I beat a game!!: Dragon Quest IV
Well, let's just say I take back a lot of what I said: I don't necessarily hate the RPG genre, I hate its bloat under the reign of Final Fantasy. I'm not interested in tedious sidequests, or long drawn-out storylines, or playing for 70 hours just to get through the main quest.
Dragon Quest IV is an RPG without the bloat. I made it through the main quest in a little under 20 hours, and it took me another 3-4 to finish the bonus dungeon and get the secret ending, and I enjoyed pretty much every minute of it. There is no padding, no overly-long dungeons, no extraneous levels. Part of this is faithfulness to the original game it's a remake of--which was made right around the time RPG Bloat was discovered--but part of it is the fact that Dragon Warrior, even in its 100+ hour seventh incarnation, simply prides itself on the fact that it is simple, stripped-down, old-school.
In 1992 I was too young to get games on the day they were released--pre-orders didn't exist that I was aware of, and I was dependent on pooling allowance and begging my folks for money and to drive me to the store--but I'd been anxiously awaiting the game since it was announced. Previews were not the prominent irrelevancy that they are today, and I didn't have much more information than a notice in Nintendo Power to the effect of, "Dragon Warrior IV is coming out!" I got the game soon after it was released and it kicked me in the face, with its structure, with the simple hugeness of the world.
DWIV's main conceit is its chapter system. When you begin the game, you get to name and gender your hero, and you won't see him or her for a very long time (unless you're playing the remake, where you get a 5-minute prologue showing the hero in his hometown.) The first four chapters of the game each take place in a different area of the world (with a few overlaps) and star a different main character. It's like a collection of short stories--each has a goal which ranges from a simple "go on an adventure to prove yourself" to a more elaborate "find out who killed your father and go and get revenge." Behind the scenes, the overarching plot begins to bubble up--you begin to hear whispers of someone named Saro, begin to learn about the chosen hero, begin to realize that the forces of darkness are gathering. Each of the characters ends his or her story knowing their journey has just begun, and resolves to do something about the evil that is about to awaken and destroy their land. In the fifth and longest chapter (longer than the other chapters combined), you finally get control of the hero you named at the beginning, and the first half of this quest is to find the other characters to form your party.
At the time, nothing like this had been seen in RPGs or otherwise--the most elaborate narrative structures were either "go through the same amount of levels but pick a different character to go through each" (Mario 2) or "select your stage from a menu" (Mega Man). I've always been a sucker for multiple points of view--not sure if Dragon Warrior IV started this love or if I love the game because of it, but whatever--and this was one of the most sophisticated structures I'd seen. It makes the threat to the world seem much more dangerous--people from all over are becoming aware of it, and we get to see it build up from a personal threat (the kidnapping of children from a small remote village) to a worldwide one. It also services the non-Hero party members much greater than any other game. DW4's immediate predecessor allowed you to form your party from random adventurers--you picked a name, gender, and class and that was ALL you learned about the person. Here, rather than passively learning their backstory through flashbacks or dialogue or whatever, you actively participated in How We Got Here. And rather than simply supporting the hero, the characters are shown to be perfectly competent and capable on their own before they meet him.
I remember the game being extremely hard, a few dungeons in particular; it took me over a year to get to the final boss and I still have never defeated him on my original cartridge. In contrast, I made it through the main quest of the remake in about a week, with another week (of admittedly less-concentrated play) to get through the bonus dungeon. The final boss kicked my ass on the first try; after about a half hour or so of levelling, I beat him on my second. I'm not sure if I've just gotten more used to levelling up--when I was a kid I would try to avoid it as much as possible, and now, even though I'm not grinding's biggest fan, I recognize that it needs to be done sometimes--or if they've tweaked the system to make it easier. Possibly a combination. Finally beating Necrosaro was almost sad. It's like the conversation between Bud and Elle Driver in the trailer in Kill Bill 2--Do you feel relief, or regret? Necrosaro was one enemy from childhood I could never kill, and now I've done it.
