Ahh Dragon Quest IV, the fourth entry in one of the most mainstream RPG series you can think of. Does the internet really need yet another review of this game? I only played the DS version, which I would imagine is very different from the original 1990 Famicom release. But yeah, it's good and if you like traditional RPGs, you should play it. What more is there to say that hasn't already been said? Let's find out, shall we? Heh, heh, heh.
I created an all female party in Dragon Quest III thereby missing some pafu pafu dialog with an NPC. On the flip side, I was able to equip them all with extremely strong bikinis and garter belts. There's no visible difference in the game but I'm sure the fictional game characters felt objectified nonetheless. This time, as a more "mature" gamer, I went with the male protagonist. This had absolutely nothing to do with any concern that a female protagonist would not be pafu pafu eligible. In the end, as far as I could tell, your gender made zero difference to the story.
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| Not sure if original author but source is here |
There is no "official" explanation of what pafu pafu actually IS so thanks to random internet artist for very clearly illustrating an event that takes place in the first chapter where an NPC regains his memory with help from Fureya's umm assets. Speaking of the chapter structure, I really enjoyed playing through each of the character's backstory in each chapter and then recruiting them into your party in what was originally the last chapter (more on that later). I'm frankly shocked that Squeenix didn't make the game into separate episodic purchase$$$ for their mobile ports (barf).
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| DS version looks mostly the same so fuck this app shit |
Overall, I liked the diverse cast such as the twins and Arina, the strong tomboy female character. She doesn't use any magic or any of that weak nonsense, just physical attacks with knives, whip, claws, etc. Oh wait, I forgot that strong female characters didn't exist before Aloy in Horizon Zero Dawn.
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| Hey, Aloy doesn't wear a weird hat! |
I also liked the fact that you can talk to your party members every time you talk to an NPC. I'm not sure if this was part of the original Famicom release but I found that for the most part, your party members say something unique for every NPC conversation, which adds a ton of additional dialogue to the game. It gave a bit more personality and flavor to the adventure since they weren't silent for the majority of the game. You do miss the comments of people you don't really use so who knows what the old guy or Toruneko had to say about shit. While I prefer something like the skits in the Tales series, it's better than nothing for sure.
As usual, since I can't take screenshots from my game file on the actual hardware, here's a quick screenshot I took of the game status screen.
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| Definitely better than the male version with the weird fish hat |
The final boss animations really stood out for me and were pretty cool. While writing this, I actually found out there was an additional chapter not in the original version even though the game clearly said "Fin". The post credit chapter was pretty grindy and features what looks like the same final boss but with different color palette and a tiny change to the original ending. Meh.
Score: 3 missed opportunity to translate final boss name as "DEATH PISS ARROW" out of 5 (38 hours to beat)
Overall, this was a solid fun and traditional RPG, which of course is what the DQ series is known for. I would definitely recommend setting battle speed to the fastest setting. In additional, having the dual screen real estate made it really easy to look around the map by rotating your view where that was allowed. The dungeon maps are pretty small and easy to navigate as well. As long as you have the hang of basic buffs and debuffs (Sukuruto and Rukana), it's a pretty simple and frictionless playthrough.
Scale
0 - Awful
2 - Has some flaws but still enjoyable
3 - An average enjoyable experience
4 - A great game
5 - Masterpiece of a caliber only found very rarely
