Dragon Quest V

It’s a 15-years-old remake of a 30-year-old video game. I’m playing it on a well-worn Nintendo 3DS. I love everything about this game, especially in this version, which is breezier than the original, but still tough enough to keep one’s attention. I’ve been playing video games my entire waking life, and this is one of maybe three that has a truly good story that is woven coherently through the entire game.

It does the standard Dragon Quest move of giving you a person A in town 1 who talks about their relationship with some other person B in town 2, and then you eventually make it over to town B and that other person has something to say that maybe is in agreement with person 1, maybe not, and either way it’s as interesting as the most interesting conversation you’ll overhear in public on a given day. And then you push the button to talk to your friends in the party and they’ll have something to say about what the person just said. Do that over and over for 40 hours and fight 10,000 cute monsters between towns and you have a Dragon Quest.

There are a couple parts of the game that feel pretty lonely, when the hero is wandering around without his friends and trying to sort out what’s next. I’m in one of those spots now. It’s a great video game.