Necrosaro has the most sympathetic backstory in the Dragon Warrior series. For the most part, the villian is a Big Hulking Evil who wants to Destroy Everything because he is Evil. (And the vast, vast majority of these Big Hulking Evils turn out to be controlled by a Bigger Hulking Evil who is More Evil than you could imagine.) Saro is different. He's got the general monster contempt for humanity and an insatiable ambition and lust for power, true, but he's in love with an elf woman that cries rubies. Because of her talent, she's cruelly abused by greedy humans and eventually killed. Her mistreatment and eventual death drive him insane and lead him to believe that humans need to be purged from the world. It ain't Dickens, but by 1992 standards it's impressive. The bonus dungeon--which you need to go through either six or seven times if you want to get the best equipment--lets you find a way to resurrect the elf. It turns out that Saro's been manipulated by one of his generals--a mini-boss character that you face earlier--who turns out to be the true villain of the game. Saro joins your party for revenge, and he's a tough little guy. It's very weird--I've always been fond of the-enemy-of-my-enemy teamups--but this is a guy I've cursed for the past 16 years, and now he wants to join my party?! Although I guess that's kind of the point. The bonus boss is a simple pallate swap of the final, and that's disappointing too--it'd be cool to have some new and more horrible design--and he went down on my first try. (I had made my way through the bonus dungeon those 7 times, had the best possible equipment in the game, and was very overlevelled, but still.)
But I do like that I could have all the best equipment. The hero's legendary equipment is gained through the normal course of the game; Saro's ultimate is gained through the aforementioned 7 trips through the bonus dungeon; everyone else's is either found in treasure boxes or bought from stores. There are two major sidequests in the game--one involves scouring the world for medals which can be traded in for better equipment, and I got most of those; the other involves finding people around the world in order to grow a town, and you're given clues as to where they are. I like this very very much. The game can be completed to perfection without a guide if you're in an exploring mood--nothing is vague or bizarrely clued or arbitrary. There's no clicking on every single pixel on a wall to see if there's a secret there. RPGs should be this way. To me, who does not have the time or the ambition to dodge 100 lightning bolts, a game like this feels challenging--I do have to explore and find stuff--but not frustrating--everything's findable. Again, the original game came out before RPG Bloat.
The Final Fantasy IV DS remake felt useless--it was in a way too faithful in that it kept all of the problems of the original and what it added was stupid. DWIV's remake keeps everything that was good in the game, and fixes any problems it has by virtue of being almost 20 years old: battles are streamlined, the Tactics system is fixed (originally, in Chapter 5 you could only have your characters be computer-controlled and you only manually controlled the hero in battles. It's handy when levelling or going through random encounters, but a lot of the characters ended up doing stupid things like wasting turns and MP casting Instant Death spells on the final boss. You can now have the option to manually control everyone, which makes bosses a LOT easier), there's an excellent map screen, there's a bag (Dragon Warrior has always had a limited inventory for each character; since VII, I believe, they've added a bag which never gets filled; it's balanced by not letting you access it during battle, so you've still got to manage your character inventories), walking is fast, the graphics are excellent. Polygons only vaguely make sense as far as the DS is concerned--although I'll usually come on sprite graphics' side whenever possible--because with the system's power, it's a lot easier to make good-looking sprite graphics than it is to make good-looking polygon graphics. FFIVDS comes across looking ugly and dated; DWIVDS looks fresher and prettier.
I'm mildly excited about the remake of V coming out--it's not my favorite in the series but it's not a bad one--and I'm extremely thrilled for the upcoming remake of VI, which I've played and loved (it's got a job system! I'm a sucker for job systems!) IVDS does exactly what a good remake should--it stays close enough to the game to give the same sense of it, but makes enough changes that it still feels fresh. It does not stray so far that it feels like a different game, but is not so slavish that it keeps what sucks.
