One of the best RPGs of its day, Dragon Warrior IV has become a timeless classic
As with many games, Dragon Warrior IV is the story of a hero destined to save the world from evil. The bad news is that the chosen hero is too young to fight, but the good news is that the great evil has not been resurrected yet and its minions do not know where the hero lives. The hero is not alone in his quest and will be helped by seven others, who will have adventures of their own while the hero grows up in his quiet little mountain village.
The game is broken into five separate chapters, the first four of which occur simultaneously (in terms of plot, not gameplay) and setup the story and introduce the characters who will help the hero. The fifth chapter brings the other four plots together and concludes the story of the Chosen Ones.
The first four chapters explain how each of the supporting characters became involved in the fight against evil and the search for the hero. Chapter 1 is about Ragnar, a royal soldier, and his search for missing children which lead him to search for the hero who is a child at this time. Chapter 2 is the adventure of Princess Alena and her aids, Cristo and Brey, who originally is seeking independence, but later returns home to help her father. Chapter 3 is about the merchant Taloon's hope of running his own business, and Chapter 4 is about the sisters Nara and Mara who are seeking vengeance against the man who killed their father.
For an NES game, Dragon Warrior IV has a lot of plot and character development; more than the first three Dragon Warrior games or the NES Final Fantasy games did. While characters in other NES games may have had different abilities, they did not have much personality and were simply there for unexplained reasons. However, in Dragon Warrior IV all of the characters have their own reasons for doing what they do and there motivation changes and evolves as the game progresses. The plot is also fairly complex and develops as the game progresses. There are also numerous sub-stories and other objectives through out all five chapters. Each of the characters has unique strengths and weaknesses, and a well planned party formation will greatly improve your chances of surviving. Some characters excel at physical combat but cannot use magic, while others are powerful magic users, but physically weak and others have high agility but low vitality. All characters have their strengths and weakness, with the hero being the most balanced. While the characters do not have specific classes like they did in Dragon Warrior III, each one has a strong resemblance to a basic class. For example, Alena is similar to a fighter, Ragnar is a soldier, and Brey is a wizard.
While the story is very linear, there will be several optional subquests and the order that a few of the subplots are done in isn't always set. For the most part you will travel around the world, from one castle/town/kingdom to the next, and in each on you will have to complete a subquest to continue on. Many of these subplots involve item fetch quests in a nearby dungeon, however there is usually a decent subplot going on that gives you a good reason for going into the dungeon. The first four chapters are completely linear, but in the fifth chapter things become more open, especially once the ship is acquired. There are a lot of little things to do towards the end, such as collecting small metals to exchange for items, or going through an icy cave to get a powerful sword.
One of the more entertaining minigames of Dragon Warrior IV is something that has very little to do saving the world - the Casino. While it doesn't open until the fifth chapter, once it does you may find your self losing a lot of money in it, or hopefully gaining a lot (especially if you are using an emulator). There are three casino games to play – slot machines, poker, and a fight ring. While you don't actually fight in the ring you can bet money on one of four or five monsters, and if they are left after then automatic battle, then you will. All of the coins you win can be exchanged for prizes, most of which can only be found at the casino.
There is a wide variety of items, magic spells, and equipment. Not all characters will be able to equip all weapons and armor, and what spells, if any, that a character can use depends on their class. Generally the physical fighters will be able to equip the strongest armor and weapons and fight at the front lines, while magic users will only have light equipment and stay in the back casting spells.
Besides the eight main characters, there are also eight other minor characters who will join your party for a short time period during a subplot, and then leave. The eight minor characters cannot be controlled by you, nor are they able to continue fighting if the main characters have been killed.
For the first four chapters battles are handled in the exact same way that they were in the previous Dragon Warrior games. Each fight is done in rounds, and before each round you select the commands of each main character in the party, and then the computer decides on the commands for the enemies and minor characters. After all commands are entered, each character takes their turn one at a time, with the order being determined by agility. Since agility determines when a character will move, strategy is required to ensure that you do not waste moves by doing things like having multiple characters attack the same enemy when one hit will kill it. All of the commands, including running and changing the party formation are done through menus and the results of all actions are displayed in a text box in the bottom half of the screen.
