In Dragon Quest XI the player has the option to let the hero, Gare (the name I gave the hero turned out to be his canonical name after all, I looked it up), either marry or else be a live-in best buddy with any of the main characters in your party. Here are my power rankings for each one:

8. Gemma: Boring. The most heterosexual white-bread choice is absolutely the least narratively satisfying. You have a whole party of good friends with incredible talents and so many things that make them special, and what does Gemma have for you? She’ll wait for Gare, for however long he wants or needs to go on adventures. That’s it? Your childhood friend’s main thing to offer is “it’s cool if you do other shit with other hoes.” Look, no offense to Gemma, she’s very sweet and a good friend who’s been with the hero for a long time, but I’m sorry, Gare is the dang Luminary of Legend and you’re out of your mind if you think he’s gonna settle down after this. Notwithstanding his restless spirit for adventure, I mean this world will just not let him rest anyway, there’s always great evil brewing in dragon quest land. Light can’t exist without the dark and all that. I just think if Gare picks Gemma they’re gonna set themselves up both for disappointment down the road (by the way, if you’re looking for a good reason to play the special edition over the original, here it is, for what it’s worth, since in the original you only have Gemma available to you).

7. Veronica: First of all, let me be clear that I’m very glad you’re here, Veronica. I’m glad Gare went back in time to save you and create a happy ending for you and the rest of his friends. Don’t listen to anyone who says Act 3 is bad or even that Act 3 erases any of the meaningful changes brought about in Act 2. To paraphrase all the positive takes on it that I’ve read, Act 3 is there to show that Gare is such a powerful hero that he can will a happy timeline for the people he cares about. Character change is fine, but it necessarily comes with suffering. Just because Serena does become stronger through experiencing the pain of losing Veronica, it does not mean it was necessary! There was nothing wrong with Serena pre-character growth, and it’s cool and good that Gare wanted to give her and all of his other friends that as well.

Having said that, let me get this straight. Gare went through all the trouble of traveling through time to save your life, and you’re still going to be mean and bossy to him? I’ll hand it to Doki Doki Literature Club exactly once: that game correctly called out the tsundere type as non-existent outside of Japanese romance and far too obnoxious to put up with in real life, should it ever exist. Keep them out of my stories! Anyway, she ends up being more of a kid sister than a love interest to Gare.

6. Rab: I like Rab, and every time he was sad about his daughter and son in law I was sad too. But was this necessary? A whole-ass magical wish to be with him forever and ever? First of all, it’s not as though we really need to consider a keep-grandpa-out-of-the-old-folks-home scenario, do we? He’s still a limber mage and kung-fu fighter, and lord knows he still has his virility. It’s not like gramps is only good for a limit break, guys. I’m sure Gare’s going to see the old man every now and then once the dark lord is good and vanquished. Who knows, in the meantime Rab might even hit it off with Amber and settle down in Cobblestone just like his grandson.

And second of all, if a relative, any relative, asks you if you want to see their porno collection, run away. That’s all I have to say there.

5. Jade: I really want this one to work. It’s kind of nice that Jade has to work on warming up to Gare, after being cold and aloof for the years she was on the road. It’s also a practical match, as the princess of Heliodor joining with the lost prince of Dundrasil. But let’s be honest, there’s not a lot of chemistry between them, and also, there’s a whole sword of Damocles hanging over this pairing that is the fact that Jade was like a big sister to him for years, which is weird. Not my favorite.

4. Hendrik: Well, one thing’s for sure, Jasper is definitely gay for Hendrik. In my official capacity as a gay, I’m here to tell you one does not get so obsessively jealous over another male friend like that, to the point of villainy, unless that one also wants to hop on that friend’s dick. It’s the rules. But does Hendrik reciprocate? It could be that he’s so hopelessly straight he could never figure out what’s going on in Jasper’s heart until he heard his friend gasp his last dying words to him. That could also be why the pairing of Hendrik and Gare is so sexless. That said, I like it more than others. I think he really just wants a best friend, someone to replace Jasper maybe, someone he can keep up his whole personal identity with, this whole sworn knight with a sworn companion thing that he’s been building up for his whole life, and it’s nice to see Gare is game for it. I like imagining these guys broing down, sparring in the daytime and knocking back mugs of your finest tavern mead in the late night. And to be honest, it is a little gay listening to Hendrik being like “by the way, some of my comrades in arms used to tell me I snore pretty bad, so I’m sorry in advance about that,” and “you don’t have to worry about me leaving the dirty dishes in the sink, I wouldn’t do you like that.”

3. Serena: This is the best heterosexual coupling available to be sure, and I suppose there’s nothing wrong with that. After all, if there were no straights then I wouldn’t even be here, which would be bad because then I’d never even know about Dragon Quest.