It seems the Enix branch, then, knows what it's doing a little better than the Square branch.
Dragon Quest IV is an RPG without the bloat. I made it through the main quest in a little under 20 hours, and it took me another 3-4 to finish the bonus dungeon and get the secret ending, and I enjoyed pretty much every minute of it. There is no padding, no overly-long dungeons, no extraneous levels. Part of this is faithfulness to the original game it's a remake of--which was made right around the time RPG Bloat was discovered--but part of it is the fact that Dragon Warrior, even in its 100+ hour seventh incarnation, simply prides itself on the fact that it is simple, stripped-down, old-school.
In 1992 I was too young to get games on the day they were released--pre-orders didn't exist that I was aware of, and I was dependent on pooling allowance and begging my folks for money and to drive me to the store--but I'd been anxiously awaiting the game since it was announced. Previews were not the prominent irrelevancy that they are today, and I didn't have much more information than a notice in Nintendo Power to the effect of, "Dragon Warrior IV is coming out!" I got the game soon after it was released and it kicked me in the face, with its structure, with the simple hugeness of the world.
DWIV's main conceit is its chapter system. When you begin the game, you get to name and gender your hero, and you won't see him or her for a very long time (unless you're playing the remake, where you get a 5-minute prologue showing the hero in his hometown.) The first four chapters of the game each take place in a different area of the world (with a few overlaps) and star a different main character. It's like a collection of short stories--each has a goal which ranges from a simple "go on an adventure to prove yourself" to a more elaborate "find out who killed your father and go and get revenge." Behind the scenes, the overarching plot begins to bubble up--you begin to hear whispers of someone named Saro, begin to learn about the chosen hero, begin to realize that the forces of darkness are gathering. Each of the characters ends his or her story knowing their journey has just begun, and resolves to do something about the evil that is about to awaken and destroy their land. In the fifth and longest chapter (longer than the other chapters combined), you finally get control of the hero you named at the beginning, and the first half of this quest is to find the other characters to form your party.
At the time, nothing like this had been seen in RPGs or otherwise--the most elaborate narrative structures were either "go through the same amount of levels but pick a different character to go through each" (Mario 2) or "select your stage from a menu" (Mega Man). I've always been a sucker for multiple points of view--not sure if Dragon Warrior IV started this love or if I love the game because of it, but whatever--and this was one of the most sophisticated structures I'd seen. It makes the threat to the world seem much more dangerous--people from all over are becoming aware of it, and we get to see it build up from a personal threat (the kidnapping of children from a small remote village) to a worldwide one. It also services the non-Hero party members much greater than any other game. DW4's immediate predecessor allowed you to form your party from random adventurers--you picked a name, gender, and class and that was ALL you learned about the person. Here, rather than passively learning their backstory through flashbacks or dialogue or whatever, you actively participated in How We Got Here. And rather than simply supporting the hero, the characters are shown to be perfectly competent and capable on their own before they meet him.
I remember the game being extremely hard, a few dungeons in particular; it took me over a year to get to the final boss and I still have never defeated him on my original cartridge. In contrast, I made it through the main quest of the remake in about a week, with another week (of admittedly less-concentrated play) to get through the bonus dungeon. The final boss kicked my ass on the first try; after about a half hour or so of levelling, I beat him on my second. I'm not sure if I've just gotten more used to levelling up--when I was a kid I would try to avoid it as much as possible, and now, even though I'm not grinding's biggest fan, I recognize that it needs to be done sometimes--or if they've tweaked the system to make it easier. Possibly a combination. Finally beating Necrosaro was almost sad. It's like the conversation between Bud and Elle Driver in the trailer in Kill Bill 2--Do you feel relief, or regret? Necrosaro was one enemy from childhood I could never kill, and now I've done it.
