around with the L and R buttons though, which makes finding certain passageways and doorways a lot easier than it would have been if the camera had remained static.

The soundtrack is pretty great too, and while there are some familiar DQ themes that pop up (data load, saving game tune, etc), there's a lot of new stuff here (well, new for me at least) and for the most part I enjoyed every bit of it. Along with that, I thought the sprite representations of Toriyama's artwork were really spot on, and the dungeon design and town design was really well done too.

Overall, I'd say this is probably my favorite entry into the Dragon Quest series, and one that I'm definitely glad was ported over to the DS so I could get a chance to check it out. If you've been a fan of the series then I can't see any reason why you wouldn't enjoy this, but even if you're new to the games, or even the genre, I think this is a pretty good entry point to see what they're all about, and one that shouldn't let you down. The difficulty isn't particularly high, and the main story is certainly engaging enough. Definitely worth owning for DS owners and RPG fans alike, and I look forward to checking out the eventual port of Dragon Quest VI down the line.