Besides Final Fantasy, throughout the years the Dragon Quest franchise has proven itself to be one of the best RPG franchises around. When you mix a traditional old school RPG system with the charming character designs by Akira Toriyama (of Dragonball fame), you get yet another classic in the series. Making its way to the North American audiences for the first time in history, it's yet another great game deserving of the Dragon Quest lineage.

Describing the story of Dragon Quest 5 is a strange task to undertake, as it doesn't follow the same footsteps as many other JRPGs. You usually are given a plucky hero who has to destroy an ultimate evil to save the world they love. While there is a bit of that in Dragon Quest 5, it's far from the main driving force of the game. Besides a smidgen of info scattered about throughout the lengthy adventure, the villains aren't really fleshed out too much.

Dragon Battle

Instead of placing your hero against an ultimate threat, Dragon Quest 5 is much more about telling the story of life…more specifically the life and times of your character. I'm used to jumping into the life of a character for a short span whenever an RPG is released, but it never really feels as if I'm spending more than a few days or weeks with the cast. In Dragon Quest 5, however, you'll start out as a young little boy, who eventually grows into his own man, gets married, has kids, and watches as time flies and the world changes. I found myself really engrossed by the life my character was living. He starts out as nothing more than a naïve kid who can't read a sign to save his life, but through a series of hardships he becomes a man destined to help rid the world of evil.

The game is essentially told through a series of chapters, though ones more coherent and natural in their progression. I loved the gameplay of Dragon Quest 4, but constantly switching me between alternate characters left my head dizzy and trying to desperately form a connection with them before they disappeared again. In Dragon Quest 5 you follow your character and the changes they go through – that's it. You start out as a little boy traveling around with your father, advance into manhood years later, find a woman to marry and have kids with, and then find yourself in the father role as the kids travel with you.

Besides the natural development of my own character's life, it's great to watch as those you knew grow-up beside you and witness the changes that happen to the world. Visiting a town when you're a boy is much different than when you return as a man. When talking to a young kid looking to be a soldier when he gets bigger, don't be surprised when you run across them later to find they did indeed become a solider in the army. It feels great to be part of a constantly changing world and feeling as if you're really experiencing the life and times of all these people.

Personally speaking, I've always been a fan of more traditional turn-based battle systems, so Dragon Quest 5 was a great game for me to delve into and get lost in among all the random battles and level grinding. You'll issue the same type of commands that you always get to do in RPGs – attack, heal, use a spell, use an item, or defend – but it's just easier to do in a game like this where you can take your time between moves rather than have to constantly press buttons like happens in many games today. I like being able to sit down with the game, make a series of moves, then get a moment to take a rest, analyze the situation, and then plan my next moves based on what I see. I like not being rushed by the game into making stupid playing decisions. The battle system is thankfully easy to learn and fights breeze by rather quickly, as you'll be doing a lot of it throughout the game, so anything to speed that process up and making it more user friendly is always a good deal in my book.

The only gripe I really have about the gameplay is that it's often difficult knowing exactly what armor and weapons you have and seeing when it will or won't be helpful to another one of your team members. It's easy to go to the store to see whether something will be good for a character, but if it's something already in your bag you'll have to transfer it to that character and manually check it out. I wish the item system had been streamlined or replaced into something more manegable. Besides needing to transfer items between characters, each character only has a certain amount of slots in which they can carry items. So if you need something special you better be sure a character has it in one of their slots, because otherwise you'll be lost and possibly dead when the time comes you actually need that item and forgot you didn't equip it.

As you travel around and fight enemies, you'll at a later time get the chance to befriend monsters to have them work for you. Once a monster is on your team you can do with them like you'd do with any other member of your team. You can level them up to be stronger, equip them with items, use their abilities, etc. The only catch is that a monster with a Wisdom under 20 won't always respond as you like, so it's a good idea to keep them in your cart until that stat is passed so that they won't risk you losing a battle.

To round out the package, you'll also get to gamble in casinos to make money for special items, pound on slimes in a Whack-a-mole type game, race slimes, play a life-size board game for prizes, find knick-knacks for a special museum, and even be able to trade knick-knacks with other players in a somewhat Pokemon-esque manner.

Besides the addition of animated characters and enemies attacking each other (which are very nice and smooth to watch while during a battle), the game has also brought the world of Dragon Quest 5 beyond the realm of 2D and sprites, into a strange and yet wonderful mixture of flat characters walking around fully realized worlds. When walking into a town, village, or place like a dungeon, it's entirely possible to walk around and never have to use the game's new 3D environments. If you want a better look at the environment and where to go next, however, by pressing the shoulder buttons you can rotate the world around to change perspective. In order to get the view back to the default, simply hold down both shoulder buttons at the same time and the world will spin back to the regular placement. During the exploration phases of the game, these rotating environments even stretch into the top screen, really making the world feel expansive since it takes up so much of the DS' screen space.

Ooh Pretty

In terms of settings the game is very diverse, ranging from little villages hidden away in the mountains to bustling cities and giant towers plagued by monsters. You'll get to climb inside a volcano like temple, traverse a mysterious land covered in snow, and work your way through the desert to find an oasis kingdom. Unlike some RPGs that use these settings all the time, but in a way that feels more akin to a platformer, you'll be happy to know that progressing from one of these lands to another feels very natural and fluid. When you get to a desert it isn't because the designers wanted to throw a desert at you to switch things up, but because that desert feels like a natural part of the world you're discovering.

Beyond the excellent old school sprite graphics, newly realized revolving landscapes, and excellent animations, the game also features some great music and sound effects, ranging from the classical score that starts the game off to the dungeon crawling or slash of a sword. The only thing that would've made the package even better from a technical standpoint would to have had a little more variety from the effects and include a little spoken dialogue.

It took a long time, but thanks to the Nintendo DS I'm slowly getting to delve into a backlog of classic RPGs I wasn't privy to back in the day when they were originally released. Old school RPGs can certainly be a niche title nowadays and nothing more than a great little hop into a time when things were simpler, but since so many people have never got to experience the game before with a proper English translation, Dragon Quest 5 will be a completely new experience for many people. If you enjoy RPGs – especially old school ones – and own a Nintendo DS, I'd highly emplore you to go out and purchase Dragon Quest 5. The game looks great, plays great, and is a great look into the life of one boy who grew-up to become a man.

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