Board 8 > Started Playing Dragon Quest IV

(+) Yeah! (+)

So earlier today I got and began playing Dragon Quest IV (the mobile port version). I havent played any DQ games before this one, and honestly I regret not starting earlier. Its fun and what I want out of an RPG. Talkative characters, unique enemy designs, rewarding surprises, and so on.

With that said, the in-text accents are rather bothersome to me. My reading comprehensions usually great, but its hard to decipher clues and story beats in dialogue with all the intentionally misspelled words.

Im going in mostly blind. So far Ive finished chapter 1. Ragnars pink armor caught me off guard, ha.

Also, why are the default slimes purple? I thought they were supposed to be blue?

The exact shade regular slimes are does lean toward indigo in the DS games. It varies a bit throughout the series.

Always glad to hear of more people playing DQ!

Iirc chapter 1 probably has the most distracting accents

I never did like the accents in the DS version, and the NES version is considered like the king of 8 bit jrpgs, so i always preferred the NES version myself

Ooh, DQ4 was the only other one than DQ1 that I ever played mostly to completion... on NES. Tagging.

UltimaterializerX posted...

It does get grindy though, more than usual for a Dragon Quest.

I don't think this is true at all. I guess in each of the chapters you might grind one or two levels at the start since you're starting at level 1 with each character, but for this game in particular, since you get so many characters with different roles, you can pretty much always find a solution to a tough fight if you rearrange your party. In something like 3 or 6 where you have fewer characters and have jobs you have to choose from you can conceivably make a party unable to win until you change jobs and grind job levels.

I beat this game but was bored out of my skull with it. Combat is so boring as the characters are all just basic warriors or mages with a few different spells, and dungeons are just 'find whichever path isn't a dead end while fighting random encounters'.

I did hear the DS version had the problem where your characters don't chat, which I think was a big shame as it completely zapped any personality out of the game.

DQ3 > DQ4 for me back in the days of the NES. I wonder if that would still be true if I played them today. Considering DQ4 has actual story and 3 is just a stock level-grinding JRPG, probably not.

Dragon Warrior IV is the best one.

DQIV unfortunately is the one that has the worst use of accents in the series. And it's gonna get worse before it gets better.

But the series is great and I hope you continue to enjoy it. If you plan to stick with it and play the other games, I recommend getting around to DQV sooner rather than later because that is a fantastic entry.

I never minded the accents too much in Dragon Quest IV, but it's been a while since I played it

Well, 8 actually. 4 was the 2nd game in the main series translated in the modern European style after 8.

And they didn't even commission them enough to do party chat so it just got cut out. Not exactly a shining point in DQ localization

The main problem is that 8 had voice acting, so the various accents they used in that game were only apparent vocally. In text they weren't that prominent.

But DQIV had no voices, so in order to get the same idea across they wrote the script to have them heavily appear phonetically, and used very strong accents to push it more. This simply doesn't work as well in text form. Luckily the translations of the games they did later handled this MUCH better.

Woah. Thats a lot more replies than I was expecting. I guess theres a lot of pressure for me to see this game to the end, huh.

Im currently in the midst of Chapter 2. I kind of miss Healie, but having an actual party is cool too. The trio suit their roles well. I dont think that hole in the castle walls is going to be fixed for a long, long time.

Im stuck on a boss so Ive been grinding for levels and for money to buy better armor/weapons. It seems like this is where youre introduced to all sorts of magic spells for you to try. The game in general is opening up more than it did in Chapter 1. I assume its only going to get more exciting from here on out.

Update: Im still on Chapter 2, although Ive made much progress since last post. My partys currently at about level 12 from some grinding (mainly for the purpose of earning gold coins rather than exp, but still). I cant find a way to unlock the cemetery door though, so it looks like Ill have to resort to using a guide.