A [Dragon Quest IV DS] approaches! Command?
Lunker
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DAAAAAH! Duh-duh-duh dut dut daaaaaaaah!
Who: Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen
What: One of the best JRPGs of the 8-bit era, remixed with 3-D graphics, remastered and peppered with bonus content
When: Sept. 12 (EU); Sept. 15 (US)
Where: Nintendo DS
How long has Lunker dreamed of having his favorite RPG updated, ported to a portable platform and slipped lovingly under his pillow? Only every day since October 1992.
Gameplay video (Japanese)
Dragon Quest IV (née Dragon Warrior IV in the U.S.) is hands down my all-time favorite RPG, favorite NES game and easily one of the top five video games ever created. The powerful combination of its classic, streamlined 8-bit JRPG battles and dungeon-crawling; at-the-time radical, multithreaded storytelling techniques (more on this below); simply presented, yet memorable character archetypes; and overarching sense of adventure, exploration and fantasy—all painstakingly preserved under a thick sheen of nostalgia—is all why this game is still my gold standard for how role-playing games should be.
STORY AND GAMEPLAY
As with all of the Dragon Quest games, DQIV's story and gameplay mechanics aren't really treading any new ground, but it did have a lot of new things going for it that blew my 12-year-old mind at the time. Instead of following the story of a main character or a party of characters from start to finish, the game is broken up into five different chapters. The "main" character (the Hero or Heroine named by the player at the beginning of the game) doesn't actually take the stage until the final act; Chapters 1-4 instead follow the individual, separate stories of the seven other main party members as they travel the world, acting as preludes to the much larger Chapter 5. All of the chapters take place within the same world and not only introduce the other party members but also give hints and context both to the Hero's legacy and to the greater evil that brings everyone together to fight against it.
DQIV's gameplay is, well, Dragon Quest. Simple, quick menu-driven turn-based battles that have you pick your party's actions, the enemies pick theirs, and agility stats determine who goes when. The first four chapters take maybe a few hours each—they're kind of mini-RPGs in their own right, and it's a novel way to watch the growth of your party members from their first steps without having to force your party of Lv. 20s to baby-sit a new Lv. 1 character. You also occasionally travel with NPC allies that act on their own but still help you out—like Healie, the lovable Healer creature who wishes to become human and agrees to help you out in Chapter 1. All of the chapters take place within the same larger world but typically on different continents and in different areas, so you'll meet new people and visit new places but you'll occasionally get new perspectives on the same areas (like the Castle of Endor, which you'll visit in three of the five chapters). And your battle strategies will vary in each chapter; handling enemies solo as the soldier Ragnar is very different from the three-member party of fighter Alena, healer/warrior [strike]Cristo[/strike] Kiryl and wizard [strike]Brey[/strike] Borya.
And then, in Chapter 5, you finally take control of your Hero or Heroine—and everything changes. Now you start alone in your quest to defeat the Ultimate Evil, and one-by-one you'll encounter the seven other party members who have actually been traveling specifically to find you! But when you add them to your party, you now have a choice; apparently in the DS version, you can still play as a standard four-member DQ party, but you can also follow how the NES original played out, which is only controlling your Hero and letting the other three allies act on their own. DQIV has a set of six different Tactics guidelines (standard options like "Conserve MP" or "Defense" or "All Out!") that let you give basic AI rules to your party, and you can change tactics at each new turn. You also gain access to a Wagon that lets you bring all eight players along at once (barring certain dungeons), and during battle you can swap out characters or have living players take the place of dead ones.
CHANGES AND UPDATES FOR THE DS VERSION
The DS version of Dragon Quest IV is a spiffed-up version of the 2001 PS1 port of DQIV that never saw the light of day in the West, despite even being advertised on the back of the instruction manual for DQVII. It's got kind of mid-PS1-level graphical detailing in the overworld/dungeons, but the camera is fully controllable and it fills up both screens. When you flip to battle you go to 2-D sprites on a 3-D background, and enemies are fully animated. Character info is on the top screen and all the action takes place on the bottom; I think you can use the touchscreen if you want but I believe it's not mandatory.
Changes to the game itself include, according to Wikipedia, a new chapter (a postgame Chapter 6), a new character, an intra-party talk command similar to Dragon Quest VII and the ability to turn off the artificial intelligence for party members to allow for direct control of their attacks (except AI Party Members). A brand-new translation was added, including regional dialects as found in DQVIII, and some of the characters' names were changed to be closer to the original Japanese script (I mourn the loss of Cristo and Brey
). If you want more details you may want to check out the GAF thread on the Japanese release, which is a lot more comprehensive than mine.
So: I haven't even pretended to be objective when it comes to my opinion of the game, but I'm curious how other people feel and who else is as mindbendingly excited as I am for this. Having the best RPGs of my youth updated, cleaned up and placed in portable format is one of my favorite trends for this generation.
