Dragon Quest IV

 Slightly below Dragon Quest V, this was the game I was most looking forward to getting to. I knew it featured a chapter system where you change protagonists throughout it, the highlight everyone mentions being "that chapter where you run a weapon store". Squaresoft produced a ton of SNES/PS1 era RPGs with the format of multiple protagonists, and they generally yielded some of the more interesting stories as a result of not being stuck with the stock teenage boy protagonist. So I was really curious to see the probable video game origin point of the style, and even more interested in seeing what it looked like when Dragon Quest was actually still innovating instead of its modern form of being unchanging video game comfort food. What I got wasn't entirely what I expected.

Right up there with sequels that start with you losing all your equipment from the previous game for in-universe explanations for mechanics.

Dragon Quest IV is rather different from those Squaresoft RPGs I mentioned in that it sticks to a linear sequence for shifting between protagonists. This results in telling a way more coherent narrative in between character vignettes that builds up a looming threat: Ragnar the town guard uncovers a sinister plot of monsters kidnapping children, tomboy princess Alena's rollicking adventures end in tragedy when the monster's plans advances, Taloon thrives as a weapon merchant in a world preparing for the worst, the fourth chapter is a head on revenge mission against the monsters, and finally ending with the chosen one Hero gathering everyone together to save the day. 

Dungeons are a lot more visually elaborate

The first four chapters are great. It's basically taking a hard look at the world of Dragon Quest and asking what goes on when someone isn't on a world saving adventure. What's life like for a town guard, princess, or a merchant? The chapters aren't just flavored by the story, either. The town guard actually has to investigate around town to solve a mystery (which is a staple for the series, but it integrates perfectly with the smaller scale). The merchant chapter is the most extravagant, as it basically functions like a precursor prototype of a life sim. Push the old man to church every day for gold, operate a bunch of boring menus to sell weapons to adventurers, and then go back home at night and do it all over again. It actually branches out quite a bit with a dungeon sequence, figuring out schemes to buy low and sell high, hiring people to escort you in harder dungeons, etc. It's pretty good, though in true NES fashion it leans a little too hard on grinding money at the end. It almost certainly inspired a few genres, and is kind of crazy to look at today considering how intentionally not experimental Dragon Quest ended up becoming.

I actually really dig how the Taloon chapter melds adventuring into it, and kind of makes me want to see a life sim with more world exploration (but still without combat).

The final chapter is where it's kind of a let down. After building up all these characters, they end up silent after they join your party. Disappointing since the structure makes you think they're going for something, but admittedly not unexpected for the time. It's also really freaking big and long. Like probably three or four times the length of the previous chapters combined? I sort of wish I hadn't skipped playing Dragon Quest III first as the two games are of similar size, but I suspect III works out far better without even playing it (just by knowing it's fairly non-linear out the gate). IV's final chapter is basically structured such that there's a mainline path that directs you to the next location after each step (and often unlocks more chunks of the world), but several parts of the main path also require solving branches that you may or may not have found/done earlier in the game. It's not a terrible structure in itself, but the size of the world makes figuring out some of the branches a real chore (made worse by the world map being huge, sparsely populated with towns/dungeons, and visually indistinct- making it easy to not realize there are certain patches you haven't explored yet. I ended up resorting to the included manual's map, but it felt cheap knowing the Japanese version didn't have a map).

Despite the size, the world is still using the same basic tiles everywhere which makes it pretty easy to miss corners.

