A remake that is just a hair away from perfection
Dragon Quest is the name of Japanese name for what we used to call in America "Dragon Warrior" and to date I have played almost all the Dragon Quest/Warrior games for at least an hour and enjoyed them and especially the original Dragon Warrior IV, which earned a rare 10 rating from me on this very site. When I heard that there was going to be a remake of the NES classic I was hoping that it would live up to my lofty expectations and it did...almost!
Dragon Warrior IV was the first game I ever played that incorporated a "Chapter System", that is it had a section of the game that was devoted to each character and they had a mission that was separate before eventually joining a hero/heroine, which you name at the beginning of the game and get to control briefly in a newly included prologue chapter before entering the first chapter.
The gameplay has been upgraded with the addition of the four extra buttons, but I've one question that boggles me a bit: Why is it that I still get a "talk" command on the menu when the "A" button does the same thing? That was a bit of a curious decision, but not a big problem that made me upset or deduct points. One of my minor quips that did was when you realized that the characters moved a lot faster than they did in the NES game and therefore it could cut down on enemy encounters. This is good in theory, but what about if you need to level up and you have characters basically walking around like they drank about a case of "Mountain Dew"? I'm sure the developers didn't see this as a problem, but when you want to level up it sometimes made it more difficult because the monsters didn't show up as quickly as you may have wanted even when night fell.
So right about now my "10" would be knocked down to a "9.75" and now for the other issue this game presents: The dialects!
Understand this: I have no problem with individuality and attempting to give each region and character its own personality, but if you try to read some of the dialects out loud(raises hand) you'll crack up laughing at how broken the English sounds. I watch BBC America and the different dialects the people use there don't sound nearly as off as some of characters in this game. It made me wonder if when I was playing the game the people programming the dialects were watching the 3rd and 4th seasons of "Sailor Moon" in English and thought to themselves *Hey I like how ridiculous those people sound...let's do that in this remake, but with accents!* and if they did its unfortunate becaue the whole thing about this game and its series that were made appealing to me is that its done during the Medieval period and you typically hear people say "Thee" or "Thou" and not language that makes me wonder whom was programming the text...I'll stop that thought there!
Outside of those quirks the game does a lot of things that made the original great. The "Mini Medal" side quest and "Casino" return along with an immigrant town that the player can build up to a castle and bring in citizens through the remainder of the game. This was a bonus for me as well as a bonus dungeon the game gives you to compete in should you complete the original game and its just as fun as the standard game.
On a whole I enjoyed this game as much as the original and if you are a "Dragon Warrior" veteran you can't go wrong and if you want to see what the big deal about "Dragon Quest" is then I strongly recommend the game and be ready to lose yourself in one of the few "Games of the Century".