This game has always intrigued me. I've heard about it's influence on the visual novel genre a lot, so curiosity got the best of me and I sat down, got an emulator, and checked out what made this thing so influential. At an outsider's glance, it seems like this sex fueled journey with no real point to anything, but after having played it I realize that to be wrong. While there is sex stuff (it's what holds this back from being a full 5 stars, same with the forced use of guide to play this), it is mainly a story about time travel, parallel worlds, and what it means to fight for someone. I was hooked soon after I began, and as the mystery got deeper and deeper, and more answers were being given, I found myself eagerly anticipating every playthrough of this game. I went into this as blind as possible and I'm so happy I did. The emotions I've felt with this game are unrivaled and I have not been this hooked on a game in a long, long time. This is for me a must play of the visual novel genre, and something that I don't think I will ever forget. Thank you Yu-No, for being such a stellar game...

just good enough to scratch the adventuring itch, if that's what you're after. very much a one-dev project with a variety of jank in its movement and controls. i honestly appreciate the imperfections; they add an extra layer to the experience and there's a lot of heart and raw effort in here to make up for the quirks. i enjoyed learning the map and finding the hidden nooks and crannies. the combat gets trivialized by the introduction of a spammable aoe that doubles as a universal block, but it's strangely satisfying to cheese all the encounters this way. the platforming is less fun; there are some frustrating segments to navigate, but they're not long and death is mostly a suggestion anyways.

I had an itch for a blue sky RPG, and after replaying the first half of the Ys III remake and Ys VI, I went to start Legend of Mana again, only to find this on sale, so I took a chance. And it's a 100% totally just okay Zelda love letter that wants to be Link to the Past but plays more like the first Legend of Zelda.

It's hard to be mad at it because I felt the love in this, and seeing the very short credits appreciated how much work just a few people did.

That said, it can be incredibly frustrating and a little polish would help. For instance, it's really easy to fall in the water on accident, the "interact" button is also the "roll" button, so I frequently rolled when trying to talk to someone, and boss fights are uninspired. The game also ends with a whimper.

It is gorgeous, with beautiful sprite work and a lovely score, the dungeon design is solid, and the writing is clever and fun. There are lots of areas to explore and lots of side quests that are actually fun to complete. I'd guess I finished the game with ~90% of it complete (I had 15 hearts, I think, had completed 30 side quests, with one left incomplete, and had two gaps in my inventory screen), so clearly it was charming enough that I wanted to keep going.

soy supercrítica con la cultura jirai/menhera tanto en la vida real como en sus representaciones porque creo que es muy fácil glamorizarla de forma acrítica de una forma que romantice la autolesión y la drogadicción y demás problemas mentales o dejarse llevar por comportamientos dañinos para una misma y los demás amparada en el arquetipo de jirai onna, pero no siento que NGO haga eso; es más, creo que representa todo lo que es esta cultura de una forma muy acertada, al más mínimo detalle (los diseños de Ame y KAngel, su cuarto, la estética de la interfaz, sus acciones...). es cierto que puede ser duro al ser gráfico a veces y que tiene montones de TW, pero si buscas representar una realidad hay que representar esa realidad con todo lo que conlleva. aparte, con estos temas siempre es muy difícil juzgarlos desde el ojo occidental, sin tener en cuenta el tabú y por ello el problema que supone para la juventud japonesa todo el tema de la salud mental y la depresión en Japón.
APARTE, la localización es literalmente buenísima, cuidada al detalle, supernatural, apropiada para el contexto, literalmente si Ame fuera española escribiría tal y como ella, Y CON REFERENCIAS A TWITCH ESPAÑA SUPER BIEN TRASLADADAS...... de verdad es que merece un premio a la mejor localización.
por lo demás, quiero hacerme todos los endings poco a poco

Man...53 hours...I honestly think it took me as long to beat this game as it did to play the other games up until this one combined. I usually don't start out talking about things like that, but it's kind of the best way to express that this Dragon Quest game is different from the past games.

As I've played the series I've said that I can oddly see the parallels between how Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest grew between their matching numbered games, but I honestly think FF6 and DQ6 don't quite have the same parallels except for MAYBE that both have an issue where the plot comes to halt and there's a lot between that time and near the end where there's just side quests and dead air of vague story, before the story revs up and gets going again.

It's honestly becoming kind of hard to talk about this series graphically because it seems each game uses the same sort of graphics and animations as the last. DQ 1 - 3 as far as the Switch remakes look the same, DQ4 - 6 on the DS kinda looks the same with very small improvements in spots. this isn't a bad thing, because as I've said with 4 and 5, the game's look great and remind me of that era between SNES and GBA. I will say the one thing that has been getting much better per game is the character art, definitely has improved a lot.

Everytime I write one of these reviews I kinda worry if when I think of music to the game, have I been hearing the same tunes between the trilogies and aren't noticing or are the compositions so alike that I'm confusing them? Either way, I really like the music even if I'm too the point I swear I've been hearing a lot of these songs for like 6 games with little change, but if it's not bothering me, it's apparently pretty good then.

Now for the story...as I said earlier, the game has this weird issue that the story kinda disappeared for a good chunk of the game and was just sending me for place to place late into the game, but before then...the story was going very nicely. The mystery of why you constantly find yourself going between two worlds that seem closely related to each other and why things are affecting one in ways that sometimes do or don't change the other. I really liked the story overall, and honestly found most of the characters to be pretty interesting. It's weird, but I kinda like the "Hero" design of this game out of the 6 so far. Oh, and unlike some of the past games, this actually fixed something I've complained about and actually made the villains important and were a constant through the whole thing.

