Dragon Quest V - Hand of the Heavenly Bride (US)(M3)(XenoPhobia) ROM

Finally, Dragon Quest 5 comes to the states!
In this installment, you start off as a young boy travelling the world with your father. You go on small adventures involving killing monsters, but then a tragic event occurs, separating you from your father, but you are given a task to do before you part from him.
This is possibly the darkest Dragon Quest game to date. Many tragedies occur to you as you play throughout the game. Many consider this game to be the best storyline Dragon Quest has had. The game revolves around a family theme, as most of your quests invovle finding, relocating, and aquiring someone in a family sense.
As the title suggests, you get to choose a bride towards the middle of the game. Each bride has a different battle niche which is nice to choose from, but nothing too different from each other. One has better spells and healing, another is able to equip stronger weapons, and the other is a happy medium of the two.
This game is also the first of the Dragon Quest series to allow you to recruit monsters to your party. In some cases, the monsters are better than the humans you have (though harder to get), but they are a welcome addition to the game. Fun fact: When Dragon Quest 5 for the Super Famicom came out, it was the first game to incorporate monster training. (Yes, before pokemon)
Some features different from the Super famicom version include having four-person parties instead of three. You also have party chat in this version, and with the different brides to choose from, you can get quite the interesting party chat compared ot others. Also different is a third bride compared to just two choices in the original.
I know my description of the story is lacking a bit, but there is much in ways of spoilers that could be made by describing the journey more accurately. Instead, enjoy the rather dark storyline, it has a good ending if you beat it through!

This game is a lot of fun. I played a fan translation of this game awhile back, and despite its archaic look, it was a lot of fun. Now, 17 years later, this game has been improved on so much that it feels fresh again. There's a casino, new monsters to catch, and even a new bride to choose from! The only problem I had with this game is that most battles require little to no strategy and you just need to click "Attack" a lot of the time. besides that, if you liked DQIV or RPGs in general, I suggest that you pick this one up.