IV

Again, the offset put the release date on Dragon Warrior IV to 1992, a time when already, the NES's days as a mainstream console wee numbered. By then, people were clamoring over Super Mario World, Mario Kart, the Super Nintendo, and The Legend of Zelda: A link to the Past - or more often Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat. Again, RPGs were taking a backseat to action filled titles, and now a new obstacle was there, the 16-bit Console War (Sega vs. Nintendo vs. Turbografix vs. Neo Geo). So almost nobody bought this game, making it the rarest of the Dragon Warrior releases on the NES. Super sad because to me, this is my favorite, and it's a bloody masterpiece.

In Dragon Warrior IV, known also as "Chapters of the Chosen" in Japan, you play a 5-chapter story that tells the backstories of all of your commrades for the named hero of prophecy who is about to save the world from a revival of the ruler of evil using the secret of Evolution. **SPOILERS START** It all starts when some poor guy has his elvenn girlfriend who cries ruby tears beaten to death, so he becomes a misanthrope, and declares to destroy the world and humankind once and for all after he revives the ruler of evil. A great prophecy says that a special child will be born in the world - the character you name at the beginning - and this somehow ubiqutously known yet unknown "hero" is the main goal of the first 4 chapters (for the most part). You follow Ragnar, a royal soldier from Burland who saves Izmit village from child abducting monsters in an isolated tower. In Chapter 2 you play the very feminist Princess Alena who wants to fight in a competition in Endor to prove her strength, all the while her sexist father makes his royal soldier and clergyman wizard follow you around to "protect you" (when really she needs to protect them, LOL). In chapter 3 the beloved Taloon appears for the first time wanting to start a shop of his own someday, and goes on various political and business pursuits to raise money to open his own shop, and use money to commit more good acts in the world such as allowing inter-island transport via a tunnel. In Chapter 4, Sisters of Monbaraba Nara and Mara are out to seek avenge the death of their father at the hands of a student who killed him - who just so happens to be the evil Necrosaro, that same Misanthrope widow of the elf who cried ruby tears. And all this crammed into a 512 Kiolbit cartridge for the NES - holy smokes!

Some weekend while feeling a bit more energetic than usual I wandered over to my ol' pal William's house to play some games. While there, I decided, not sure what possessed me to, but I decided to borrow Dragon Warrior IV. Up until that point, I was not that big of an RPG fan, I enjoyed Illusion of Gaia for the SNES, but that was not a DND style nerd-math RPG like Dragon Warrior was in my 14 year old mind. And as soon as I was home with it, I started my months long campaign that made me a Dragon Quest fan for life. Well, 8-bit Dragon Quest fan at least.

See, I would come home from Sgt. Megaphone's bootcamp, sweaty, tired, ready for a nap, but I did not want to screw up my hours this time with sleep. See, I was a teenager, and a night owl (still am somewhat to this day), but I also wanted to not screw up in school anymore (though I would not admit that at the time). I also was smitten with a chick, who was an honor student, section leader, and dare-I-say HOT - so I did not want ot screw that up (but I did). So that 12-2pm slot was where I could get my mind off of how sweaty I was, and the indecision on whether it was the girl orthe weather! (aw, c'mon, it was the weather).

So I'd come home and spent pretty much the first two "chapters" in bed, with a NES Advantage in my lap, sucking down Gatorade like a F350 sucking down diesel while pulling Bigfoot #1 on a Trailer. I remember completing that first chapter, forgetting the "Chapter I" at the start and starting to feel dissappointed as that VooDoo Moblin Pedo and his One-Eyed-Six-Horned-Turquoise-Spellcaster died and I fulfilled what I thought was the whole quest - only to find out there was another chapter....

