Dragon Quest 5: Hand of the Heavenly Bride for Nintendo DS
Dragon Quest 5 is another one of my favorite Role Playing Games, and has tremendous replay value, for much the same reasons Destiny of an Emperor has great replay value: you are able to recruit different party members from the monsters that you have knocked down. Turns out the main protagonist has a rare "ability" to fight monsters "with love", and monsters of the right types can see that and after getting thrashed (mortally wounded?), they get so enthralled with you that they get fully healed and then they want to travel with him forever.
Yeah, that doesn't make sense, but what I can't deny is how this particular element makes the game fun. It combines a cast of very nice PCs with monsters that you recruit, and in the DS version you can bring any four characters into battle at once (the SNES version only allowed three). In addition, you can travel with up to 8 humans and monsters combined, who earn experience equally. Allowing four characters makes for more party combinations, and thus makes the monster recruiting feature just that much more fun. What's more, the DS version of Dragon Quest 5 allows the player to recruit many more monsters than the SNES version!
Unfortunately, some of those monsters are not recruitable at a time in the game where the player would be inclined to use them. For instance, the Ghost, the Fat Rat, and the Wax Murderer are all fought early in Chapter 1, and are not exceptionally powerful when you recruit them... but you couldn't recruit them in Chapter 2; far too late in the game, in Chapter 3, you might get a chance to recruit them!
Because I wanted to emphasize the monster recruitment feature of Dragon Quest 5, I developed this "Monster Trainer mod". It is understood that players will likely want to travel with the Monster Trainer, Wife, Hero, and Daughter late in the game, but even still I wanted to give players the option of recruiting monsters that provide alternate strategies. There are some changes to the stats of some human characters, as well as some monsters, but this is one of my more subtle gameplay mods, as Dragon Quest 5 was excellently paced and balanced already. Chapter 1 will not play much differently, but I hope that Chapters 2 and 3 will be much more fun and engaging.
If this mod sounds like it is of interest to you, try it out. As always, if you have any questions on the Dragon Quest 5: Monster Trainer mod, find any bugs in the mod, or if you just thoroughly enjoyed it, I welcome your input.
Copyright notice
The content in this portion of the website pertains to "software" known as "Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride" (hereafter referred to as DQV-DS), which was created by Yuji Horii, and published by Square Enix. The mod is completely unofficial, and was an amateur fan-made undertaking. As such, any ROM representation of DQV-DS represents and remains the intellectual property of Yuji Horii and Square Enix, and under no circumstances will I distribute any ROMs of DQV-DS. The patch available for download solely modifies game data and does not meaningfully detract from or add to the characters represented or story told by Yuji Horii or Square Enix. It is a derivative work in the sense that it can exist on physical mediums and has no value on its own; it merely patches a US version of DQV-DS. The patch represents in its entirety my own work. It is offered totally free of charge, and I offer the patch in hopes that Square Enix will benefit from any additional publicity garnered from the patch.