Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Dragon Quest V Diary: Parts 1, 2, 3, and bits of 4


Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride
Designer: YĆ«ji Horii
Release Date: September 17, 1992

I've recently gotten access to a proliferation of vidja games (mostly SNES ones) (What? What do you mean? What are ROMs?), most of which it is unrealistic to play with my schedule. Not that I'm working. I should be, but my time is mostly taken up with catching up on Louie and looking at Wikipedia to see what crappy Nickelodeon/Disney Channel celebrities were born in the months surrounding my birthday (apparently white supremacist ones). But, every once in a while, I like to play one of them there gamey-games. And, this week (or month) I felt like loading up an RPG. A SNES one. The SNES had a deep well of RPG's, so I didn't have to go with the obvious ones (Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy VI...Sailor Moon RPG). I've heard good things about the Dragon Quest series and enjoyed Dragon Warrior (in theory), so I went with Dragon Quest V for the inaugural Backlog.

Now, this was about 2 weeks ago. I didn't think I'd be doing this stupid post about it, so I didn't make any screenshots or bother to remember any of the plot points, but, hey, why should that stop me from trying to recount them?

SPOILERS, obviously.
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- I get borned.

- Due to child birth complicatio
ns, I guess, my mother gets dead.

- Jump forward 8-or-so years, father and I getting off a boat onto a harbor that is part of no town. Just a harbor.

- We slug it to town (Santa Rosa), everyone loves my father, of course. People treat me with little respect, as I am a child. Can't even get respect from a bar maid wearing a bunny outfit.

- But everyone does like me in that oh-look-at-the-small-child kind of way.

- While my old man talks to som
e other old men, a little girl (Bianca) invites me up to her room (Friendly Reminder: I am the same age, if not younger then her).

- Boring stuff, saved some dude in a cave, yawn.

- Old man, Bianca, and I go to other town called Alcapa and spend the night.

- Awoken in the night by Bianca, we go to rid a castle of ghosts to save a suspicious-looking "kitten" from two terrible twins.

- My fears about the "kitten" are justified when, after we save it, it joins the party as a modestly strong member of the team. Ain't no kitten casting fireball.

- Got back to Santa Rosa, found invisible fairy, teleported to fairy land via magical basement staircase, saved fairy land, blah blah blah. I'll get better at trimming the fat with these Diaries.

- Back at Santa Rosa, bedtime arrives and sleep keeps me from seeing my father's exodus from town to yet another town (Reinhart) for he was beckoned by the King.













- But, wait, no, nevermind, he was too busy praying.












- At Reinhart, King and old man talk, I meet King's son who is a spoiled, little brat. I mean that in the best possible way, m'lord.

- Turns out, dad gets hired to babysit Henry. He doesn't seem too upset by this from talking to him, but you can just tell he's a little disappointed.

- Prince Henry, in a very clever scene involving a trap d
oor, is kidnapped and taken away to a dungeon by some thugs.

- Pops rushes off to save him, I have to spend about the next three hours trying to find where the dungeon is.

- Turns out, it was right behind the castle. Go figure.

- I hope you took heed of the SPOILER warning, cause this is a doozy: father dies trying to save Prince Henry, Prince Henry and I are taken away as slaves. What's this? Mother LIVES!?

- Skip ahead 10 years, I am pushing boulders. Prince Henry has turned into a slightly better human being, if only because he's older and less of a rich douche.

- New girl in slave camp gets pummeled by some thugs, I step in and save her, kinda. Well, I take a beating, too. Henry and I end up in slave jail, which just has to be the worst thing in the world to be a slave in slave jail, and the new girl and her brother (who's a guard) show up and, not only break us out, but also help us escape by shoving us in a barrel and throwing it down the river they use to send bodies into the sea.

- Barrel somehow floats right then up to a small monestary where Henry and I are given two hots and a cot. While there, nuns nurse me back to health, give me a handful of cash, and say things that make me suspect some of the members of whatever-church-this-is were playing "How Deep Of A Sleep Is This Guy-Who-Washed-Up-Near-Our-Monastery Right Now".


- I am bidded farewell by the members of the monastery, everyone makes a pretty big deal of me leaving, I get a little wierded out by their warnings of a "dangerous path", I scoff and throw the bird as I leave, and I barely make it to the nearest town with a dead prince in my party and 1 HP.



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That's that, so far. I'll continue to update on my journey as I experience it.
Next on the agenda: figuring out what the hell I'm supposed to be doing now. Then buy a sword.
- Nick

P.S. - Pay no attention to the name in the screenshots. My character's name is Nikeless. But everybody calls me Nike.
P.P.S. - The shots I neglected to get myself were grabbed off of shrines.rpgclassics.com/snes/dq5/walkthrough This "Chris" character will be my alternate-dimensional doppelganger for the remainder of my journey.
P.P.P.S. - Thank you, whoever made that walkthrough on that website. I assume your name is Chris. I hope that is not too presumptuous.
P.P.P.P.S. - You know what happens when you presume? You make a pre out of 'u' and 'me'.