...and then another, and then another, and then another. Between (sometimes) homework and guitar, songwriting and learning Paul Dean licks from Loverboy records, I was playing this game, and it just kept on going, with the plot getting deeper and deeper. One minute I'm saving children from a pair of flying shoes in a well, next thing I know I'm fighting the secret of Evolution itself, and the Ruler of Evil, yet feeling conflicted because the perpetrator of all this hates humans because his elf girlfriend got beaten to death for **spoiler** crying ruby tears....sheesh. I kinda got it then, but as a present-day humanity hater, I really get it now as a part of today's society.

That December, I returned the cartridge. A Couple years later, I got the chance to buy his whole game collection, only to find out Dragon Warrior IV was not in it (DOH). This lead to a 20 year quest for Dragon Warrior IV, I watched as the NES grew to be a very desirable collectable, and the Dragon Warrior games gained in value (except the first one) due to their scarcity and their cult-status as a franchise connected to Dragon Ball Z because the character designer, Akira Toriyama, became late Gen Y and Gen Z's anime artist of choice for cute but serious characters, and Dragon Warrior IV went from an unobtainable $45.00 on e-bay when I was a fry cook, to a "Just-barely-affordable" $156.00 I spent buying the copy I have now - in 2021! This cart was the holy grail of my NES collecting.

So in June of 2021 I got to deal with the most messed-up set of emotions I ever have as a fully grown adult that did not involve someone in some kind of serious medical, physical, or legal trouble. It's hard not to feel silly when you're spending over $100 on a nearly 30 year old Nintendo game nearing 40 years old yourself, while trying not to feel cringe-level giddy about FINALLY procuring that which you have been chasing for 20 years. About the closest was scoring that Hondo Paul Dean II guitar - actually, that was quite the same...so I guess I kinda forgot there, except there's no shame in buying a $200 Electric guitar in your 30's - guys my age do THAT all the time, but $150 for a Nintendo game? I boxed up as much crap as I could find, high-tailed it to the shop, and waied patiently for 2-weeks while they evaluated and calculated my "trade-in" cost for a tirade of NES and Atari 2600 stuff I was willing to part with, including 2 boxed NES games and 2 boxed 2600 games. This was the "maturity" part of the equation. Let's see - hold onto a 30 year old in-box copy of Little Nemo I never play + 20 2600 games I never play, and a pile of controllers that have not seen my hands since George W. Bush was in office? Or Sell them all and get Dragon Warrior IV which I STILL love replying and want to make an even more "god tier" savegame than I did when I was 14!

Chapter I: Ragnar The Royal Soldier of Castle Burland To preface, we're living Ragnar, the Soldier's backstory of how he came to be in high esteem working as both a soldier, police, and private investigator, all in one. Brefriending animals for companions and party members while taking down evil!

Chapter II: Princess Alena, Feminism before Feminism was a word! Princess Alena wants to prove her strength at a muscleman competition where they are looking for heroes to fight the ruler of evil who is "about to awaken". Joined by her two initially quasi-sexist companions, a Chancellor and a Soldier of Santeem castle, she seeks out to prove her strength to the world.

Chapter III: Taloon the Rotund Explorer and Entrepeneur Taloon has been living the ho-hum 9-to-5 life of a weapons merchant. His wife makes him lunch, he sells weapons, sometimes keeping what's bought by the shop, but he wants something more. Guide Taloon as he partakes in adventures, expiditioons, new businesses, and local politics.

Chapter IV: Nara & Mara, 2 Sisters out for Justice! Nara & Mara, a dancer and a storyteller, and sisters, are seeking to find the man responsible for kiling their Alchemist father Edgar, which as it turns out was one of his pupils (dun dun dun). So they set out to fight a corrupted, collapsing kingdom foor justice.

Chapter V: (s)He got the word....he got the REAL Story Unlike the other Dragon Quest/Warrior games in the series, it is only here and now you awaken....the hero, the character you named. You're a teenager, you lose everything, and now you're off to find a purpose in this big old world, all alone, everyone you knew is dead, and you have no clue you're the big hero in this ginormous 512 Kilobit NES cartridge.

