Bianca Whitaker

Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride, known in Europe as Dragon Quest: The Hand of the Heavenly Bride and in Japan as is a 1992 role-playing video game developed by Chunsoft and published by Enix for the Super Famicom. The fifth main installment in the Dragon Quest series, the game was the first title in the franchise to not be initially localized in North America due to programming issues.

It later had an enhanced remake only in Japan for the PlayStation 2 in 2004. The remake was developed by ArtePiazza and Matrix Software. Another remake was made for the Nintendo DS, which was released in Japan in July 2008 and worldwide in February 2009; this marks the first time the game had officially released in English. In addition, ports for Android and iOS were released in Japan in December 2014, and worldwide the following month.

The game takes place over roughly thirty years of the main character's life, from when he is born through to when he gets married and has a family. The title introduced a gameplay dynamic in which monsters from random encounters may offer to join the player's party. This concept was used in later Dragon Quest games, as well as in the Dragon Quest Monsters series as the primary way to form a party. The game's monster-collecting concept had been used before in the Megami Tensei series and appeared in many later franchises such as Pokémon, Digimon and Dokapon. Dragon Quest V has also been credited as the first known video game to feature a playable pregnancy, a concept that has since appeared in later games such as Story of Seasons, The Sims 2 and Fable II. In 2019, an animated film adaptation, Dragon Quest: Your Story, was released in Japan. The film was later released digitally for other regions through Netflix.

Dragon Quest V uses basic role-playing video game mechanics seen in the rest of the series, which includes leveling up by gaining experience points through battle, first person turn-based battles, and equipping weapons and armor. Something new to the Dragon Quest series is the ability to tame monsters into the player's party. The monsters can be used in battle and level-up like the human characters. Monsters sometimes request to join the Hero after battles if the party is strong enough. There are a total of 40 monsters that are capable of joining the Hero's party in the Super Famicom version, with 71 in the PlayStation 2 remake.