Dragon Warrior IV

Dragon Warrior IV, also known as Dragon Quest IV, was the fourth game in the Dragon Quest series of role-playing games published by Enix, and the final one to be released for the NES. Originally released in North America in 1992, the game was remade for Sony Playstation in 2001 and Nintendo DS in 2007. Neither remake has been released in North America, though fans are hopeful the DS remake will be localized.

The game is unique in the series, being divided into five chapters. Chapters I through IV introduce the supporting cast of the game, while the player-named Hero does not make his/her first appearance until the opening of Chapter V.

Prologue

In the NES version the game starts you off in chapter 1 as the soldier Ragnar who has been assigned the task by his king of finding the missing children of the nearby town Izmit who have been mysteriously disappearing. The remakes of the game, however, start you off as the hero in the small town where you've grown up in which you cannot exit. While short lived this little segment serves as a way to get to know a little bit about the hero before you start the game.

Characters

Hero

Ragnar

Alena

Cristo

Brey

Taloon

Nara

Mara

Necrosaro

Gameplay

A classic turn based style like its predecessors, Dragon Warrior IV breaks apart from the trilogy of its previous three games and sets you in a new world to venture and explore. Also unlike, the games before it you don't start out as the hero, instead the game is divided into 5 chapters in which you play as your party members in the first 4 before finally controlling the hero and meeting your companions in the fifth chapter.

In the fifth chapter the player no longer directly controls any of the previous characters, instead using the Tactics menu to deliver a loose set of instructions (Normal, Defensive, Offensive, Save MP, Use No MP, Try Out). The only character directly controlled is the Hero. All chapters except chapter 2 also contain Non-Player Characters, which travel with the player, but cannot be directly controlled. They act on their own, guided by the game's AI.

New to the game was the Medal King who makes appearances is the sequels as well. If you collected small medals for him you could exchange them for prizes. The casino was also expanded to include poker, slots, and monster fight betting. If you won big at the casino you could exchange your chips for extremely valuable prizes.

Version Differences

Both the Playstation and Nintendo DS versions have a Prologue chapter to introduce the hero before chapter one begins, as well as a 6th chapter with a bonus dungeon and alternate ending. There is also a new Tactics feature to manually control your party in chapter 5. The playstation version uses the graphics engine from Dragon Warrior VII and the DS remake uses nearly the same style.

Packaging

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