Cry havoc and let loose the slimes of war!
Who: Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen
What: One of the best JRPGs of the 8-bit era, remixed with 3-D graphics, remastered and peppered with bonus content
When: Sept. 12 (EU); Sept. 15 (US)
Where: Nintendo DS
How long has Lunker dreamed of having his favorite RPG updated, ported to a portable platform and slipped lovingly under his pillow? Only every day since October 1992.
Gameplay video (Japanese)
Dragon Quest IV (née Dragon Warrior IV in the U.S.) is hands down my all-time favorite RPG, favorite NES game and easily one of the top five video games ever created. The powerful combination of its classic, streamlined 8-bit JRPG battles and dungeon-crawling; at-the-time radical, multithreaded storytelling techniques (more on this below); simply presented, yet memorable character archetypes; and overarching sense of adventure, exploration and fantasy—all painstakingly preserved under a thick sheen of nostalgia—is all why this game is still my gold standard for how role-playing games should be.
STORY AND GAMEPLAY
As with all of the Dragon Quest games, DQIV's story and gameplay mechanics aren't really treading any new ground, but it did have a lot of new things going for it that blew my 12-year-old mind at the time. Instead of following the story of a main character or a party of characters from start to finish, the game is broken up into five different chapters. The "main" character (the Hero or Heroine named by the player at the beginning of the game) doesn't actually take the stage until the final act; Chapters 1-4 instead follow the individual, separate stories of the seven other main party members as they travel the world, acting as preludes to the much larger Chapter 5. All of the chapters take place within the same world and not only introduce the other party members but also give hints and context both to the Hero's legacy and to the greater evil that brings everyone together to fight against it.
Wikipedia wrote:The first four chapters introduce the motives and histories of the hero's future companions, as well as some information on the game's main antagonist, Saro. Each chapter gives meaning and attachment to those characters. In chapter one, the royal guard Ragnar must save the missing children and in doing so uncovers a plot to kill the still young hero. In chapter two, the princess Alena rebels against her father and sets out to prove her strength and embarks on a journey with Borya and Kiryl. In chapter three, the merchant Torneko Taloon seeks wealth and treasure, and an ultimate weapon that will destroy Necrosaro. In chapter four, the dancer Maya and the fortune teller Meena attempt to exact revenge on their father's murder. All four of these stories lead up to the hero's fifth chapter.
DQIV's gameplay is, well, Dragon Quest. Simple, quick menu-driven turn-based battles that have you pick your party's actions, the enemies pick theirs, and agility stats determine who goes when. The first four chapters take maybe a few hours each—they're kind of mini-RPGs in their own right, and it's a novel way to watch the growth of your party members from their first steps without having to force your party of Lv. 20s to baby-sit a new Lv. 1 character. You also occasionally travel with NPC allies that act on their own but still help you out—like Healie, the lovable Healer creature who wishes to become human and agrees to help you out in Chapter 1. All of the chapters take place within the same larger world but typically on different continents and in different areas, so you'll meet new people and visit new places but you'll occasionally get new perspectives on the same areas (like the Castle of Endor, which you'll visit in three of the five chapters). And your battle strategies will vary in each chapter; handling enemies solo as the soldier Ragnar is very different from the three-member party of fighter Alena, healer/warrior [strike]Cristo[/strike] Kiryl and wizard [strike]Brey[/strike] Borya.
And then, in Chapter 5, you finally take control of your Hero or Heroine—and everything changes. Now you start alone in your quest to defeat the Ultimate Evil, and one-by-one you'll encounter the seven other party members who have actually been traveling specifically to find you! But when you add them to your party, you now have a choice; apparently in the DS version, you can still play as a standard four-member DQ party, but you can also follow how the NES original played out, which is only controlling your Hero and letting the other three allies act on their own. DQIV has a set of six different Tactics guidelines (standard options like "Conserve MP" or "Defense" or "All Out!") that let you give basic AI rules to your party, and you can change tactics at each new turn. You also gain access to a Wagon that lets you bring all eight players along at once (barring certain dungeons), and during battle you can swap out characters or have living players take the place of dead ones.
CHANGES AND UPDATES FOR THE DS VERSION
The DS version of Dragon Quest IV is a spiffed-up version of the 2001 PS1 port of DQIV that never saw the light of day in the West, despite even being advertised on the back of the instruction manual for DQVII. It's got kind of mid-PS1-level graphical detailing in the overworld/dungeons, but the camera is fully controllable and it fills up both screens. When you flip to battle you go to 2-D sprites on a 3-D background, and enemies are fully animated. Character info is on the top screen and all the action takes place on the bottom; I think you can use the touchscreen if you want but I believe it's not mandatory.
