Preface: My RPG review series kinda fell by the wayside (like a lot of other things). This was largely a result of me quitting Dragon Quest III halfway through my first playthrough, and then helped along by the commencement of a separate project in which I've been introducing my significant other to the Final Fantasy series (I'm sparing her the tedium of the Dragon Quest series, because I want her to like the genre, not loathe it), to give her some context when she finally gets to play my own RPG (when it's ready for playtesting). So although I'm no longer playing through the Final Fantasies again myself (although I did play Final Fantasy IIIj for the first time recently), and thus not really writing reviews of them anymore, I consider it a worthwhile tradeoff to share my love of the genre with someone close to me (whom I get to watch playing these games for her first time). In a way, it's a bit like reliving my childhood. In any case, I did eventually go back and restart Dragon Quest III, which I finished, and then continued on to Dragon Quest IV, which I've now also completed. Here are some of my thoughts on those games - you may be relieved to hear that this will be [considerably] briefer than my previous, meandering "reviews".
Dragon Quest IV
(fyi, I'm doing these in reverse order)
This is the most fun I've had playing a Dragon Quest game so far (which bodes well for the next couple of releases). It's still frustrating at times (mainly being pummelled by enemies via a much too frequent random encounter rate) (oh, and using an expensive life spell five or seven times and not having it work...), but not nearly as consistently as in past games. I appreciate giving the Clinics access to the Imperial Scrolls of Honor, as the long trudge to the kings in their isolated halls of stone was becoming entirely gratuitous in DQIII.
I really enjoyed the way the game started with separate chapters, each introducing different characters (character development is still minimal, but leaps and bounds above previous games) that you get to grow a little bit before they all join your party in the last chapter. It was a great way to try out different jobs (merchant was the most fun, and a class that I never would have considered wasting time on before), without feeling like you're committing to something huge. Plus, I like how the extended team works in the latter part of the game much better than the character registration feature (which I never used) in DQIII.
I have mixed feelings about only being able to control the Hero and having the rest of the party on auto-pilot. I like being able to control my party on principle, but in practice, I haven't minded letting the computer take over so much. The AI is pretty decent (with a few exceptions - occasionally overusing useless spells and neglecting useful ones), and it makes the tedious quantity of battles just a little bit less labor-intensive. I've also learned that I can totally use more magic than I would normally ration out without it becoming a problem (in most cases, the OFFENSIVE tactic suited me for wiping out enemy groups more quickly).
It's worth mentioning, before I finish, that I used a couple of cheats - the Sword of Malice exploit in Taloon's chapter, and I used save states to shamelessly game the Casino (gambling sucks) - in order to get some better equipment/more gold (tip: four Meteorite Armbands means I can usually strike first and mitigate a lot of damage I would otherwise receive in battles). But given my experiences with Dragon Quest in the past, this is a game that I (rather uncharacteristically) have NO qualms about cheating at to even up the odds a little. And if it means I have more fun with less headaches, then where's the harm?
Dragon Quest III
Looking back at my notes, the highlights from Dragon Quest III were the introduction of the day/night cycle (which is pretty cool, even if it means you effectively have to explore each town twice), and my increasing confidence in using the Outside and Return spells (now with your choice of destination!), which are like Exit/Warp and fast travel (a Wing of Wyvern in spell form), which go a long way toward making dungeon crawling more manageable.
The combat was still frustrating as hell, though, and the option to switch jobs turned out to be more of a bane than a boon, as I got class change paralysis (not wanting to waste the time growing my experience through tedious battle after tedious battle for making the wrong strategic decision). It was so bad that I quit the game and started over many months later (as counterintuitive as that sounds).
And if I thought the Dragon Quest II endgame was annoying, having to basically replay Dragon Quest I after fighting the pseudo-final boss in DQIII (at which point I'd pretty much checked out) didn't have the novelty for me that I think the developers were going for. The irony is that just before this I had defended long RPG endgames in an online forum (thinking mostly of my fond memories of final dungeons in Final Fantasy - and having just recently played Final Fantasy III on the NES, which has a particularly long one*). But playing Dragon Quest totally flipped my opinion around - I guess it really depends on how much you like the game you're playing, whether you want it to drag on or not.
*Having later watched my SO trudge through the final dungeon in FFIII, only to get whupped by the final boss, and lose at least two hours of progress (it's hard enough finding that kind of time to sit down and play games together quietly at home, in the midst of our busy lives - especially post-COVID), I've gained a little more perspective. Ironically, I'd have to commend the endgame in Dragon Quest IV for being more forgiving - still long and drawn out (although not so bad as in the previous two titles), but more segmented and with ample opportunity for escape/saving your progress. I will certainly be taking this into account as I go into developing the endgame in my own RPG in the near future.
Anyway, it's a wonder I didn't quit the Dragon Quest series full stop after my experience with DQIII, but I can be persistent when I put my mind to something - and I'm glad I didn't quit, because with DQIV, the series finally appears to be turning itself around and beginning to embrace player-friendliness. I look forward to seeing what they came up with for the SNES, which was the golden age for the Final Fantasy series, at least.