In the fifth chapter combat gameplay changes a bit since you will only have direct control over the hero. The actions of the other main characters will be determined by the computer's AI based on what tactics you decide to use. Tactics include the basic offensive, defensive, and balanced combat, as well as others such as conserving MP, and experimentation. As you use a particular tactic the party will become somewhat better at that particular fighting style. For the most part the AI is effective and consistent with its actions, so you will be able to develop a pattern and have the hero fight in coordination with the rest of the party. No matter what tactic is being used, the minor characters will not use them. All of the minor characters have their own tactic and will stick to that no matter what. The AI is by no means perfect, though the biggest problem is that it wastes magic by healing characters when the battle will end before they can possibly be killed, or using attack magic against a character that can be killed in a single physical attack. While this is a nuisance, it is easy to deal with by either using the no magic tactic or not having magic users in the party.
The enemies get significantly stronger as you travel into new areas, but you do as well. How strong each character is depends on their stats, which include things like hit points, magic points, strength, defense, agility, intelligence, etc. As you fight you will gain experience points, with stronger enemies giving more points, and when you reach a certain number of points your level goes up. When your level increases all of your stats increase by a certain amount, and depending on the character and level, a new spell may be learned.
Unfortunately, the enemies increase in strength faster than you do if you don't get into a lot of fights. Because of this you will have to spend a good amount of time fighting enemies for no reason other than to get experience points to raise your levels or gold to buy the best weapons and armor. Depending on how much experience or gold you need this can be a very time consuming and tedious process. Throughout the course of the game, players will spend hours building levels. Most likely the majority of gameplay time will be spent fighting random battles around towns.
How difficult the game is depends on party formation, levels, equipment, and to a certain degree, luck. Having the best equipment and high enough levels can make a dramatic difference in how much damage each hit does and how long fights will last. The difference between two or three levels can be dramatic, since characters will not only lose less hit points per blow, but also have more hit points. If you are willing to spend the time building your levels, the game will not be very hard, but if you choose to fight at low levels every dungeon will be a challenge.
While there are sixteen different party members, up to nine of which can be in your party at any one time, only four of them can be in combat at once. Shortly into the last chapter you will gain a horse drawn wagon that will store your characters that are not being used. The wagon can go all over the world, but only into a small number of caves. When you have the wagon with you party members can be swapped at any point when traveling or in between rounds during combat. If the wagon is separate from the four on the ground, they will be on their own until they get back to where they left the rest of the party.
Besides the wagon there are several different ways of traveling around the world. Once you acquire a ship you will be able to leave the island that you start on and travel around the entire world, which will add a lot of different options for where to go and what to do. Towards the end of the game you will get a hot-air balloon, which will further increase the area that you can explore.
The game controls perfectly for an NES RPG, and response time between when you press a button and when the characters respond is instantaneous, unlike in Dragon Warrior III where there could be a slight delay. Everything that you need to do, besides walking, is done through a menu. The menu has commands for talking, setting up party formation & tactics, item and equipment management, and other functions.
Dragon Warrior IV is a decent looking game, for an NES game anyway, since it came out fairly late into the NES's life. While the game doesn't have a wide color palette, objects and characters are fairly detailed and textured. It is surprising what can be done with only four colors. The only problem with the graphics is that the game cannot draw more than four characters in a single row at once, so it there are more than four characters (including major, minor, NPCs, and any other moving object) two of the characters will flicker. This is a constant problem, since there are almost always at least four characters in a row since the wagon is four characters long, so it does not take much for the flickering to start.
The music is acceptable, and is about on par with Dragon Warrior III. For those that haven't played the previous games, this means that you don't have an uncontrollable urge to mute the TV once the game starts up, though the sound is by no means something you would choose to listen to if it wasn't connected to the game.
Dragon Warrior IV is a great game, and considered to by many (myself included) to be one of the best NES games among all genres, not just role playing games. This was one of the first games to have well defined characters who are not just fighting because they are the good guys and an adversary that has reasons for doing what he does that are developed during the game and go beyond the old he is doing evil things because his is evil routine. This was one of the first RPGs to have computer controlled allies, and for the most part the AI does a good job of fighting strategically.
This game has become rather rare in the United States since unlike the first three Dragon Warrior games it was never remade for the GameBoy. NES cartridges can run around $40 on eBay, so everyone except game collectors will probably not bother buying it, but there is always emulation. Anyone who is a fan of classic RPGs will probably enjoy playing Dragon Warrior IV and should try it out if they haven't already.