Necrosaro has the most sympathetic backstory in the Dragon Warrior series. For the most part, the villian is a Big Hulking Evil who wants to Destroy Everything because he is Evil. (And the vast, vast majority of these Big Hulking Evils turn out to be controlled by a Bigger Hulking Evil who is More Evil than you could imagine.) Saro is different. He's got the general monster contempt for humanity and an insatiable ambition and lust for power, true, but he's in love with an elf woman that cries rubies. Because of her talent, she's cruelly abused by greedy humans and eventually killed. Her mistreatment and eventual death drive him insane and lead him to believe that humans need to be purged from the world. It ain't Dickens, but by 1992 standards it's impressive. The bonus dungeon--which you need to go through either six or seven times if you want to get the best equipment--lets you find a way to resurrect the elf. It turns out that Saro's been manipulated by one of his generals--a mini-boss character that you face earlier--who turns out to be the true villain of the game. Saro joins your party for revenge, and he's a tough little guy. It's very weird--I've always been fond of the-enemy-of-my-enemy teamups--but this is a guy I've cursed for the past 16 years, and now he wants to join my party?! Although I guess that's kind of the point. The bonus boss is a simple pallate swap of the final, and that's disappointing too--it'd be cool to have some new and more horrible design--and he went down on my first try. (I had made my way through the bonus dungeon those 7 times, had the best possible equipment in the game, and was very overlevelled, but still.)
But I do like that I could have all the best equipment. The hero's legendary equipment is gained through the normal course of the game; Saro's ultimate is gained through the aforementioned 7 trips through the bonus dungeon; everyone else's is either found in treasure boxes or bought from stores. There are two major sidequests in the game--one involves scouring the world for medals which can be traded in for better equipment, and I got most of those; the other involves finding people around the world in order to grow a town, and you're given clues as to where they are. I like this very very much. The game can be completed to perfection without a guide if you're in an exploring mood--nothing is vague or bizarrely clued or arbitrary. There's no clicking on every single pixel on a wall to see if there's a secret there. RPGs should be this way. To me, who does not have the time or the ambition to dodge 100 lightning bolts, a game like this feels challenging--I do have to explore and find stuff--but not frustrating--everything's findable. Again, the original game came out before RPG Bloat.
The Final Fantasy IV DS remake felt useless--it was in a way too faithful in that it kept all of the problems of the original and what it added was stupid. DWIV's remake keeps everything that was good in the game, and fixes any problems it has by virtue of being almost 20 years old: battles are streamlined, the Tactics system is fixed (originally, in Chapter 5 you could only have your characters be computer-controlled and you only manually controlled the hero in battles. It's handy when levelling or going through random encounters, but a lot of the characters ended up doing stupid things like wasting turns and MP casting Instant Death spells on the final boss. You can now have the option to manually control everyone, which makes bosses a LOT easier), there's an excellent map screen, there's a bag (Dragon Warrior has always had a limited inventory for each character; since VII, I believe, they've added a bag which never gets filled; it's balanced by not letting you access it during battle, so you've still got to manage your character inventories), walking is fast, the graphics are excellent. Polygons only vaguely make sense as far as the DS is concerned--although I'll usually come on sprite graphics' side whenever possible--because with the system's power, it's a lot easier to make good-looking sprite graphics than it is to make good-looking polygon graphics. FFIVDS comes across looking ugly and dated; DWIVDS looks fresher and prettier.
I'm mildly excited about the remake of V coming out--it's not my favorite in the series but it's not a bad one--and I'm extremely thrilled for the upcoming remake of VI, which I've played and loved (it's got a job system! I'm a sucker for job systems!) IVDS does exactly what a good remake should--it stays close enough to the game to give the same sense of it, but makes enough changes that it still feels fresh. It does not stray so far that it feels like a different game, but is not so slavish that it keeps what sucks.
It seems the Enix branch, then, knows what it's doing a little better than the Square branch.
posted by R. Goodness at 8:26 AM
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