As for the gameplay, not much really changed from the past games. Exploration was mostly the same, dungeons and puzzles were the same, combat didn't have too much of a difference....except the Vocation system was brought back. I absolutely love job/class system games in RPGs and I love to customize my team and especially since there's a Martial Artist vocation I went straight for it! But...this system felt like a double edged sword. Unlike the past games, you learn skills from the Vocations as they go up by rank. this is done per battle and isn't tied to your experience level. every skill you learn in your Vocation you get to keep when you move to another vocation, so there's plenty of hybrid customization. even better, some vocations when mastered make a new Vocation, again an awesome system, but where the double edged part comes in is...the Vocations kinda feel like accessories or something to that nature, because when you equip a Vocation it doesn't change anything about the character aside their stats and skills they can learn. This mean that you can have a Mage which in most games uses Staves or Clubs, but in this game equipment types are tied to the character themselves not the Vocation...so if you make the Hero a Mage...he's gonna be a sword and shield heavy armored Mage casting spells or in my case a Martial Artist with the same equipment, but using fist-like skills and kicks despite having a giant blade and wearing heavy gear...get what I'm saying? It's weird, but not entirely bad...just strips the identity of the Vocations a little.

I did have some things that caused me not to be able to give this game the 5-star treatment.

- I'll start with the biggest issue and the reason it took me 53 hours. Grinding is required and I don't mean just leveling, Vocation grinding too. the final boss ALMOST requires 3 particular Vocations to be mastered or you're highly unlikely to win.

- Sometimes there's so much space between story bits, it's easy to forget what you were doing originally.

- The map really could be smaller, so many areas had little to no point to it and it makes it worse with two worlds.

- Half the total characters are optional characters and half of the main characters are under developed story wise.

Honestly I really liked this game for what it was, but I kinda felt it needed to be reeled in a bit and shortened to be a tighter experience, it has all the makings of a great RPG, but is a little too bloated in spots, but other than that, a pretty solid entry in the series.

Every time I start the next game in the Dragon Quest series, I always wonder if it's gonna be like the last game or will it take a turn and be something different? I already wasn't familiar with the Dragon Quest series as a whole, but I would sometimes hear or see things about one of the games...this one is the one game I had listened (but not watched) a review from SomecallmeJohnny some time ago and I did so because I didn't think I'd ever really want to play the Dragon Quest series due to how archaic it seemed on the surface.

All that above is important to mention, because while the past games were great in their own right. DQ5 seems to be the turning point when the series goes to telling a much more compelling story while still focusing the importance of the adventure.

Being that I played the DS version, I found the graphics do look slightly better than DQ4. the world is much more vast, with all of it connecting quite well. This game seems to focus much more on dungeon set pieces over elaborate towns and castles. I really like how the continued moving the enemies seem to get more animated with each battle, and the character drawings seems to have found it's sheen here.

Speaking of sheen, so far I believe this game has the best collection of musical pieces I've heard in the series. As I played the past games, I felt the music was good, but I often felt I heard either the same song or tune in spots, while this one has a vast fitting soundtrack for each area and moment.

Something that hasn't changed too much is the game play. everything seems pretty much in order that the games have been doing...except this time it takes a "monster trainer" approach and let's you recruit monsters as your party members giving you plenty of choices of party building. Other than that, a lot of it is just normal Dragon Quest affair.

Where this game shines it's best is the story. I won't give anything away from it, other than to say that it tells an amazing story that as goofy as the series is, it tends to mix those moments and the story with no tonal whiplash. Serious parts are treated with a grounded tone and silly weird moments are used to not bog down the emotions too deeply. So far this is the best story in the series (from DQ1 to DQ4) and the best cast of character bar none. For the story alone it must be played and nothing I could say could even touch the magic being told in this game.

Now while I've given the game praise, can I think of any flaws? Yes. A small few.

- I don't know if it's just me, but I felt grinding was required for this game, due to recruiting monsters and party members coming and going, money and gear grind is at the forefront.

- The monsters have level caps to them, so rarely do they stay useful for too long at points.

- While the story was written well, the only way you'll learn about your party members once they join is the party talk command, if you don't frequent that you'll lose out on a lot of lore and the character most effected is your main character.

As you can see, I really couldn't find too much issue with this amazing game, and even the few I wrote felt like kinda personal nitpicks, but I really loved this game and it brought my opinion of the series much higher than before.

Okay, aside from playing the arcade beat 'em up back when I was a teen, I know absolutely nothing about Dungeons and Dragons.

That said, I had a blast playing this, Metroidvania games are my favorite genre of games bar none. the best way to describe this game is to pretty much compare it to Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. You could actually switch the sprite of Deedlit and Alucard into the other's game, and you'd never know aside from the settings, one being gothic and the other olde fantasy. The only difference between the two is a sort of "bullet-hell" mechanic that basically allows you to drain attacks of the current element/color you are, and take damage from the opposite, other than that it's a well done spiritual successor to SotN.

If by chance you aren't familiar with Castlevania Symphony of the Night or Metroidvanias, you basically are giving a 2D world, where you explore and find weapons, spells and items to progress through rooms and levels all while fighting enemies whose weakness and styles of combat you'll learn about as you progress. The difficulty in these types of games come from your progress being halted due to needing an item or power up to progress, often this is either finding a key to a lock door, or a jump power to reach a ledge. This is an abridged of the gameplay of this type, in this case you're exploring a world Deedlit isn't familiar with.

Lastly this isn't really a drawback per se, but the story is hard to follow. I assume it's because of my lack of D&D knowledge so I had no idea who these characters are, and I didn't understand the overall motive until pretty much the last section of the game. So, the gameplay is more than enough to make you enjoy it even if you don't know anything about DnD and if you do, well...I hope it's interesting on that front because it gives you no backstory at all. Still a really great game.