Dragon Quest V

• Once you can recruit monsters, get the Rotten Apple(it's near Uptaten Towers). It's a good mid-late game monster that's rendered useless because of equipment and an early level cap, but it's solid until you're level 25 or so.

• You should also get a Slime Knight, who is basically a copy of the Hero. They are found near Coburg.

• Late game, the only real monsters you should use are (mild spoiler that's not really if you know a thing about RPG conventions)Saber and Golem (Killing Machine is good too but it's hard to get and you get it way later than Golem). The rest you can fill with human characters.

• Don't worry about your choice for wife too much. Go for personality rather than stats/combat potential. On a tangent to this, press B after talking to any NPC if you have human characters in your party.

• Another fun/interesting/good "monster" to use is Dwight Dwarf.