From our other sites
The story
Dragon Quest’s new spell “Behoimu” has arrived as a mid-tier healing spell slotting in between Behoimi and Behoma, sparking debate on 5ch’s Hardware/Industry board over “why is everyone hating on this?”
The thread covered everything from how easily confused the name is with Behoimi, to recent spell-naming trends like Magic Barrier and Bagimucho, to how the spell addresses HP inflation in versions like the HD-2D remake — with opinions split for and against.
What people said
Part of the backlash is also that "Magic Barrier" is just plain English.
And this is smack in the middle of all the coined spell names Horii dreamed up out of love for Wizardry.
Mahoton
Mahokanta
Mahotora
Mahosute
Mahokite
— they all matched, and then suddenly it's "Magic Barrier"…
Since it's basically the magic version of Fubaha, they could've just called it Mahobaha or something.
You can't tell from the name alone whether it's stronger or weaker than Behoimi.
Meragaia sounds way too uncool. Iogrande's fine, I guess. But Bagimucho makes you wonder if they're even trying anymore.
A group-cast spell that got wiped from existence entirely… and there was a DQ-obsessed artist who went and took that very name for himself lol
Would "Behoimy" not have worked?
Lightning-Fast Meragaia
Raging Gale Bagimucho
Ice Block Mahyadedosu
Chain-Cast Dorumadon
Exploding Doganutarosu
Majirumba Samba! (a joke name mashing up "Majin" with the dances rumba and samba)
There's more:
"Bagi, Sealed Since Ancient Times"
This is a case of not knowing about Flashing Begiragon.
On the flip side, Bomie blends right in like it's always been there, no weirdness at all.
Zao makes sense functionally — you need revival available from low levels or it's a real problem.
Yeah, and a group-cast version of Hoimi would be nice too.
Zao's a must-have — a revival spell that fails one out of three times would be brutal that early in the game.
But the second enemies start casting Behoma too, you'd be the first one calling it a trash game, right?
Can't be helped — HP caps hit 999 now…
Hoimi and Behoimi barely heal 100 HP at best.
Even Behoimu only heals around 160-180 HP, you know?
If the series keeps going like this, it's obvious they'll need new mid-to-high-tier healing spells, right?
Even some random kid could've predicted that after Behoimu we'd get something like "Behoime" or "Behoimo" next.
These days even Priests routinely break 1000 HP, don't they?
Shin Megami Tensei V also caps HP at 999, and that game's balance is just fine.
Was about to write that myself and got beaten to it.
Since player HP has inflated so much, it's handy for when Behomara alone can't heal enough.
There being no other way to heal is one thing, but what really gets me is how long it takes to learn it.
How long are they gonna make us rely on Rihoimi?
Also, other final-boss names I'm not a fan of:
Pisaro, Orgodemira, that sort of thing —
they sound Italian, or Portuguese, or Mexican, or Spanish, whatever,
but that modern-sounding vibe just doesn't sit right with me.
Bashirura: "I've been forgiven" (Bashirura is DQ's infamous spell that randomly teleports party members away — long reviled, but forgiven now by comparison)
For what it's worth, the single-target version is called Mahobaria.
When it first showed up in DQ7, there was no Mahobaria though.
On top of that, it eats up one of your precious skill slots, so you end up figuring a Gem item will do just fine instead.
Background and Key Points
Dragon Quest’s healing magic has followed a fixed naming ladder since the 1986 original: Hoimi (single-target heal), Behoimi (stronger heal, historically capping around 80 HP), and Behoma (full heal), later joined by group variants like Behomara. The “Be-” prefix has long signaled “upgraded version,” and Horii’s spell names were traditionally coined pseudo-words rather than borrowed English, a convention some fans trace to his fondness for Wizardry. Behoimu is a genuinely new rung squeezed between Behoimi and Behoma, healing roughly 160-180 HP, introduced as party HP totals have climbed toward the series’ 999 cap in recent entries and remakes such as the HD-2D Dragon Quest I.
The thread doesn’t actually converge on one complaint. Posters disagree over whether the real problem is the name itself being too close to Behoimi (making it impossible to tell at a glance whether it’s stronger or weaker), or whether the “hate” is overstated and mostly directed at the thread starter, or whether it’s really a generational gripe from players who feel three healing tiers was always the right number and resent any addition, functional or not.
What the thread leaves out is that Behoimu isn’t new to the franchise — it has reportedly seen regular use in Dragon Quest X, the MMO entry, well before this rollout into mainline single-player games and remakes, so its reception there could have informed this debate but goes unmentioned. Readers unfamiliar with the series may also not realize the naming backlash is really about a decades-old internal logic (coined words like Mahoton/Mahokanta) being broken by newer, plainly English-derived spell names like Magic Barrier and Bagimucho, not about Behoimu alone.
*This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (Hardware/Industry, aka “Geha”) thread “[DQ] Behoimu: “A single-target healing spell between Behoimi and Behoma” — why is this getting so much hate?.”
Leave a Reply