October 4, 2013

Dragon Quest IV

For a while there each Dragon Quest game I played was better than the last, and now predictably as I transitioned from the fifth installment down to the fourth, there was a small drop in quality. But hey, that just means chronologically, these games keep getting better and better! Dragon Quest IV is subtitled "Chapters of the Chosen", due to its chapter-based story- you play each of the five chapters as a different character or group, with the first four lasting a few hours each and the last one taking up more than half of the game's length. I wasn't a fan of this choice- the worst part of many RPGs is the first hour or so where you need to build up your weakling character enough to finally move on to the next town; repeating this five times over felt unneccesary. That's really the only knock I have on Dragon Quest IV compared to DQ5. The gameplay and graphics are almost exactly the same- where the Final Fantasy series is famous for introducing wild new mechanics and summons in each installment, Dragon Quest is content keeping things simple and straightforward. This means there's far fewer missteps in the series, but it will also probably never reach the heights of some of the better Final Fantasy games. Oh well! Dragon Quest IV and V are both fun old-school RPGs and I assume Dragon Quest VI will be too.

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