Saturday, May 7, 2022

Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride, Part 7 - A Dream of Spring

 

We last left DQV with Gazpacho a petrified lawn ornament / bird dropping target practice. Much time has passed, and winter has finally ended.



The Kids arrive and un-petrify Gazpacho. They're both like ten years old now, which means he was petrified for an entire decade.

While Luke is the Hero of the game and all that goes with it (best equipment, powerful heals and attacks)... Madchen, the daughter, is nothing to sneeze at as a party member. She gets all kinds of offensive spells, the full repertoire of black magic including the all-important Oomph. No priest spells, but we can do something about that later.

This is all very heartwarming, but...where's Debora? The search begins.

Also, WE MISSED SANCHO'S DAUGHTER'S QUINCEANERA.

DAMMIT.

A stunning revelation: The Son can equip all of the Zenithia equipment. So he was going to be the Legendary Hero all along! Explains why our hero had "legendary hero bloodline" yet couldn't equip any of this stuff. This also raises alarming questions about Time and Fate, however. If this was destined to happen, does that mean nobody in this world has any free will, and everything has already been decided for them? Well, that certainly takes away some responsibility for one's actions. I didn't want cheat on my wife, your honor, it was in the cards of Fate.

Sancho joins at this point, and his equipment is pretty bad. Perhaps it is HE who was El Cheapo Diablo. Maybe don't throw stones from your glass house!

Metal Babbles start appearing here. It'd be wild if the heroes in these games ever froze one and shattered it, T-1000 style. I wish there were more reliable ways to one-shot them. Actually this game does have one of the better ways to one-shot Metal foes: Hela's Hammer, which isn't until later. Debora can use it and it always criticals. However it only has like a 50% chance of landing.

Early in Act 3, you can get the best monster in the game (debatably). At the very least, it's the best fighter. Golem is capable of dishing out some major melee damage, has a ton of HP, and can self-fullheal.

We stop by Flora's place and she's now with Crispin. I guess the Bianca fling didn't work out. Maybe they brought in Crispin for a throuple, the meat in their sandwich. Then Bianca ended up in jail for smoking weed and while she was in D Block, Nera and Crispin realized they'd rather just be a duo because Bianca is too high-maintenance and takes like an hour to orgasm.

...or maybe none of that happened IDK

Nera is having issues with her dad. He's obsessed with the coming of some mythical monster. Meanwhile Nera is obsessed with the coming of Bianca

Got Sancho some better equipment. He's basically the Dragoon of the game. He doesn't really have any major abilities of note but he's a decent fighter with decent HP, and suffices for the 8th party slot until I can get Debora.

We visit Prince Harry and his insatiable nun wife, who now have a little tyke running around. He's the same height as the actual Brian Kendrick!

Sounds like Harry's kid is the same ZANY RAPSCALLION~! that Harry was back in the day.

Queen Cleohatra talks in flowery prose. Which figures because you find her amongst all these flowers.

That leads to our heroes getting the next Zenithian item, and just in time because we're about to fight a huge optional* boss.

Join Rodrigo in his tower and he informs you of the coming of an apocalyptic beast.

* - This fight isn't optional in the sense that it can be skipped. You have to do it eventually because it nets you the Ultimate Key. However, you can do it whenever you want and it isn't part of the main story chain. I'm doing it at the earliest possible time, so the fight is going to be VERY HARD.

The monster arrives.

Rodrigo: "SEE? Why didn't anyone take me SERIAL?"

The monster continues lumbering in, like Diamond Weapon. They should play the drumline from that one scene in Monty Python here.

Around 26 minutes later, he arrives.

This is Bjorn The Behemoose. He's been asleep for decades and he's PISSED.

This fight is absolutely brutal at this stage. I use the standard meta of Kabuff and Sap, etc.

He has 4000 HP, which might not seem like much when Gaz and his son can hit for 200 each. However, at this level you spend so much time healing that the fight goes on for a while.

Things are rapidly going south.

ANNNNND we take a loss. Was this my first loss all game? It might be, I don't remember.

I change my healslime's name to Healie and get him a few levels so he has Multiheal and actual HP. In this game, wagon fights (like Bjorn) let you heal out-of-group party members when you use group heals. So if your group is ailing, you can switch them all out for the backup team and drop a few multiheals.

I mentioned Gazpacho and Luke, but WHAT ABOUT GOLEM, you ask? Well, he can charge up and whack this guy for 5XX damage every second turn. Before too long, Gaz and Son are too busy healing to mount much offense, and that's where Golem comes in. He's all offense, all the time.

Finally, after an extremely lengthy fight, I eke out a win. This and the final boss both take AGES to beat and the latter is the one real blemish on the game. The final boss isn't even necessarily tough, just has tons of HP. There's difficulty, and then there's a fight taking so long that you start dying by attrition and losing interest.

The best key in the game, as usual, unlocks a whole bunch of gates around the world.

Tutti-Frutti? What?

Ripe? WHAT IS THIS. I'M NOT UR BOY TOY.

Equipment for Healslime is few and far between. This is about as good as I could find at this point.

Robust? Like...for portly ladies?

Wait, why is Sancho putting it on? SANCHO!

"Si, mi amigo! Late at night, I run about in lady clothes and fancy myself a ballerina."

This next area is home to much tougher enemies than previous areas, like the AOE-happy Blizzybody.

Also..."Mother Ocker"? WTF.

"Megoosa"....LOL

"I like it" says Sancho when reached for comment.

On the edge of the world, we find this strange town full of strange people, descendants of an advanced ancient civilization. Sorta like the Lefein people in the original Final Fantasy.

The Magic Key is acquired here, which is the intermediate key...and it's useless because I already got the Ultimate Key way ahead of schedule. This opens magic red doors, while the Ultimate Key opens those plus jail gate doors.

We also come away from that town with the Flying Carpet, a low-elevation flight tool that can't go over mountains but can across oceans and avoid encounters in low-lands.

This lets us get to the mountains where Zenithia lay in ruins.

Before we can reach Zenithia propa, there's this semi-annoying dungeon full of mine cart puzzles. At least it looks nice.

Along the way we find this scholar of Zenithian history who got trapped in a mine cart 20 years ago and has been going in circles ever since.

Never climb aboard things without so much as a "should I diddly shouldn't I". It never ends well.

The scientist joins us and we continue the journey through the hallowed tunnels of mine carts and waterfalls.

Finally, here's Zenithia. ...and it's underwater, a forgotten relic of the past. There's a way to get it up and into the air again, but it requires a Silver Orb and a Gold Orb.

The Silver Orb is already here and placed (shame, shoulda been its own quest). The Gold Orb, however, is missing...and no one has any clue what happened to it.

...no one, that is, besides Gazpacho who remembers finding the Gold Orb as a kid. Bishop Ladja destroyed it long ago, however.

Next time on DQV: Time Travel?

Other Dragon Quest Posts

The Dragon Quest Master Post

2 comments:

  1. So weird to see the kids with black hair this time.

    Cue the Yoshi's Island final boss music.

    Ah, that must be his "joy's cookies!"

    ReplyDelete
  2. This site has a lot of really cool games. Love playing the game.. thank you..

    ReplyDelete