Changes to the game itself include, according to Wikipedia, a new chapter (a postgame Chapter 6), a new character, an intra-party talk command similar to Dragon Quest VII and the ability to turn off the artificial intelligence for party members to allow for direct control of their attacks (except AI Party Members). A brand-new translation was added, including regional dialects as found in DQVIII, and some of the characters' names were changed to be closer to the original Japanese script (I mourn the loss of Cristo and Brey
). If you want more details you may want to check out the GAF thread on the Japanese release, which is a lot more comprehensive than mine.So: I haven't even pretended to be objective when it comes to my opinion of the game, but I'm curious how other people feel and who else is as mindbendingly excited as I am for this. Having the best RPGs of my youth updated, cleaned up and placed in portable format is one of my favorite trends for this generation.
Cry havoc and let loose the slimes of war!
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Although I won't be getting this right when it comes out because of lack of money. I will request it on Goozex though, so I might get it that way eventually. If not, then I don't know when I'll be getting it.
It just took way too damn long.
A new chapter and character, you say? Hmmmm....
If you loved the origional DW4, you will really enjoy the new character, especially once you find out who it is. I have to agree with you on DW7, that game was complete shit in comparison to the awesomeness that DQ5 and 6 were. For those that have the means to do so - play through DQ5 and DQ6, they are just plain awesomesauce.
His chapter is much, much more tolerable this time around. you'll see once you play it.
I'm trying to figure out who the new character cited on Wikipedia is, but I've not a clue. And yeah, I was so pumped when I saw the ad for the PSX remake, only to be disappointed when I later heard it wasn't going to be brought over. Crushed.
In my NES cart I had the third save slot permanently set to the beginning of Chapter 3: A Merchant's Tale, because his entire chapter was just so fun. I even did the trick where you wait until someone randomly sells a Sword of Malice to his shop (a weapon you shouldn't have access to until way at the end of his chapter) and then grinded up all the money to buy it, just for shits and giggles. I think I only really finished the entire game once or twice but I started and restarted the game dozens of times; as someone who usually loves the beginnings and middles of RPGs more than the endgames, I was enamored with a game that let me play the beginning arc five times in a row.
Circuit City has this game next week with a $10 gift card. I swear they have some kind of dark ritual pact with S-E because they've done this with both TWEWY and Crisis Core. Although honestly, if I find it somewhere else first and CC doesn't have it I can't promise I'll hold out.
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You were not the only one. I still look forward to being able to do that chapter just so I can hoard that sword away from all those adventurers. I have not gotten to play this game in over a decade, and can't wait until it arrives in the mail this month.
You might be thinking of Dragon Quest IX, the new one, which has kind of gone back behind the curtain after it was unveiled. That's the one that started as an action-based multiplayer online affair, but I believe it's shifted back to turn-based. Square-Enix has kind of kept tight lips on DQIX, but hopefully we'll see something at TGS in the coming weeks.
I'm curious to see how newcomers to the series receive the game; again, I'm retardedly fanboyish about the game so I don't know if I can objectively say anything about it.
Wait, what? Aw, shit. For one, I was hoping to save my monies for a few months, for two, I try not to shop at Circuit City since I'm still annoyed at them for the whole Divx thing. (Yes, I realize that was over a decade ago, but still.) Well, looks like I'm diving in earlier than I thought, then.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
(Just kidding, this is bought)
That's because 8 didn't have shitty 3D models like FFIV.
Pretty much. I'd rather have nice 2D sprites than crappy 3D models
and the enemy sprites in this game? so good~
But I did grab a nice orchestral soundtrack of 3 and 4.
as someone stated earlier this one is bought SO HARD
:winky:
try out DQ8 on the ps2, if you like that then go from there
Yeah, that's who the secret character is in the PSX remake and I doubt they've changed it in the DS version.
Oh and there's a mistake in the OP. It says that DQ4 is one of the best JRPGs in the 8-bit era when it is clearly THE BEST RPG OF THE 8-BIT ERA!
Steam ID : rwb36, Twitter : Werezompire,
I've never played IV, and I'm ready to be blown away.
PSN ID : Xander51 Steam ID : Xander51
I don't have a PS2
I love FFIV and VI, if that helps.
Is it possible to rename the characters? I usually name the male hero in RPG's Ragnar, so uh, this game is kinda unique in that there is already a character ingame with my preferred name.
Of the Pink Armor Club.
On the negative side, I just spent over $100 on XBox 360 games ($50 on MSN points so I could buy the rest of the Summer of XBLA titles + Civilization Revolution & a couple cheap games) so there's no way on earth that I'm going to justify buying DQIV DS on release date to my wife. On the positive side, I just got a match on goozex for one of my old games putting me up to 950 points. Coincidence? I don't think so. I like to think of it as fate.
Steam ID : rwb36, Twitter : Werezompire,
He is fabulous.
From wikipedia:
really excited about this game! haven't bought a traditional RPG in forever