I think the game is leagues better than DQ3, at least in my experience. The characters are much more fleshed out, even if they could be even more fleshed out. The story seems to be much more present in the game than in the first three, and there's a lot more music and bosses than those games as well. I like the chapter system introducing characters before they join the main party a lot. It makes the start of chapter 5 cool as you want to hurry and gather up a team of characters you've had before. I do wish they had done a better job with the Hero's story though. I think they should not have shown us the Hero at the start to not just jarringly switch to a whole different character out of nowhere. They could've also shown glimpses of the Hero between chapters to fix this. Combat in DQ4 was generally enjoyable. I really liked the ability to swap your party out freely in certain battles, as that made it feel pretty different from the older games. I like the ease of grinding exp later on in the game from the Metal Slimes, although money is still annoying to grind for. Chapters 2 and 3 can drag a bit in certain sections, but otherwise I enjoyed the pacing. I wish chapter 6 added more stuff to do after getting the 9th chosen, as they expect you to grind a bit too much if you want to see their full potential. I didn't hate fighting any of the bosses like I did in DQ and DQ3 for the annoying final bosses. Overall, a solid entry, and a surprisingly good title to come from the NES, even if the version I played was somewhat reworked.

What a good time that was. I love when narratives switch POV characters around, and it blew my mind that Dragon Quest was doing this as early as the NES. My rating would probably be lower if I wasn't playing the remake with party chat patched in, but I really liked everyone in the crew even if the accents could be a bit much. Honestly, my main complaint on the character front would be that the hero is easily the least interesting of the bunch and I lost steam a little when I got to their part, but I suppose that's often the case with silent protagonists. I did finish it though, bonus chapter and all, and that's more than I can say for a lot of games.
Also, the DS spritework was absolutely delightful. Estark in particular was especially gnarly, I loved it.

Random thought: I played Hollow Knight a month ago, and Cornifer and Iselda are basically Torneko and Tessie as bugs. No, I will not elaborate.

Anyways, I've previously played all of what I consider 'classic DQ' (the original versions of the first seven games), and this marks my first foray into the DS remakes. I like the game a lot, but it also solidifies my distaste for the series' combat in general. It's not so much that the game is grindy, but that it boils down to praying hard to RNGesus only to find out that he's RNSatan instead. As an example, an early-game boss can either do a normal attack for 30-40 damage, an AOE attack for around 20, or a different AOE attack for 40plus. He also sometimes gets two actions per round. And if you think about it, him doing an AOE twice at the end of a round, then following it up with the same thing at the start of the next round (which happened to me more than once) is such monumental overkill that it will wipe your party even if you're overlevelled. Random lategame mooks do this as well. Some bosses will instakill a character if they get a critical hit - which would be tolerable in a game where you have ready access to reliable methods of resurrection, but not here! This all adds up to a game which is so random that it kills almost all attempts at strategizing in favor of relying on luck, and simply doesn't come across as fun for me (or maybe it's a skill issue? So many people enjoy the combat so I might be missing something).

The game does have updated graphics and better QoL than the NES original - as expected - but I do need to complain about how they added one of my biggest pet peeves: Xenogears-style camera angles. I feel like controllable camera angles are good for immersion if you have interesting locales that are set up like actual real-world locations, but if your towns and dungeons are set up in a rigid grid and the only thing that separates them from 'traditional' JRPG towns are the fact that the doors of houses are not all facing the same direction, then all you're doing by adding a controllable camera is adding tedium to getting around!

My star rating above should spoil that there are enough things I like about the game to balance out my biggest gripes, and really it's just the fact that... well, this game is Dragon Quest, man. Like every other game in the series I've played, the NPCs are charming, the vibes are cozy, and it really nails the sense of exploration by being nonlinear enough that everyone's journey of discovering the world in Chapter 5 will be uniquely their own. The more modern hardware and more polished translation render the dramatic moments of the original - like your childhood friend's willingness to protect you, and the villain's origin story - far more effective. And as one of the not-many who adores Koichi Sugiyama (the composer, not the person), the updated orchestration does his work a lot more justice; as a purist who writes very much in a traditional classical style, the more 'accurate' instrumental samples represent a huge jump in quality over the tinny midi of the original.

One last thing I need to mention is that the Party Chat function - which adds a ton of characterization to your party (and even the guest members!) - is inexplicably dummied out of the Western release. For a game with such a colorful cast of characters this is a massive miss!

In the end, this is a great way to play one of the strongest entries of the series in a more 'modern' medium. Fittingly for a series which has been often described as 'RPG comfort food', you know exactly what you'll get - if you like the other games in the series, I'd recommend this!

The thing I love the most about Dragon Quest IV is its structure. The story, which concerns the ominously-named Psaro the Manslayer and his efforts to destroy humanity, is broken into chapters, each one focusing on one of the heroes who's paths will eventually all cross to form your adventuring party. It's a really strong way of presenting each character, and cements their personality and their reason for fighting, in an effective way.

As is usual for Dragon Quest, the moment-to-moment gameplay is very traditional. You'll wander around a lush fantasy world, going from town to town solving people's problems and fighting monsters in turn-based combat. The main quest is, as is common in the series, a scavenger hunt for legendary weapons, but here they're woven neatly into the world as national treasures or sealed away in deep caves and tombs. There's less freeform role-playing here than in III, but it's replaced with a strong character-led quest that hits all the right notes for fans of the series.