Dragon Quest IV is a solid RPG history lesson.
Dragon Quest games always give you a great feeling of accomplishment. They always have that perfect difficulty balance that gives you a great feeling when you finally take down a boss. There's always that right amount of strategy and perseverance that works in these games. The constant feed of new weapons, new towns, new spells and levels really push you to complete the game as well.
It's not my favorite Dragon Quest games but I respect it, and I still had fun with it. It shows it's age, but with pride.
----------Battle System----------
Hey! Have you ever played a Dragon Quest game before? Then you know exactly what to expect. This is an old school Turn-Based RPG at it's finest. It's not to easy and it's not to hard. Dragon Quest IV requires experience grind and money grind if you want to advance to the next town or complete a dungeon. Luckily, dungeons aren't to big or complex. There are puzzles but they're never hard, or anything like Zelda or Wild Arms. Finding your next objective is never difficult either.
This Dragon Quest game has one of the biggest cast of playable characters I've seen. There are atleast 8 or so main characters, plus another 5 or 6 that join you along the way. This does give you a chance to customize your party if you want to. With this big of a cast, you're constantly leveling someone up, so it feels rewarding even fighting small battles.
----------Characters / Story----------
You play as a nameless hero. Your village is destroyed by an evil warrior, who is on a quest to resurrect an evil god named Estark. You team up with 7 other warriors to team against this evil. Blah Blah Blah.
You don't play Dragon Quest games for the amazing plot twists and expanded history. There really isn't much to the Dragon Quest IV story. However, it does one cool thing and that's to separate each main character into it's own storyline.
It almost feels like 5 seperate RPGs into one actually. There are 5 chapters in the game, and each character(s) have their own set storyline. You have the start from the scratch with each character. That means you'll have to grind out your characters each time so they can get strong enough to advance the opening storyline.
I really like this idea but it has one flaw. Each time you take control of these characters, they're all voiceless. They have no personalities. The only personalities they have is what the NPCs project of you. So by the time all your party members join together, it's just a series of voiceless protagonists.
They do give these characters speech once you take control of the main Hero, but by thing, it's too late.
----------Graphics----------
The graphics are straight from the Playstation 1 era Dragon Warrior games. If you've played Dragon Warrior VII, then you'll know what to expect. The world is in full 3D, you can control the camera in a 360 direction, but your characters are sprites. The graphics are actually much improved over Dragon Quest VII but it's still the same idea.
The battle animations are mostly the biggest improvements. Each enemy musics fluently, and there's even a couple fully 3D enemies as well. There's even 3D cutscenes aswell.
----------Sound----------
The music is typical Dragon Quest affair. You won't hear any new tunes or sound effects but everything is great. This is classic stuff so it will get stuck in your head.
----------World Map----------
The world map is very typical for a Dragon Quest game or most RPGs for the NES or SNES era. You are a short squaty sprite walking over a massive piece of land. The random encounter rate is higher when you're on the map too.
You slowly gain new access to faster travel, either by magics (zooming) , sea or air. The game does section off the areas your able to visit at first but after the mid-way through the game it opens up and you can pretty much explore where ever you want.
----------Time to Complete Game---------
32:55
You can save your game after you complete it and unlock a new dungeon as well.