Plot: 10/10 You're going to find I'm a bit more serious with this review than with Dragon Warrior III. That's because this game is serious in plot. And I'm here to tell you all about it.

IT starts with Saro, a young musician whose elf girlfriend is murdered by humans who beat her to death so they can get rich as she cries ruby tears. Saro is so heartbroken he teams up with Esturk, the ruler of evil, to discover the secret of Evolution and uses it on various forms of evil plus himself to take over the world and destroy humankind in an act of Misanthropic vengeance. Monsters pop up all over the world and his tirade of evolution based growth continues in the background as his story unfolds parallel to the many characters involved in saving the world.

Seven people - Ragnar the Soldier, Princess Alena, Cristo, and Brey of Santeem Castle, Taloon the Merchant, and sisters Nara and Mara of Monbaraba, a belly dancer and a fortune teller, all live out their unique stories in chapters 1-4 and their various brushes with Saro and his "creations" as they set out to find the prophecized hero who will save the world from the ruler of evil who is "About to wake up".

This hero, the character we name at the beginning, slimly avoid's being murdered at the hands of Necrosaro who murders everyone in his village and destroys the village in his wake. Leaving our hero or heroine homeless and searching for purpose. As it turns out, the hero is a lovechild of a human woodsman and a celestial angel that fell to earth from the Zenithian castle above run by the Dragon King. In his travels he finds purpose and meets the various people above to join his party to save the world from the ruler of evil - eventually found to be Necrosaro himself. They carry out several quests in preparation, and head for the dark world to defeat the four guardians of the castle, head op the mountain from the purple castle of death, to put an end to Necrosaro once and for all - in an EPIC battle of multiple stages where Necrosaro evolves through various stages of evolution to become a truly amazing threat.

Now compare that to "The Dragonlord has sent chaos upon the land, now save princess gwalein and the kingdom" or "The evil Wizard Hargon has set evil upon our world, please bring together your family and save the world!" or "The Archfiend and Pool-God Barammos has cast a pall upon our world in the form of evil, now kill him and discover he's just a puppet for Zoma in the dark land that is Alefgard in this prequel!". Almost all of the previous stories have beben fairly basic, but this one is just insane complex. But unlike "Cawthon Insane Complex", this one actually makes sense. 10 out of 10, bravo. It seems Horii and co got their story-writing in good with this one.

Graphics: 10/9

Chaaracter designs have gone up too, with little minor touches added, wuch as a glare off a slime or a extra few pixels for some texture. Larger characters are super detailed. Just seeing thte final boss is a thing to behold. We even have a NES attempt at Mode 7 Scaling at one point as your overworld sprites are enlaged and put into battle against your own party! They pulled all the stops on this.

And despite use of mostly the same tileset around the whole game, it seems Enix/Chunsoft managed to give each land it's ow unique vibe and each section it's own unique feel much like Dragogn Quest III, but it's a bit more believable as things are a tad more subdued in a way that makes it feel more realistic.

Sound: 10/8

The character creation music is the same as Dragon Warrior III, and little surprise, I learned the NES releases were worked on at the same time, probably to quickly squeeze these localizatitons out quickly before the NES was killed off in 95'. This one has a bit a kitschy flavor, and is the same music we still hear on character/savegame creation screens in Dragon Quest to this day.

The castle music has returned more to form, beinig more baroque and closer to the original music, starting off, yet again, stressed and minor-key, indicating not all is right with the world, but as you carry on your investigation of your direction, it starts to tip it's hat upward more like "while there's this big ominous world out there, it's the same old same old for the castle, an alchemist studying in the Lycaeum, a nurse is tending to the babies in the castle Natal ICU, the cat is talking to a slime on the roof (racord scratch noise)..." yeah, justs another day in the world of Dragon Quest. Compositions are noticeably longer in this game than any other in the serires, stretching over a minute long and really playing out as true symphonic epics and not ear-grating 30-second Jingles. I feel IV Is where Sugiyama started hitting his stride as an 8-bit composer. If you really just sit still for a bit, and listen to every piece, you'll realize just how elaborate the score is in this game.