The worst part is just that all of your characters (except the protagonist) become locked into being AI controlled. Of course every remake changes this, but I was so deathly curious I had to try it for myself. The result was: it's really boring and hurts the game a lot. There's actually an interview with the developers around the time of release that is a fascinating read. The quotes pretty much straight up admit it was a bit of a failure: "I think we didn’t quite capture that feeling of being a “general” and strategically directing the combat", "The other thing I felt was lacking, was the wagon. You can have up to 10 characters in the wagon, but unfortunately, the game never really requires you to swap them out in any strategic way.", etc. The nicest thing I can say is that I pretty much just held down the fast forward button and mashed attack through every battle and either the AI was good enough to handle it, or the game was easy enough it didn't matter (I did catch it trying to use an instant death spell on the final boss, so...). And while the AI system is far less advanced than something like Final Fantasy XII, it still ends up being the better game just because the dungeons still have distinct tricks, there are overworld discoveries to make, resources still have to be managed (albeit tediously with single target healing), etc- while XII's world is pretty much just empty space. Years later Final Fantasy XIII would end up successfully bringing the "general" battle concept to life, while Dragon Quest pretty much just gave up on it.

The early chapters trick you into thinking you can control everyone, which I guess would be a cool surprise if the AI feature was actually fun.

 Despite all that complaining, the final chapter isn't a total wash. The chosen one premise works better than most thanks to the build-up of the prior chapters (plus having the player enter their name at the start of the game and then not show up for hours and hours is.. beautiful), gathering up all your party members and understanding how each chunk of their adventures actually fits together in a world feels great, seeing how various NPC's lives changed since earlier chapters is great (those lovebirds you saved are married and having a kid, etc- that kind of thing is actually more impactful with less work than something like Final Fantasy II smashing villages left and right), there's actually a fair amount of plot with the main antagonist who ends up as a tragic figure who just wants to bring humanity to extinction because they're jerks (he's not wrong), and it's still pretty good at the general Dragon Quest formula of feeling like a genius when the clues finally start to click together or you figure out the missing piece.

The dungeons feature a variety of gimmicks like dodging boulders, but thankfully never go too far where they become annoying.

So should you play Dragon Quest IV? I dunno, I guess if you want? Certainly not the original version. The high points aren't particularly high any more, other games have since done them better. In other words, it's so close to later entries in the genre that it isn't particularly distinct. It's also bloated as these things usually are, though it thankfully still has tight, compact dungeon design. But in the end it's just... another RPG. With some cool bits that are a fraction of the run time.

They were really stoked they could fit that many NPCs on screen.

 

 (I don't know where to fit this in the greater review, but I'd also like to note how in love with moving NPCs this game is? They were clearly extremely psyched when they finally had the storage to start including NPC move patterns. They have a bit with an old man who tries to follow you but can't keep up, merchants moving from their wife to the store front, merchants running 4 shops at once, priests tending to their gardens before helping you, meeting other adventuring parties in towns and dungeons, etc. It's neat to see since a ton of later RPGs generally aren't this elaborate with it)

Monsters hate open borders.

Bonus: Series Stuff

On the other hand I feel like this game was a real motherload in terms of like... establishing series stuff? The villain is using "The Secret of Evolution" to make all the monsters and some animals in the world smarter, enough to start talking. I could be wrong, but I don't remember any monsters talking in the earlier games (the Internet is useless at "when did DQ monsters start talking" trivia apparently), but it becomes a series staple from this point forward so it's kind of cool that maybe there's actually a lore reason for talking monsters? Albeit it also creates a Tolkien orc conundrum of it now being way more morally questionable to slay thousands of them, but it's still a cool revelation for someone who's played a fair amount of other Dragon Quest stuff.

Careful what you wish for.

Cities in the sky and bird people are also a bit of a series staple, but later games introduce them so nonchalantly that I always found it weird? It's a common fantasy thing sure, but the rest of Dragon Quest's village style is so intentionally bland that I always found them out of place and kind of sudden. IV is the first introduction of these things, and it at least does it with an appropriate amount of build up- the sky city and its ruler are slowly foreshadowed for a ridiculously long time before you finally meet them. They also form a lot of little backstory for certain parts of the plot. So for the first time they actually feel like they fit in the world to me? Just one of those things where people who grew up with a franchise end up slapping in cameos so casually that they never stop to think about the details?

Seems familiar..