Universal Dragon Quest IV (by Square Enix)

Discussion in 'iPhone and iPad Games' started by PeteOzzy, Aug 6, 2014.

  1. Shaun Musgrave

    Shaun Musgrave Well-Known Member

    Jul 8, 2013
    1,088
    3
    38
    Freelance writer, teacher, business owner
    Ibaraki, Japan
    Yes, it does. Your items carry over, as well. The only thing that doesn't is money, so spend it all on anything before you end each chapter if you can. This is especially good advice for Torneko's chapter.
     
  2. HungarianUrinalCakes

    HungarianUrinalCakes Well-Known Member

    Jan 14, 2012
    87
    0
    0
    Saskatchewan, Canada
    I was sure wishing I had an auto battle option when I was grinding at the start of chapter 2 and kept encountering one or two walking sticks. A whopping one gold and two exp. a piece...
     
  3. orangecan

    orangecan Well-Known Member

    Aug 9, 2011
    1,997
    145
    63
    Nice one thanks, as soon as you mentioned the money and Torneko it all came flooding back
     
  4. Emotive

    Emotive Well-Known Member

    Sep 14, 2013
    82
    0
    0
    Great White North
    Awwh, it's not call Dargon Quest anymore :(
     
  5. curtisrshideler

    curtisrshideler Well-Known Member
    Patreon Bronze

    Jul 30, 2011
    3,097
    25
    48
    Male
    Video Producer/Editor
    Texas
    My Continue Suspended Adventure is showing wrong stats and level too. Says I'm level 1. Maybe it means the Hero and not the current chapter I'm on?
     
  6. chumpop

    chumpop Well-Known Member

    Aug 2, 2013
    55
    0
    0
    Sorry, peeps... Just curious... How big is the file after it's installed? Space isn't really an issue at the moment, but I'd like my phone to have enough breathing room after getting this game. Thanks in advance!
     
  7. Mene

    Mene <b>ACCOUNT CLOSED</b>: <em>Officially</em> Quit iO

    Mar 18, 2012
    1,873
    0
    0
    Showing as 405mb on my ipad which is far smaller than the 1.6gb of VIII

    ..I should really delete that tbh.
     
  8. pluto6

    pluto6 Well-Known Member

    Jun 21, 2009
    5,837
    2
    38
    Military
    It is too bad you had such a bad time with DQ 8. It really is an excellent game.
     
  9. Louis Ace

    Louis Ace Well-Known Member

    Apr 4, 2013
    117
    0
    0
    So I just finished Chapter 3 at about 11.5 hours, and I remembered that in the review it said the game was about 40 hours long. Does this mean that the fifth chapter is a lot longer than the first four (which have on average lasted 4 hours each)?
     
  10. chumpop

    chumpop Well-Known Member

    Aug 2, 2013
    55
    0
    0
    Thanks for the info. Bought it! I had heard that DQVIII took up a bunch of space, deterring me. Guess I could always just play it on my PS2. Cheers!
     
  11. Shaun Musgrave

    Shaun Musgrave Well-Known Member

    Jul 8, 2013
    1,088
    3
    38
    Freelance writer, teacher, business owner
    Ibaraki, Japan
    Chapter 5 is about as long as the first four put together, if not a little longer. Then, the bonus sixth chapter adds another 5-10 hours on top of that.
     
  12. Louis Ace

    Louis Ace Well-Known Member

    Apr 4, 2013
    117
    0
    0
    Okay that makes sense. Thanks for the response.
     
  13. Shaun Musgrave

    Shaun Musgrave Well-Known Member

    Jul 8, 2013
    1,088
    3
    38
    Freelance writer, teacher, business owner
    Ibaraki, Japan
    Sorry for how long this took, and I realize you already bought the game. I hope you're enjoying it. This post is going to be wordswordswords, something that will be little surprise to regular readers of TA reviews.

    The first thing I want to say is that there is a key difference that separates Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy as we know them today. Final Fantasy is and to an extent always has been a name and a few core concepts that were used by a number of teams to explore different RPG ideas. Apart from certain mainstays who even now have largely departed such as Yoshitaka Amano and Nobuo Uematsu, the games usually had very different staff from installment to installment, and there was no real auteur to the series. FF long outlived creator Hironobu Sakaguchi's tenure at Square, and indeed there aren't many people at all from the old days still working on the series.

    Dragon Quest, on the other hand, is the vision of one man, Yuji Horii. He always collaborates with artist Akira Toriyama and the music always has been at least under the supervision of Koichi Sugiyama. Those three work with various programming houses (Chunsoft, Heartbeat, and Level 5 so far) to create the games, but they very much reflect the vision of Horii, lending them a very interconnected feel.

    This is important because fundamentally, the Dragon Quest series iterates, eternally perfecting its established gameplay, while FF innovates, often throwing out nearly everything to try something totally new, without care of refinement. It makes the series harder to compare than you would think, especially once we get past the first few games where FF was mostly existing as a reply to DQ games.

    Dragon Quest IV is a weird era-straddling game. It came out quite late, in February 1990, with the Super Famicom less than a year away. It released around the same time as Square's Final Fantasy 3, which had an unenviable job of trying to clean up after FF2's mess and establish some sort of stable relevance for the series. I like to think that at this point, even though FF was relatively minor compared to DQ, that Horii *was* paying attention to what it did well, but that's just speculation.

