Dragon Quest 5: Finished. The second Nimzo fight took forever due to his HP getting pushed up to 7000, but I was under very little threat so long as I maintained Insulate up and spammed Sage's Stone, and with the 2x speed accessory on Parry that wasn't exactly hard.
As a game, DQ5 is really distinguished from bog standard RPGs by two things: the "generations"-spanning plotline and the monster recruiting system. Unfortunately, both of them seriously suffer from being bound by Dragon Quest sensibilities.
More than any other game in the series that I've played, DQ5 desperately needed a main who could talk and exhibit an actual personality - even a relatively generic one would help. So much of the plot revolves around the main's personal life rather than saving the world per se that the game would've benefited greatly from showing just how he reacted emotionally and grew from everything he went through (many of which are genuinely NOT cliched or bog standard for RPGs, for once). Instead we get an emotionless cypher who never shows any reaction to anything. The improvements to the script just accentuate how much of a missed opportunity this was.
Any claims that a silent main lets the player "step into the role" are invalidated by the fact that every single personal decision (and there are some pretty significant ones) is railroaded by the game with no chance to mold him in your likeness in any fashion, except for the marriage - and boy, does the game try to guilt trip you into doing what it wants there as well. Speaking of that much-hyped marriage decision, it basically boils down to the game repeatedly telling you over and over that Bianca is your One True Love because there's no way in hell to actually show a dialogue-less, expressionless blank having actual feelings or chemistry with anyone. Nope, gotta resort to the bludgeon with NPC text, including from one of the wife choices even!
Monster recruiting is a pretty neat idea on paper; it gives you access to an enormous variety of PC options, with tons of variety in terms of stats, skills, equipment, and everything. It also takes advantage of the fact that Akira Toriyama is a vastly superior monster designer than he is with humans (see the main looking exactly like Goku with a turban, or Bianca pretty much being Android 18 with different clothes). The "recruit by killing lots of them until one joins" system, combined with rates that are often pretty rare is a huge fundamental problem though. Most monsters require a lot of luck or a very significant time investment to actually get, and nothing speeds up the process so you just have to sit there and grind more. Oh, and when you finally get one to join you'll probably have to get it caught up on levels, too. More grinding, whee! Just what we needed in a Dragon Quest game! All the new monsters added in the remake help, since more of them means a better chance of getting something good to join up, but it doesn't resolve the fundamental issue.
Now in fairness you can easily go through the game with just Slime Knight (easy recruit), Rotten Apple (ditto), Saber (plot recruit), and assorted high rate flotsam like Slime/Brownie/etc along with your human PCs. But not going any further with monsters seriously limits the game's variety and replayability. It basically becomes just another generic averagish RPG with a substandard plot and some direction problems at time (though way better than most DQ games, admittedly). Now there's nothing wrong with a generic averagish RPG, obviously I've been in the mood for one of those enough to play the game twice (<_<), but barring these sort of irrational urges there's not much to recommend it over other titles lying in the sea of RPG mediocrity. Preferably one where the basic revival spell isn't a foul monster who steals mens' souls and makes them its slaves.
On the upside, Party Chat is a really neat addition that really does add a good deal of personality to both the human characters (when they're around, at least) and to the game itself, to some extent. People besides Harry/Henry actually exhibit a personality this time around, instead of being an indistinguishable morass of genericness. Since people react to almost every location (and almost every line of NPC dialogue, even), it's actually pretty fun to walk around and talk to everyone, then gauge your party's reaction. A lot of the kids' lines in particular were pretty charming in gen 3. Definately the best feature of the game to me, enough to enjoy replaying a game that I didn't really care for in the original form.
Party chat aside, NPC dialogue has been revamped subtly to better give hints on the plot and make the world a bit more developed. Stuff like namedropping Nimzo and his influence on Nadiria earlier on give a better sense of what the world's like for those players who try to talk to as many NPCs as possible. I also approve of the decision to expand on Ladja's plot presence; I remember thinking with the original that they had enough plot to make one villain distinctive but split it out between a whole bunch of people (Gema, Jami, Ivol, Mildrath, to use the original names) so that none of them were memorable in the slightest. Ladja isn't exactly a developed or nuanced villain in any sense, but at least you develop enough familiarity with him that ultimately killing him feels like an accomplishment.
There were tons of polish improvements compared to the original, as well: a bag to store items in instead of needing to deposit them in a bank (a painfully slow process, given all the NPC dialogue you had to go through to drop off/grab any single item), doors opening automatically instead of needing a menu command, no time wasted on a dialogue box if you search an area and don't find any items, being able to buy items in bulk, not having to go through a five-nested menu option each time you cast a healing spell out of battle... the list goes on and on. None of these are deal-breakers individually, but combined they removed a lot of tedium from gameplay. The game's balance has been tweaked in a number of minor ways, some of which I mentioned earlier, which are a pretty clear improvement overall.
On the whole, I'd say the game went from a 4/10 for the original to a 6/10. An alright game with some interesting premises but handicapped on execution by Japan's general "Change = EVIL!!!" policy on Dragon Quest games.