Ragnar's Overworld theme is a bit more jingle-y, but still not short. I keep expecting an Irish Spring soap ad to start up "Ah, Ilrish Spling! The puurfict bar'o'soap to get cha' soldiers movin' in the morn'nin!". It's just pretty, relaxing, and chill.

There's now a new underworld music, that's a bit more pop, and somewhat crystalline in feel due to the tingly square wave melody line, which sounds like something out of a Goonies movie, giving a less "creepy" more "we're on an adventure" vibe. I could see this being the backdrop of villan moments in a DIC cartoon from around the time this game came out. Actually, if it were not for the lack of fanfare for Dragon Warrior in the USA at the time, I'd wonder why DIC never made a cartoon around this series.

Then of course is the town music, which is also shared with travelling merchants, and I think a few other friendly "interruptions" in the story. It returns a little to Dragon Quest 1's Christmas Crackers commercial feel, like I'm watching an H.O. scale train run around under a Christmas Tree with Swiss Colony truffles and ham underneath, but the truth of the matter is it fits the vibe and makes for a very strong indication of a friendly place, unlike the oompa oompa quirky theme of the second game that sounds like Benjamin Orr should be kicking in with some lead vocals any moment, here it just feels relaxed but bustling.

But my favorite of the "happy" pieces - the towers - seriously, this is some madlad music here! A sawtooth shuffling underneath a seemingly disjoined melody line playing in a 1/3/5 blues progression like The Clash on 4 different kinds of drugs totally undecided on going punk, reggae, or funk....."aw fuck it" says Joe Strummer "Let's just do all three at once". I call it "Flight of the Ducksbill" because that seriously sounds like the character it should be tied to (and is most likely what you'll be fighting the first time you hear it). I can see it now, a ducksbill in a studded up vest shaking it's fist at a punk band on stage. I might have to cover this.

My other favorite - the one I call "ruby tears" - the music tha tplays when your party is wiped out, you witness that dreadful nightmare of Saro's girlfriend getting basically, uh....abused to death, and the Aktemto mine that has people dying in a way that seems like a Natral Gas Leak has invaded the entire town. I mean, it's a bloody TEARJERKER - IN FRIGGIN 8-BIT! Another Sugiyama masterpiece that does not get it's fair due. It has just the right amount of death-induced stress, sorrow, and sadness even to make a tough as nails rocker like me feel a bit emotionally on edge. And I'd most likely be that guy at the funeral whose just standing still, stone faced, while his emotional wife asks why I'm acting like a "robot".

Now comes some spoiler fun.......the final battle theme. I mean, it EVOLVES with Necrosaro. It starts off with a pretty sick, almost Metallica-esque beginning, before degenerating into a whole-tone, jagged, atonal freakout briefly, then going into a total Megadeth type shredfest that makes me think of potato chips for some reason. Then every time that crazy creature evolves - grows bigger appendages, grows horns, another face, another head, you get this agonizing yet comedic indication that things have just gotten worse, what I like to call the "ludicrian" mode, and then by the end, it tears into something akin to the music that would play as your body is being ripped apart dramatically and slowly by a rusty pully machine operated by demons who just cackle and laugh the whole time. Seriously, did Koichii Sugiyama ever compose for a Metal Band? Does nanyone know? Because this is prime thrash material here.

