It had some clever foreshadowing with the "two people who have been marked can't be married!" Now I only heard from the kid that the guy is actually also marked, but I still wonder what will happen with that! Also, this is the second quest in a row with a crazy possessive jealous guy. Girls, if he does that, RUN THE FRICK AWAY! That's never a good sign!
Its pretty cut and dry, but has several interesting elements come from it later.
Yeah, that was that. I loved how in the present the Greenthumb Gardens are gone but instead you have this other village with the convent (they're called the sisters of Regrette-Rien, which made me chuckle). Again, nice and bittersweet but with a more hopeful note since it's heavily implied they got together by the end. Anyway, got to the bit with the Roamers and their quest to wane the Almighty at the altar with their dancing stuff. And I'm guessing this is where I lose Kiefer. Should have figured it'd happen over a girl... but the chapter itself is really intriguing so far and I can't wait to see where it goes!
Is Greenthumb the town with the flowers and the the love triangle? All the names are different it seems. Yeah the Stone Rain village is one of my favorites. My other favorites is the twon which has a prophet proclaiming the end of the world (that one actually has an interesting twist), the town with the missing priest, and freaking Loomin, that town just got weirder and weirder.
Btw, the people of Greenthumb appear to have Texan accents! "I do declare," "fixin' to," etc. I think it's the first explicitly American accent in a DQ game so far (I know DQVIII has Argonia, but this is still not VIII )
Yeah, and I do appreciate it for its idealism, really, since so few games do that, really. I was simply expecting a twist because people seemed to be really affected by this chapter. The most bittersweet so far was the Regenstein chapter where there was this town of people turned to stone but way too much time has passed for them so they were all weathered and crumbling, so you could not turn them back at all. The only two survivors were a kid and an old man, and the town itself is gone in the present.
Well they almost do repeat their mistakes since they did take her and meant to break her apart and build machines similar to her, so you do actually help stop that from happening. Course this is DQ, and it almost never has twists like that. I can assure you that most of the present day versions of the world are all better off than their past incarnations. The modern world doesn't really run into problems until the Demon Lord finally starts to get involved and that's significantly later in the game (second disc in the original) so don't expect too much conflict. You do have some situations that could be better off, but mostly the modern settings are bittersweet cause you know the truth and the people are largely ignorant of their own history, but DQ has always been a more idealistic series than most.
Well, I hope so. And don't get me wrong, seeing that skeleton in the shack and the robot still serving him soup was pretty effective. It just could have ended there and been much more effective, IMO. I was really hoping this would be one of those worlds that won't stay saved, honestly. Due to the lack of records, I was expecting they'd actually use the robot to build an army and start a war all over again. Alas, that plot point was wasted. Which is exactly why I think it was all unnecessary and would have worked better if you just got to see the shack and how Autonymus died alone with the robot he named after the dead woman he loved outlived him for centuries.
He has his moments but I would argue its from moment to moment within the games themselves. I mean being stone for all the years in DQV was pretty poignant but the whole thing with your mother showing up at the end just so she can die felt like he was tacking it on to tie up a loose end and using it for a cheap last minute punch to the gut. I digress I would say the party did the best they could with their ability. She can't really be fixed by any of them and I feel that letting her be or simply turning her off is pretty troutty either way. Of anything, I see her fate as an ironic echo of a man who himself could never let go. So I still feel the scene is pretty powerful if a bit forced. Honestly, get used to the party not exactly righting all the wrongs of the world. They may be saving the lands but that doesn't mean they can solve all of their problems. Hell wait until you reach the one town that just can't seem to stay saved or the really messed up one where the town has a missing priest. Hell, even the last few lands you reach end more bittersweet than happily ever after. I said before it was the darkest entry, though being Dragon Quest, that doesn't really amount to much.
But he can be a good writer at times, and DQ has had vignettes that were really good. Heck, DQV's entire story is more poignant than most games I've played mostly because of how well it's handled - he just knew how to keep the right things subtle so that you could relate to the protagonist and feel the passage of time. So I really wouldn't consider him a bad writer because a bad writer does not create that. I think maybe it would have worked better for me if 1) I hadn't stumbled on people on the Internet praising it to high heaven and 2) maybe the characters weren't all so "This is a living being with a soul!" If they were actually emphisizing honoring the memory of Autonymus, that would have worked. But I just don't agree with the way they decided to go about her routine. And I think that's because part of me feels for her and I think the saddest thing is that people decide it's for the best that she stays deluded that she can save him instead of even trying to give her a new purpose for living. Because he's gone and she can't bring him back with no soup. Refusing to help her face reality seems kind of cruel, really. For me the story is just sad in a way that I feel is completely at odds with author's intent, because every single one of the characters is like "yep, this is the right thing to do. We are heroes for... perpetuating this limbo."
