Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen

"Reduxing the Flaws of a Classic, and Introducing Some New Ones"

Let me get this out of the way; Dragon Quest 4 is not the best Dragon Quest game. It suffered from the increasing presence of pressure, pervasive in Enix at the time of its release, for each subsequent game to outdo those that had come before. I'm not entirely certain they needed to bother; there seems to be something deeply imbedded in the Japanese genetic code which screams ‘Buy Dragon Quest!' In a very excited, high-pitched voice. It also seems to scream ‘Make Everything Smaller!' and ‘Produce Generic Rhythm Games!' but that's beside the point.

The problem with Dragon Quest 4 is that it attempts to solve the problem of overcoming its predecessors by becoming more complex. This is a huge mistake; what made the original Dragon Quest such a wonderful game to play was it's almost insane simplicity. The original was far closer to its roots in Wizardry and Ultima than anything that would come after until perhaps Dragon Quest 5. Two and three were excellent games as well, although three suffers from many of the same ailments as four. Dragon Quest 4 is too much of a good thing. All of the games are supremely bright, optimistic stories. A game which makes the player feel as though they are ‘doing' the Dragon Quest Experience five times over comes off as tedious and exhausting.

Not to say DQIV doesn't stand up as a game. It simply doesn't qualify as the best of the best. However, no matter which translation you prefer, the game never really properly developed all of it's characters. This may be an academic distinction for fans, but it is nonetheless important.

Some people, I understand, don't like Dragon Quest. Preference, however, does not make a game good or bad. As we all know, Dragon Quest is one of the most tremendously popular role-playing franchises of all time. This is particularly true in Japan, where it's chief draw is its design team. The lovely, magisterial score, composed by the legendary Sugiyama Koichi; it's rich, lush character, monster, and box art, by the equally worshipped Toriyama Akira, and it's fairy-tale like sensibilities regarding good and evil, framed by stories that are always pure and unambiguous at heart. Dragon Quest stands as the incorruptible bastion of the classic console JRPG, a series that, for better or for worse, remains bright and optimistic even in the face of an increasingly convoluted world and it's increasingly convoluted (and corporate) games.

This is why I'm always slightly concerned, at the release of a new Dragon Quest, to see so many youngsters rejecting it as 'outdated' or 'boring'. Raised on newer fare, some of which is certainly worthy of consideration and praise, these younger gamers seem to misunderstand Dragon Quest, critiquing it for a lack of interesting characters or complex stories. Many also seem to misunderstand the purpose of a review, but that's as may be.

Any Dragon Quest, and particularly four, owing to its focus on character, is an experience as much as and perhaps more than it is a game. You can't really fully engage in a Dragon Quest game without experiencing Toriyama's art on the box, instructions, and cartridge. You definitely can't play it without Sugiyama's beautiful music; I've never once started or re-started a game without listening to at least a fourth of the central theme. Don't look for complex explorations of moral ambiguity or confusing tales of shifting alliances here. Dragon Quest deliberately avoids these things. Thankfully, it also avoids the strangely effeminate main characters that have plagued recent JRPG's, although the Hero from DQ8 was pushing it slightly.

So, is the remake good? I never played the PSX remake, but I understand that much of our recent DS version is quite similar to that. The script is somewhat tamer and also sparser, and the 'party talk' feature added by the PSX remake has been omitted entirely. Irritating, but I'm happy enough to see this game that I can overlook it. 4 is one of the most interesting of the Dragon Quest games, with a multi-arc story involving five chapters; the first four introduce the supporting cast, while the fifth and final brings them together and draws the story to a close. The remake has also tacked on a prologue and epilogue which includes several optional dungeons.

Unfortunately much of this story is omitted by this remake, but the loss isn't too grievous. The story, of course, isn't ridiculously complex; heroes of disparate origins join together to defeat the forces of evil. Complex plots or ambiguous ideas of good and evil are not what Dragon Quest is about. The reason why this game gets a lower score than any Dragon Quest deserves is unfortunately because the changes to the script remove part of the carefully balanced recipe that is a Dragon Quest game.

It's difficult to care about characters who are developed so little, and difficult, in turn, to participate in a story in which you are so sparsely involved. When we are in the shoes of the supporting cast, we don't even hear them talk. I've always thought this was taking the silent protagonist conceit, which I have issues with in the first place, a bit too far. And with the omission of party talk there is virtually no character development, simplistic or otherwise. The party has a ridiculously sparse amount of dialogue, lending an air of inauthenticity to the story in general. If you were saving the world, wouldn't you talk about it a bit?

Some of you will no doubt point out, of course, that the character development whose absence I bemoan did not exist in the original. For a start, if you demand this level of authenticity, you are carrying purism to fascist heights. Minimal character development was forgivable in the 8-bit days of DQIV's birth, but later versions have added more and more layers, particularly the PSX remake from which much of our DS retread is directly taken. Why is Square/Enix cheating us out the party talk feature when there was absolutely no reason to omit it?

But I don't mean to focus on the negative. A slight disruption of the recipe can't destroy a Dragon Quest entirely. Certain elements of the combat system have always annoyed me slightly, but it is, overall, so much fun that it can be overlooked. The remake sports divers improvements over the Famicom, with far higher resolutions than would have been remotely imaginable in 8-bit days, as well as beautifully animated monster models which move with a fluid grace.

Certain gripes aside, this is an excellent and, ultimately, faithful, remake. Unfortunately, this faithfulness means that it revisits some flaws of the original. What we need to ask ourselves is if that is all that we expect from a remake. Should a remake improve on the formula if the formula is flawed? Square/Enix says no. If you agree, and maybe even if you don't, DQIV is a marvelous way to spend your gaming dollar and your time. Mind the Metal Slimes.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 12/02/08

Game Release: Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen (US, 09/16/08)