With Serena on up, we’re starting to see some actual sparks fly, which is saying something because unfortunately, this is indeed an RPG that has a silent protagonist. What a damn shame that, after taking so much care to so richly characterize your party and give them mostly-excellent VA performances, that we have an admittedly cute but otherwise fairly blank cipher grunting and generally agreeing with things all the way. I liked Gare more than I liked Link in BOTW, I think he’s more of a character than the latter, with his own feelings and motivations and such, but man this shit has to stop. Someone really needs to tell developers that no one plays a silent protagonist and goes “wow, it’s like it’s me in Erdrea saving the world! It’s like I’m really there doing it and stuff!” That is just plain not how it works (also I name all my characters Gare, and this time it just so happens that’s his real actual confirmed canonical name. Don’t look too much into it). It’s the main reason I took off a half star, to be honest. With Koichi Sugiyama’s recent passing it’s very likely, however, that there won’t be another DQ again, so I suppose I don’t have to worry about that ever again likewise.

Despite that, there is evidence that Gare sincerely likes Serena, or at least really likes being around her, if not in love. It might be a little too pat that they’re both reincarnations of the original hero and sage who loved each other in the past, but on the other hand, if anyone, ANYONE in your life wants to cook for you, you have to keep them. Hold them and never let them go. I dunno, this might be the real thing to me.

2. Sylvando: If I had mentioned before that previous Dragon Quest outings were aggressively heterosexual, then Dragon Quest XI is, by far, BY FAR, the gayest Dragon Quest, and I’m here for it. Since many others before me have already, I won’t go into a lot of detail about why Sylvando is the second-best character in the entire game (that’s right, I said second-best. You forgot about Healijah, you fucked up!). He’s coded gay but neither explicitly nor stereotypically so (I mean, unless we refer to this David Cross bit which is evidence enough for me), and when given the choice to be a powerful knight or a fabulous entertainer he really said “why not both, darling?”

I won’t lie to you, I had a smile on my face for the entire dance routine that Sylvando shares with Gare. In a shittier story Sylvando would hoist his sequins and boas upon Gare and the latter would mug to the camera like “but my heterosocial norms!” I love that the hero is just down, no questions asked, to be a part of Sylvando’s wish to make the whole world gay (happy). If this pairing is not the highest up in my rankings, it’s because it seems to me that, in a neat twist no one saw coming, it’s Syl who’s not really into Gare! He’s such a huge force of positivity and support that it’s almost as if he doesn’t need romance. With the hero, I should clarify, not in general, as it is a shitty trope that the gay character in a story is always the support for the main straights but never finds love himself. I’m positive there’s a great guy out there for Syl, but in the meantime he has a great hag in the hero.

And finally…

1. Erik: oh my god.

I fucking love Garerik.

Your first party member, who broke you out of jail and survived a dive off a cliff with you. The only character as far as I know where others go out of their way to mention you have a special bond with. Not to mention, the only character in the whole game with who you got to spend a not-insignificant amount of time alone together in a sauna. The guy who was with you from the very beginning to the very end. Now you get to live with him every day, for the rest of your life.

It’s incredible to me how they were able to somehow animate and voice-act these models and textures, even after deliberately hobbling the main character’s performance as a silent protagonist, in such a way that shows Erik and Gare absolutely, effortlessly happy together. As many of the youtube comments mention, Erik is the only character who does not ask Gare to do anything during their scene on the mountain together, just goofabouts and reminisces about the good old times. And unlike Gemma, they have a whole life before them that can offer either adventure or settling down alike. When they’re not out hunting for treasure (and hunting for treasure isn’t necessarily thieving), they cook stew for each other and go camping and make house calls on Erik’s friends and Gare’s family. They should not have made a prequel spinoff game with Erik and his sister. They should have instead made a post-game spinoff where Gare and Erik do indiana jones shit and it begins with their wedding in cobblestone.

Look, I’m going to level with you, I’m what you’d call a Dragon Quest liker. A Dragon Quest enjoyer, you might even say. While everyone else during the pandemic was playing Animal Crossing, I binge played the first six. I love the music (even after finding out that the late composer was a homophobe and Japanese war crimes denier), I love the design of the world and dungeons, I love how literally every damn thing is a pun, I love how some people look normal and other people look like Goku or Vegeta, I even, rather infamously, love the Dragon Quest V Netflix film. There was absolutely no way I wasn’t going to love the last major Dragon Quest game we’re probably going to have for a while, but even so they went ahead and gave me Garerik anyway. I got to experience a huge and moving story that took the entire month of October to get through, and at the end of it I got to imagine the hero and his best friend laying on their backs on top of cobblestone tor, looking up at the stars, holding hands, snuggling close to each other to stay warm. I’m afraid I’m going to have to rate this 4.5 stars as a result.

(Again, please keep in mind that by no means does this mean that in naming the hero after myself, and then imagining this happy ending with him, that I am inserting myself into the narrative and thereby disproving the point I was making earlier. I name all my nameable characters Gare because then I don’t have to think about a name for them, and remember, Gare is also the official canonical name for him. It’s on the internet and you can look it up)