Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen
Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen is the first game of the Zenithian Trilogy. Originally the last Dragon Quest game to arrive on the NES, it didn’t get very much attention due to being released at the tail-end of the NES lifecycle stateside. After receiving a PS1ground-up remake, it eventually made its way to the DS as another ground up remake going with a more 2D style versus the PS1 3D remake.
The story telling in this one kicks it up a step from the previous trilogy. The “chapters” bit refers to the first 4 chapters of the game. You follow each group of main characters separately. You have your aging warrior’s chapter, your spunky tomboy princess along with her entourage, the twin sisters, and the merchant. These 4 stories converge with the main characters plot line. I really liked this as it let you explore each of the main characters back stories separately. However all character development falls flat once all these groups join up. My favorite chapter was Torneko’s. He’s an old guy that’s been struggling to open his own shop. The gameplay in this chapter is just unique compared to the rest of the chapters so it was fun. You open your own store and sell goods to make money to progress his chapter. I was constantly shifting my party around though, because each character fills a niche, and is fun to play.
The graphics are gorgeous for a 2D game. The battles have animated backgrounds and enemies. The final boss has some great animation as you fight through the forms. Fun fact: the NES version is considered to be one of the pioneering games of JRPGs to introduce a final boss with multiple forms.
The story here is the standard Dragon Quest stuff. Chosen hero saves the world from re-emerging evil. It’s not going to knock your socks off. Music is, as usual, just rehashed from the rest of the series. The coolest thing the DS brings to the table is you the map extends on both screens, allowing you to rotate around and see more of your surroundings, helping you decide where to go in dungeons. It also introduced member-swapping during battles, which was awesome. It allows you to change up your party members if you found your strategy wasn’t working.
DQ4 on the DS introduced a short post-game, that gives you an alternate course of events for the ending, and isn’t very long so it’s worth the extra playtime. After that I came in at around 25 hours. However, I played with a 4x EXP cheat. I’m glad I did otherwise game time would have doubled just to grind. It didn’t affect the difficulty, as I still found myself needing to grind to get past a few spikes.
Another DQ game down in my 2021 goal to complete all the mainline games! Another great installment to the classic series. Knocking a couple points off because of how damn grindy it was, and how all character development fell off a cliff at the end of the game. Overall it was a very positive experience.
