Summary
One of the highest achievements of early Japanese RPGs
The Good
"Dragon Warrior IV" was the last Dragon Warrior for the NES console; interestingly, it was also the last officially translated Dragon Warrior for non-Japanese players until
Dragon Warrior VII appeared on the scene nine year later. This game is in every sense a culmination of everything there is to love in the series. Historically speaking, the achievement of "Dragon Warrior IV" was never repeated within the series. It was, relatively to the epoch, the most progressive and daring Dragon Warrior game both in gameplay and story, and probably the only Dragon Warrior, before or after, that was ahead of its time in those aspects.
Its three predecessors (and, should I note, also most of its sequels) did little to develop the genre and mostly relied on old templates borrowed from Western RPG scene or from other Japanese RPGs that were less conservative (for instance, the job system of
Dragon Warrior III heavily relied on the one from the first
Final Fantasy). When "Dragon Warrior IV" was released, it was a daring step forwards - most notably in storytelling.
It's hard to seriously care for the stories and the characters of the first three Dragon Warrior games. With little variation, they repeated the same old story. You played a nameless hero who had to find items/companions and to defeat evil. And then, all of a sudden, "Dragon Warrior IV" and its chapter system appeared.
The chapter system is undoubtedly one of the greatest appeals of "Dragon Warrior IV": the idea to dedicate large portions of a game to character introduction, to personal stories of your party members, was a brilliant revelation way ahead of its time. Among first-generation Japanese RPGs,
Final Fantasy II was probably the only one whose story centered around emotions.
Phantasy Star and
Tengai Makyou: Ziria were the ones that had a typically Japanese colorful character cast, if only on the surface. To perceive the greatness of "Dragon Warrior IV", one must understand it was a very important step forwards not only for the series, but for the entire genre as well. Dragon Warrior games were never particularly innovative, but "Dragon Warrior IV" was an exception.
Playing the personal stories of the characters one-by-one, every time believing the character you are playing is "you", was a great psychological device that allowed the player to develop affection towards the characters who later in the game became simple companions for the actual hero. You cared for the sad story of the two orphan girls Mara and Nara the same way you did for financial success of the merchant Taloon or for the destiny of the poor hero who had lost his family, his friends and his home. And when the stories of all those characters finally became linked together, you felt much more than just having more characters in your party: you felt that friends have found each other, that you are no longer alone in this hostile world, and that you (the hero) are not the only one who had to face despair and to venture into the "large world" on a grand journey. Together in grief and happiness, this group of friends was the first example of a well-developed, deep character cast that later marked the genre. And in many ways it also surpassed later examples.
Like all Dragon Warrior games, "Dragon Warrior IV" is very modest. And in this case, modesty translated into quality. You won't find super-tough, super-sexy, or super-annoying characters in this party; there are no morally ambivalent heroes who have undergone genetic experiments in their troubled past or anything of that kind. The people you have in your party in "Dragon Warrior IV" are simple and modest, and they are appealing in their simplicity and modesty. Take for example Taloon, a most unusual character for a Japanese RPG. While most games feed their players with young uncombed "rebellious" teenagers, in "Dragon Warrior IV" you play for a whole chapter a totally normal middle-aged man, who has a wife and a son, and whose interests are purely mercantile. This says something about the quality of a game that deliberately avoided cheap effects and wanted to impress the players with a subtly woven story which included both supernatural and absolutely natural in more or less equal doses. Yes, you fulfilled ancient prophecies, searched for legendary treasures, whacked monsters, and generally saved the world. But you also worked in a weapon store, tried to earn money buying and selling things, and your wife prepared sandwiches for you. Taloon chapter remains until now one of the most charmingly "down-to-the-earth" character-related stories in the history of the genre.
Other chapters were at least as interesting as Taloon's one: you played as a knight who had to investigate a mysterious disappearance of children in a nearby village; helped a spoiled princess to run away from her father's castle and to win a fighting tournament; led two female gypsy-like dancers on a quest to avenge their father's death; and finally, guided a nameless hero from despair to a grand victory and world salvation. The fifth chapter is much longer than the first four taken together; this is actually the "real" story of the game, which begins once you have finished the introductory stories of the characters. This main story is also surprisingly good, although some modern players would perhaps find it too straightforward, without enough plot twists and "dramatic" events. Since "Dragon Warrior IV" is rich on exploration, it was difficult to have a totally focused main story with lots of scripted events and alike. But if you have patience to wait for the story to unfold, and enough attention to gather information piece by piece, talking to townsfolk and making your own conclusions, you'll find it very rewarding. The core of the story is a personal tragedy that brought a courageous, just man onto the path of evil. Gradually you uncover this story and realize your own role in the final confrontation. For its time, this story was definitely high above the "standard requirements", and it hasn't lost its appeal until now.
