13. Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride (Nintendo DS)
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Dragon Quest V starts with our young hero journeying with his father. Unfortunately things take a turn for the worst and we'll watch our hero grow over the years and follow his journey to learn more about his parents while starting a family of his own.

This is an RPG and battles are fought in first person. You can control up to 4 characters in battle, but you can also allow them to control themselves by selecting a strategy for them to use. In this game you can also recruit monsters to fight by your side. You can also talk to your party members when walking around towns and fields and later in the game you get to pick between three potential bachelorettes to be your wife.


General impressions:
It should come as no surprise to anyone that the main reason I went for this game was because marriage. I played the game so my cute little sprite character could get married to another cute little sprite character, but what I wasn't expecting was the wonderful game I would get in the meantime. So basically what I'm saying is I came for the wedding and stayed for the charming story.

Story:
Absolutely great, I adored it. It's a cute little story with some funny moments and puns but then it throws some heart wrenching scenes at you and it shakes you up and it hits you pretty hard before it goes back to being sweet and cute. You watch your hero grow up and you see everything that he goes through and how it makes him a stronger person in the end and it's just. I can't describe. I was not at all expecting a story that moved me this much. Like I said I was expecting the game to peak at the marriage with some fun surrounding it, but instead the marriage was just a drop in the bucket of wonderful moments. I laughed, I cried, I probably applauded somewhere in there. I'm serious, I don't really have any complaints about the story.


Gameplay:
So so. It wasn't the easiest game to play, but it wasn't terribly difficult either, save for a few boss fights here and there that gave me some trouble. I liked having monsters join but it was hard to get the monsters I actually wanted. I did really like that you could talk to your party members and they would say so many different things. Like if you talk to one NPC, they'll commented on what he said, and then if you talk to another NPC, they'll comment on that one as well. I thought that was a charming little touch and would love to see more games do that.


World:
There were some good memorable places but I would say overall the world was about average. There was some good diversity and very few of the dungeons were annoying (but there were some). My biggest complaint would be that the world felt kind of small and I would have liked it more if there was more to explore.


Characters:
I really like the cast, there just wasn't a very big cast. But even the silent hero managed to have personality and spirit and I didn't dislike anyone. I obviously enjoyed having the matchmaking feature although I felt the game had it heavily weighed towards one option instead of having them all on equal ground.

Favourite character: Nera 3pvYNyR.jpg
Honourable mention: Saber kmZd2Xh.jpg

Nera is a sweet and precious woman and I loved having her in my party and hearing her comments. She was just the nicest lady. One of my top game characters ever, no doubt about it. And Saber is your sidekick saber-toothed cat so what's not to like there?

Overall this is n amazingly charming game with a beautiful and well told story that sticks out to me among the ocean of RPG's I've played. It could have been stronger in a lot of areas but it's still a great game and I'd highly recommend it to fans of the genre.


Tomorrow, the last post of the day will begin our top 10, how exciting! I bet a lot of you an guess what's coming just by process of elimination by this point. I'm glad everyone has been enjoying the list, I'm having a lot of fun posting it!