    The chronology looks like this: DQ1 -> DQ2/FF1 -> DQ3 -> FF2 -> FF3/DQ4, and I think that works for most of the comparisons. DQ1 is very primitive, DQ2 added party members and extra means of travel, FF1 had some similar ideas and threw in a bunch of crib notes (and sketches) from DnD, DQ3 introduced a class sytem and implemented it in a more sophisticated way than FF1 did, FF2 came out with a tight story focus and introduced gamers to Akitoshi Kawazu's madness, FF3 came out with a more back-to-basics approach that seemed heavily informed by DQ3, and then there was DQ4.

    DQ4 wasn't the first time DQ had "named" heroes, but it was definitely the most advanced attempt at such a thing. Tossing out the ability to change jobs and choose the job types you wanted for your party was pretty bold and seemed to fly in the face of what job classes were supposed to do. Instead, the story dictates which types of characters you have at your disposal at any one time, only allowing you to customize in the back half of the game. Interestingly, even later DQ games that brought back the class system tend not to introduce it until you're quite deep into the game, so this isn't the last we'd see of this approach, technically.

    From a technical point of view, this allowed the team a lot of opportunities for balancing, but more importantly, having a large cast of named characters allowed them to tell an even better story than the already impressive efforts in the Loto Trilogy. It put characters first, even going as far as implementing AI so that they could have their own personalities in combat. This was also the first DQ game with a full casino, a wagon (being able to switch your party members around on the fly? WHAT?!), saving in churches instead of by talking to kings, and more stuff that stayed in the series forever. It's a far more sophisticated game than FF1/2/3, and the only thing that belied its 8-bit roots in my opinion was the appearance.

    The remake solves that, of course, and I think people coming to the series today would be hard-pressed to tell DQ4 is from a different hardware generation than 5 and 6. Even in fully-remade 3D, it's still very apparent that FF3 is a NES/FC game, as an example, but DQ4 avoids that to a great extent. It has a greater focus on exploration than the FF games of the SFC era, but that's a general difference between FF and DQ outside of specific games. I think it's pretty unusual for a DQ game simply because the series isn't known for revolving the story around the player characters, but this one does.

    If I'm going to go LIST WARZ on you, here's how I'd personally rank the DQ/FF games available to English iOS gamers right now, not including genre-jumping spin-offs:

    FF5 > FF6 > DQ4 > FF4 > DQ8 > FFD > FF1 > FF3 > FF2 > TAY

    As more DQ games get released, you're going to see those FF games from Dimensions on down get pushed down that list more, with DQ5 being notable as being the one DQ game that has the story chops to best FF6 and DQ3 being the DQ game with the customization to challenge (but ultimately lose to) FF5. But generally speaking - if you like stories more, stick to FF, if you like exploring and adventures more, DQ's your buddy.
     
  14. Capronissimo71

    Capronissimo71 Well-Known Member

    Sep 5, 2011
    1,305
    137
    63
    Male
    Italy
    Guys a little help! What can i do to let time pass for a specific action? I mean, for example, when you got to talk with the teacher in the school at the beginning of the game when he says to wait till night. Thanks!
     
  15. Shaun Musgrave

    Shaun Musgrave Well-Known Member

    Jul 8, 2013
    1,088
    3
    38
    Freelance writer, teacher, business owner
    Ibaraki, Japan
    At the beginning of the game, all you can do is walk around outside on the overworld map until it becomes dark. Eventually, you can get fast ways to manipulate the day/night cycle.
     
  16. Capronissimo71

    Capronissimo71 Well-Known Member

    Sep 5, 2011
    1,305
    137
    63
    Male
    Italy
    Thanks Shaun!
     
  17. curtisrshideler

    curtisrshideler Well-Known Member
    Patreon Bronze

    Jul 30, 2011
    3,097
    25
    48
    Male
    Video Producer/Editor
    Texas
    Wow. FF5 is one I've never played, but you like it more than FF6, DQ8, and DQ4? Maybe I should pick it up then. I just can't imagine enjoying it as much as these two DQ games. My first RPG ever was Dragon Warrior, so I'd love to see a remake of that. My first FF game wasn't until FF7&9. So most of these remakes are completely new to me. But I'm finding myself still enjoying DQ a little more. Being able to play with one hand doesn't hurt either!
     
  18. Shaun Musgrave

    Shaun Musgrave Well-Known Member

    Jul 8, 2013
    1,088
    3
    38
    Freelance writer, teacher, business owner
    Ibaraki, Japan
    I waffle a lot between FF5 and FF6. Their strengths are so different, with FF6 doing some beautiful storytelling but relatively bland systems, while FF5 has amazing systems (I play it every year and still find new ways to play) but a relatively weak story. I'm just coming off my annual summer challenge run on FF5, so I'm still high on it right now.
     
  19. smegly

    smegly Well-Known Member

    Mar 27, 2012
    990
    0
    0
    NY, NY
    I've maintained for a long time that FF5 was the best "classic" entry in the series. It's definitely an unpopular opinion though.
     

Share This Page