When old games are too good, it's a pity to keep them in the archives. Or at least this is what Square Enix must be thinking lately, after putting out one remake after another on DS. The latest classic game to appear in this line is Dragon Quest IV, originally released on NES in 1990 and now redesigned in beautiful 3D graphics to fit on the handheld dual screen. Born from the combined effort of the trio of Horii Toriyama and Sugiyama, Dragon Quest IV features over 200 monsters, several main characters and a deep storyline. Every chapter of the game is dedicated to a different character and feels like a standalone experience, but after several hours of gameplay all the stories converge into one epic storyline.
The game opens with a brief introduction where players are given the choice to select their own character, complete with a name and a gender. The game moves on to the first chapter, whose main character is the Scottish-speaking soldier Ragnar McRyan, sent by his king to investigate a case of missing children in a nearby village. In the next chapters, space will be given to other popular icons of the series: dancers, fighters and even the merchant Torneko, who had his own spin-off a few years ago. As there are more characters than slots for them to fight in battles, players will have to create their "dream team" by selecting four characters they want to use and placing them in the front or the back row.
Battles show a first-person view through the eyes of the group leader. The bottom screen features enemies and the battle log, while the top one has an icon for every character involved in the fight, complete with the stats that players need to keep an eye on -- health points, magic points, level achieved and the type of command selected for each of them. The use of the two screens almost eliminates the need for browsing through the game menus, although the top screen only shows the current number of health points and not the maximum number per character, which makes the healing spells harder to use efficiently.
Commands, on the other hand, make minor battles much easier to manage. Players will still have to pick the main character's action, but they will be able to set everybody else's tactics in advance, so that they respond to certain situations: "show no mercy" characters will be mostly focused on physical attacks, "fight wisely" ones will also use magic and healing spells, and "follow orders" is the best option for those control-freak players who want to determine every single aspect of a battle.
Menus are simple to navigate and beautiful to see, as they are constituted by cute small icons instead of endless lines of text. Talk is a balloon, items are represented by a bag, attributes and stats are a heart, and so on. The same kind of graphic organization also applies to battle menus. The graphic improvements in this remake are mainly represented by the new 3D environment, while characters retain their distinctive sprite appearance. Maps are no longer two-dimensional and they can even be rotated in any direction to give players a closer look at their surroundings. The DS remake of the game will also offer a wireless option that wasn't available at the time we tried the game. In this new mode, players will be able to build a town and host their friends, trading rare items and pieces of equipment with them. Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen will be released in North America and Europe on September 16th.