Gameplay: 10/9

But it does make you think, but not at the freshly-homeless and I dunno what to do with my life level. 1 was more "go west to this place, and grab this item, and thou shalt find thee journey a success". II was "here's a ship now....you figure it out!", III was more like Ric Ocasek interview as a script "you can kinda' go get peppercorns for the king if you like. But you don't really have to right now.". Dragon Warrior IV is more like "okay, so we know we need to get across this mountainside, there's some weird old man up there that knows something we don't, let's talk to him, oh, he says he used to have a staff of magma, but he does'nt anymore, he sold it to a non-evil Wyvern in Tantgel castle....Wyvern says it's in the bbasement and he'll give it to us if we turn him human" - something like that. Scenarios seem just a little more believable here (if you can call a mythological land being torn apart by evolution and a misanthropic boyfriend of a dead elf who cried currency believable).

Same old basics as before, wander around, fight random encounters, though this seems to take up far less of your time than any other game in the series. Seriously, the first game was "oh no, a slime doth appear - though hath successfully defeated the slime" - walks 3 steps "oh no, Magidrakeee doth appear, thou dost 125HP of damage to Magidrakee..." 5 more steps "Oh know, Phantom Lord doth appear, Phantom Lord casts "Fist o' Terrors, Thou art hath died (death jingle plays" "Thou dost get another chance tho thou certainly doth not deserve it...". King Lorik was a dick. There's no genuinely massive grind fest such as the defeat gold baboon and Balrog death fest in the "Run To You" music video like DWII, or DWIII's under-mentioned grind fest that finds you grinding for experience points high enough to buy an "S" Class Mercedes, fully loaded, if that XP was currency. Seriously, if XP were mileage, my 93' Explorer would be considered "low mileage" compared to my DWIII party, of course that truthfully does apply here in 4 as well, but it just does not feel like 1,415,000XP, while in dWIII does. Some of the XP numbers from these late stage NES Dragon Quest RPG's are a mathmatician's wet dream. It seems at this point, Horii and his team mastered the art of making a game that does not feel grindy, probalby because there's a consistant amount of progress on a smaller scale WHILE you grind, vs the other games where you're now casting "Return" to an inn so your one character with "Vivfy" cna revive your whole party and retain the 65535 gold you have instead of halving it.

But things are a bit more interesting here. FOr starters, we have the start of the TRUE Dragon Quest economy, similar to the "rocker economy". Basically, you go out and buy yourself a new Axe....this axe is a "Squier" that costs 320 gold now you want a "Fender Mexican Halberd", that costs 560 GP, you'll get 150 back on your 320 Gold Axe, so you grind less, and "trade up". This keeps the inventory tidy of extra weapons (unlike me at the end of Dragon Warrior III where I was carrying around 4 magical swords in young Ragnar's inventory to use at will like he's some kind of hardware-enabled magician despite being a soldier - I know that might NOT be the same Ragnar, but I'd love to believe it IS Ragnar earlier in his life possibly, or maybe his great great grandpa"). It also allows you to afford the higher end weapons without a 3 hour long grindfest against high level enemies and likely losing half your gold at least once to some jackass baboon casting Defeat.

The party system changes too. For the first 4 chapters, you have parties of 1-3 characters each, but as you accumulate characters from the previosu chapters, somewhere along the line you manage to get a wagon and a horse in the desert, allowing for up to 8 party members, who can switch out in battle and take over if you're entire "main" party is wiped out. For you youngun's, this is a lot like FNaF World where you choose 2 parties, and when Freddy, Bonnie, foxy, and Chica are wiped out, you get the toy Animatronics in their place (I have to wonder if this game is where Cawthon got that idea). Also, you occasionally get NPC party members, like Numor, Hector, Healie, or that Dinosaur you get at the end that's totally badass...Dora I think. They do their own work and are pretty good at it. The only place the AI fails, is Cristo, a guy from Chapter 2 and a part of Alena's original party....who seems to insist on casting the same bloody spell over and over, ad nauseum, eating up his MP - to the point it's become a trope and character flaw in his actual character in the Dragon Quest lore, LOL. There's a whole tactics system I just started using, honestly, I feel it's practically optional, but it adds some replay value.

Overall: 10/9