Dragon Quest:The Hand of the Heavenly Bride Review

Written by: Steve Martin Posted: 11th March 2009

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Dragon Quest:The Hand of the Heavenly Bride Details:

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	RPG
	Nintendo DS
	Square-Enix
	Square-Enix

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Dragon Quest is a long running RPG series originating in Japan, but has not enjoyed similar popularity in the West, mainly because it has been eclipsed by the Final Fantasy series. The games have appeared on many formats over the years, Dragon Quest V: The Hand of the Heavenly Bride was originally released on the SNES in the early nineties but was never released in the UK, until this update was completed.

The story is a familiar one, a small boy goes on a big adventure, encountering many monsters and friends along the way. Some of which will join him in his quest. One of the unique features in this game is how you progress through the different stages of the protagonist’s life. So you begin as a young boy accompanied by your father for the first few hours of the game, there are only a handful of small quests to complete which are heavily limited, as you are usually restricted to the town or local area on the world map. The next part of the game follows your hero as a young man and here you are given more freedom to explore different places, as you can obtain modes of transport to allow you to access new areas of the world. Eventually, you’ll even be able to get married and there’s even a bonus dungeon to take on once you have completed the main game.

This is an old-school RPG meaning that there is a lot of emphasis on random battles that you must tirelessly take part in to gain experience and increase your hero and his companion’s stats. Thankfully the fights are quick paced, although they are graphically dated, with the traditional menu system to select what each member of your party does, which is followed by a round of attacks from you and the monsters you are battling. There are no flashy active battle time systems or real time battling here! Thankfully, the battles are worth taking part in as each increase in level is very noticeable, and if you find yourself stuck on a particular boss fight, by levelling up substantially you will find it much easier to win. Although, there is a lot of grafting and patience needed to get through some parts of the game, for instance when a member of your party dies you have to find a church (there is usually one in every town) to resurrect them, and if your party is completely wiped out then you will find yourself at the last church you visited with half your money removed. Although this is less of a problem as your party increases in size, as you can simply swap out deceased members, when you first start and there are only a couple of people in your party you find yourself back with the minister a little too often.

One of the more unique features is the ability to recruit the monsters you fight as members of your party, so you can grow their stats and use them against their own kind. This was very innovative at the time and still adds an interesting side quest to the constant battling as you hunt out the elusive monsters that will join you.

Graphically, it’s been refreshed from the SNES original and it looks very good, nice clear detailed 2D character sprites, and some weird and wonderful monsters to battle with and befriend (whom were designed by Akira Toriyama of Dragon Ball fame). The locations you visit range from busy and detailed towns to rather bland caves and drab dungeons. The battles themselves are quite dull, with only very basic attack animations, similar to those seen in other RPG’s of the time and more recently the Pokemon games. One of the really awesome touches in this game is the ability to rotate the view left and right, to give you a more isometric view and showing off the full 3 dimensions of the locations. This may not sound like much but it really helps, and allows you to find doors and breakable objects much easier. It’s truly inspired and makes navigation through the game easier, it’s just a shame that you can’t do this everywhere you travel in the game, but it’s nice to see that some effort has been put into this remake.

The soundtrack is actually pretty good, and each location has its own tune, the travelling music is even bearable. The only thing that gets repetitive is the battle music, especially when you are walking around the world map.

Although the gameplay may seem simple and dated at times, the refreshed visuals, ability to recruit and train the monsters you meet, and the engaging storyline help to make this remake very playable and enjoyable, at least the first time around, I don’t know if any but the most hardcore will put themselves through it more than once! Retro RPG gamers will enjoy this trip down memory lane and the challenging difficulty, and even newer players should be able to see the roots of many of the more complex and newer RPG’s in this delightful adventure. The repetitive nature of the battles can sometimes be a chore, but this is the only fault, and I feel it is a small price to pay for an adventure of this quality, which is long overdue an audience in this country.