Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen is a remake of the original game for the Nintendo DS. It features all the additions that the PlayStation had, but enhances the graphics even more. The game is a typical NES JRPG with the player exploring towns, upgrading equipment, talking to NPCs for sidequests and fighting monsters to gain experience for leveling up. There is a world map and of course, random battles. The encounter rate is reasonable and it doesn't feel too high. The menus are a bit old school and can be a bit fiddly to navigate. Dragon Quest IV takes an unorthodox approach in its presentation compared to most JRPGs. Instead of following the hero as they journey through the world, recruiting more characters into their party, the game is split into multiple chapters. Each chapter will focus on one party member.
Once you have played through their solo chapters, the next chapter will have them band together and have the player finally gain control of a full party. While this is an interesting take, in the end, it can feel cumbersome and repetitive. The downside with a separate chapter for each party member is that they all start at level 1. You will definitely have to grind because otherwise, the monsters will deal significant damage and kill you. Upon death, you lose half your gold but don't lose anything else, a cheap price to pay compared to other older JRPGs. The first character is Ragnar, whereby he is part of the royal guard and has heaps of experience as a soldier. He is tasked with investigating why the children are disappearing from the kingdom. His chapter is quite short, not only in terms of story but also in terms of dungeons. The subplot is straightforward and isn't too thrilling.
The second chapter follows Alena, who is a princess and yearns to explore the world in order to grown stronger. She is joined by two companions so you get to employ a little bit more strategy during battles. Her chapter is longer than the previous, taking around 2.5 hours. Naturally, grinding is required in order to comfortably beat monsters and bosses. A good thing is that Alena gets to explore a bigger chunk of the world. The third chapter follows Torneko. He's not a typical protagonist, being a father who's a bit overweight. He dreams of being a merchant and this makes the chapters a little bit different than the rest. Instead of a focus on battling monsters, the focus is on earning enough money to fulfill his dream. This makes the directions in how to progress the story a little bit more annoying and vague but is otherwise enjoyable.
The fourth chapter rounds out the party, following the twin sisters Meena and Maya. They are dancers but leave town in pursuit of the one that had killed their father. There's nothing special about this chapter since the twins travel around the land, get into towns and clear dungeons to obtain the items required to advance the story. In total, it'll take around 7-9 hours to complete the first four chapters introducing you to the various party members before finally allowing you to gain control of the protagonist again. Chapter 5 finally allows you to control the protagonist, as he finds out he is the chosen one and destined to defeat the great evil. As he travels across the land, the characters from the previous chapters join him. Unfortunately, they all join rather easily and abruptly, with no build up. Thus it doesn't feel plausible at all that they suddenly just join a stranger and then travel with them.
The battle system is a simple turn-based system. Your characters can attack, use magic or use an item. There are no complex hidden mechanic but the simplicity works well. If you set the battle message speed to its fastest setting (which is "1" by the way, not "5"), then battles are a lot more bearable and quicker to boot. Once you have more than four characters, you can swap them in and out during battle in certain dungeons and on the world map, adding a layer of strategy. There are some inconveniences to some battle commands. Trying to escape battles will probably fail more often than not, but perhaps the most annoying thing is that even using a reviving spell can fail. Considering that your character is usually dead in desperate situations, having it fail twice in a row is quite annoying, frustrating and cheap. It is worse when, no joke, your revive fails five times in a row in a boss battle. While this is a staple of the Dragon Quest series, it just feels terrible.
Surprisingly, the action takes place on the lower screen of the DS, while the upper screen will show the map on the overworld, and the character stats during battle. More impressively is how it uses both screens while you're in a town or dungeon, allowing you to see and plan your path further. While the game looks to be 2D, you can rotate the camera angle while in towns and dungeons. The game uses the top-down perspective to hide doors and items from your view. While you can rotate the camera in towns, you can only do so in specific dungeons. Thus it can get annoying when the item required by the story is hidden this way and you are encountering random battles all the while trying to find the missing thing. Despite the promising premise of dedicating a chapter to each party member and having them come together, the story ends up being a very simple affair. It boils down to the protagonist being the chosen one (with the other party members also the chosens but not as important), travelling around the world to defeating the great evil that threatens the land.
The story has no nuances or any subplots but it works for the most part since the game is short for a JRPG and can be beaten in 20-25 hours. To give you an idea, the average level of your party members will only be around 35-40 when you get to the final boss. After you beat the final boss a postgame dungeon is unlocked, packed with more treasures and tougher bosses. Overall, Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen is a very traditional JRPG, for better or worse. However, the simplicity of the story and the battle system makes it a lot of fun and gives it a classic feel. The requirement to grind your characters from level 1 multiple times can get annoying but the good far outweigh the bad in this installment.
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