Dragon Warrior games were always known for their robust, solidly crafted gameplay systems, and "Dragon Warrior IV" is no exception. It had a nearly perfect balance between linear "goals" and free-form exploration. The exploration element is very strong in the game. The moment you get your ship (which happens early in the game) you can sail around the world, visiting and exploring nearly every place. You don't always have a clear goal served to you on a plate; you have to talk to townspeople for hints, figuring out what your next destination might be. From certain points on (when you get the magic or the final key) the game becomes very open-ended and non-linear; you typically have to accomplish several tasks in order to make the story advance, but in what order you accomplish them is entirely up to you. Of course, we are not talking
Ultima-style non-linearity here, but non-linearity nevertheless. The world was open to you, and felt more alive because of that. In addition, "Dragon Warrior IV" introduced a fantastic day/night cycle system, like in Ultima games: time passed as you were walking around fighting monsters on the world map, towns looked differently at night, certain people appeared only during a certain time, etc. A great feature I wish all Japanese RPGs had.
Such open-ended nature of the game encouraged exploration and enriched the gameplay. You could venture into a dangerous cave you were not "supposed" to visit, hang around near the entrance, do your best fighting tough monsters, gain good experience, and then make your life easier in the next dungeon. In general, "Dragon Warrior IV" has a nearly perfect difficulty level, even if sometimes you would hate the party AI (which is in fact surprisingly clever, but AI always remains AI). You've got to level up like a good boy, and the sense of growth is excellent. Leveling up also never becomes an exercise in tedium, thanks to the fantastic metal slime enemies. Those slimes (of three kinds) randomly appear in certain areas in the game and are very hard to kill, mostly because they run away from battle frequently. But if you manage to defeat one, it nets you tons of experience. The hunt for metal slimes is a simple, yet excellent idea: to introduce rare and hard enemies that would spare you hours of battles against regular foes. Random enemies put up quite a fight, and some of the bosses can quickly kill you if you are not careful. But the difficulty of the game is very balanced, and there is nothing that cannot be solved with a couple of level ups, or exploring the world for powerful weapons and armor.
There are a lot of secrets to find in "Dragon Warrior IV". It's really fun to cruise around in your ship or aboard the balloon, searching for hidden towns and caves, hoping to find some powerful equipment. There are also fun collecting mini-games, such as finding small medals scattered around the world and bringing them to a medal-collecting king. As for the basic battle system, it is rather simple and effective. Characters have distinct classes (warriors, priests, mages, etc.), and you have to build a balanced party choosing four from the available eight characters (plus some temporary ones who cannot be customized). At the time when most Japanese RPGs didn't allow you to choose between party members at any time, "Dragon Warrior IV" was a nice exception. If you make your hero female, you can for example have an all-girls party (Hero, Alena, Mara, and Nara), which is in fact the party I used most of the time.
The Bad
Unfortunately, while being a very innovative and deep game both gameplay- and story-wise, "Dragon Warrior IV" cannot boast the same level of aesthetics. Dragon Warrior games are notorious for being graphically unexciting: the graphics always remain only a function in those games: for example, during the Playstation era, while
Squaresoft was creating breath-taking pre-rendered cut scenes, Dragon Warrior installments stubbornly continued looking like remakes of early NES games. One testimony for Dragon Warrior's ultra-conservative spirit is the usage of the same old, uncomfortable, and ugly menu in all its games; a menu that doesn't feature any character portraits, any graphics in general (and even not Chinese characters) and requires you to open it for every action instead of just pressing a button. At least in later Dragon Warrior games the menu was in many ways just a nostalgic feature, since you could execute commands by pressing the triangle button. But in the NES version of "Dragon Warrior IV", you still have to choose "Talk" and "Search" options whenever you want to do something.
Graphically and musically, "Dragon Warrior IV" is an outdated game. The graphics don't look much better than in its predecessors. There are no character graphics to speak of, the rest of the graphics have little detail, the battles are depressing due to lack of any background, and in general the game is not very interesting to look at. Same goes for the music. Wonderful melodies that would become absolutely charming if properly orchestrated (which they also did in the remake) sound like ugly beeps when reproduced through the poor NES synthesizer. "Dragon Warrior IV" really needed a better, SNES-quality hardware to look and to sound adequately. What was acceptable for the first two or maybe three games became obsolete in the fourth. At the time when such multimedia masterpiece as
Tengai Makyou: Ziria appeared on the scene, "Dragon Warrior IV" looked and sounded like a children's game. Personally, the quality of the music disturbed me much more than the graphics.
Then there are the annoying AI controls. Once the seven other characters join the hero, they cannot be controlled in battle any more for some reason. The only character you can directly give orders to is the hero, while the most you can do with the others is assigning a general strategy for them (don't use magic, go all offensive, etc.). Granted, the AI was pretty smart (for example, it knew the resistances of all the enemies, so that magic users wouldn't cast fire spells on fire-protected monsters, etc.), and I would certainly liked the possibility to let it control the characters, but for most occasions - especially in boss battles - I'd like to be able to micro-manage every move. What's the use of having a priest in your party who has a cool defense-raising spell, if he doesn't use it in battles anyway?
All those flaws, without exception, were corrected in the
remake.
The Bottom Line
For many fans this game remains the best of Dragon Warrior series, one they remember most fondly. Indeed, "Dragon Warrior IV" is not only a giant step forwards compared to its three predecessors, but also a quintessence of the series' quality RPG gameplay, modesty and subtlety of story. It defined all the cardinal aspects of the series, and in terms of innovation it is superior to all other Dragon Warrior games, before or after. The game's only noticeable downside are (typically for the series) its production values. In order to enjoy this classic in a form that would also appeal to our eyes and ears, be sure to play the wonderful
remake.
