The first proper characters in Dragon Quest and they're all very very cute. While the distribution of towns and grinding across the chapters is very uneven, DQ4 manages to clearly declare its territory within larger game scripts by extending the charm of the franchise without ever stumblinh. The cast is a charming spread of personalities brought to life by interesting pre-built packages of DQ3 classes. It is especially impressive the way this game handles women who just exist and have motivations when FF4 comes out like a year later only offering damsel wife lady and cursed daughter girl. I think there's a lot of ways this game is trapped under the weight of DQ3, largely in how restrictive party compositions can feel because of the pre-builds and the unecessary lack of villain scenes with Psaro coming from the insistence to not pull the camera away from the player. Still, it's a breezy time despite being a little larger than the proceeding entries, lately in thanks to a better paced gear advancement. God bless my girly girl party that I took all the way to Psaro and no further because I still do not like DQ post-game content.