Dragon Quest IV #01 Continued

Nintendo DS time! Still only on the first leg of the journey, but I felt the first post was getting a little long so I cut it short. Plus I'm taking it slow to start, there's a lot of stylistic stuff to look at. EDIT: New as of 1/4/13 is the first chapter of my video LP for DQIV, added above for your enjoyment. Enjoy! ^_^

Flipping a coin for gender again, and again roll male for the Hero. And his name is a randomly chosen...Alden Skyrah? Okay, Alden, let's get going!

First thing I realize is that the Nintendo DSi XL is much larger than the Nintendo 3DS that I've gotten used to over the past several months. The humongous armor case I purchased with storage for four game cards and the XL stylus which weighs just as much as the device itself certainly doesn't do anything to disguise this fact. Just sayin'.

The remakes, unlike the original game, contain a Prologue of the Hero in his hometown, so this time we actually get to begin the game as Alden (though not for very long). Someone is training him to be a warrior, and they seem to think it needs to be done ASAP. Busting some barrels reveals an herb and a little money. Leaving the cellar, there are more barrels hiding an antidote, and a frog beckons! Oh, but it's not really a frog. It's a princess! She says we should help her break the witch's curse, although being a frog isn't really so bad. It's just...it's just that...back to the cellar, run! And so it comes to pass that the frog which is not really a frog is not really a princess either, but my friend Eliza who has just learned the spell of Morph! Tricky! She becomes a rabbit and scampers off.

Around town, everyone seems to know something that they aren't telling me. It kind of feels like The Truman Show. Even at home, my father seems to be acting like he's some sort of oracle, rambling on about grand adventure and strange companions. Mom says "shut up and eat" (more or less), so we do. The Prologue ends!

The name of Chapter 1 in this version has significantly expanded into "Ragnar McRyan and the Case of the Missing Children." Nice ring to it! And thus begins the Scottish brogue. Simmer doon an' listen noo! Izmit toon hae noo become Strathbaile; I suppoose the faermer weren't Scottish enough, youse ken. I actually find the accent quite charming, albeit a little difficult to read when unfamiliar words pop up (The bairns are missing! Jings!), or when a modified word looks just like a real word (Gae tae the toon!). Compared to the Final Fantasy remakes, I prefer the expanded Dragon Quest text. It feels creative, rather than just wordier like FFVI Advance seems to me, for example.

Speaking of loquaciousness, there are some bookshelves that actually contain books to read. In the castle, you can read about Roburt the Burruce, founder of Burland. Poking around further, the old man doing research actually tells us his findings. He's studying the Lord o' the Underworld! But there's no info on it. In the southwest room again is the same Medicinal Herb as in the old days. In the town, Flora is now known as Aigneas, and in her house is a Seed of Strength! A few other scattered coins and items are all about town inside pots and barrels. Don't miss the Leather Shield upstairs in the armor shop! It also appears that the Thorn Whip sold by the weapon shop has been replaced with a Divine Dagger, which is mildly confusing.

Out on the world map, the top screen contains an outline of the world which gets filled in with color as you explore. Nice touch! Another nice touch that I almost missed is the Y Button; pressing it brings up a hand-drawn close-up of the map with greater detail. Attempting the same in town also brings up a hand-drawn overview map, and doing it again cycles through shop inventories—very nice! In battle, monster graphics are fully animated, not just when attacking like they are in the PlayStation remake, so they look pretty lively! The cave, which one of the townspeople referred to as Strathbaile Burrow, is rendered as one continuous area now, rather than having darkened pathways as in the original. The treasures are the same with nothing extra hidden, so I go on to the town.

I also must note somewhere that the arranged music is spot on. Kōichi Sugiyama, a classically trained musician, obviously composed these songs for these instruments, even as good as the 8-bit original tracks were. Awesome job!

Everything in Strathbaile is pretty much as it was when the place was called Izmit, except for a well in the north that hides 25G. Take the money and run! In the shop, the Boomerang is replaced with a Hunter's Bow, and this is when I realize why the Thorn Whip was changed as well: The Boomerang and Whip classes of weapons are multi-targeting in later Dragon Quests, but that wasn't true in the original DQ4 yet. The names were changed so we wouldn't get confused and expect the new behavior from those weapons where it wasn't intended. Good idea!

Now the PlayStation remake! I sit through the opening theme just in case (as I always do with a new game), and I'm rewarded with a series of scenes that doesn't appear in any other version! It seems to be relating what each of the first four chapters' characters are doing just before their respective adventures begin. If only I could read it all! I'll look into it further if I get a chance, but in the meantime here's a cursory description:

A soldier in pink armor, ライアン [raian], is overseeing the royal guards as they practice their swordplay in the castle, when another soldier comes to speak to him. Cut to a scene in the town, where a child runs laps around him and cheers him on as he recruits two other guards to follow him. Then cut to the throne room, where he is present as parents from the next town proclaim to the King the disappearance of their children. Then the four guards head off toward a cave together.

In the next scene, ブライ [burai] is apparently admonishing the young princess アリーナ [arīna] about how she should not leave the castle unattended, during which admonishment she hastily departs behind his back. He asks her other protector, クリフト [kurifuto], where she has gone. The latter says she's left for adventure or something, and the former calls him a moron for letting her go. They take off after her. Cut to the castle gate, where apparently the guards are just stupid enough to let her out, but the King puts a stop to it and explains the importance of her position. She responds by saying she can kill a bear with a kick to the stomach or some such nonsense, and knocks down a stone pillar. Then she actually seems surprised she did that. Hilarity ensues!

Next scene! ネネ [nene] wakes her husband トルネコ [toruneko] to go to work. He neglects to say goodbye to their son as he trundles off next door to the shop, where he serves two customers and goes home because that's how short the days are. They eat dinner and go to bed. Exciting!

Now the final scene. マーニャ [mānya] the dancer is performing on stage when a poor, misguided drunken fool decides he wants to play feely. He lurches his way onto the stage, where her twin sister ミネア [minea] the fortuneteller has been looking on, and she accosts him. He decides he likes her too, and starts to grab her when the dancer jumps in and pulls the man to center stage, where she kicks him in the...face. The owner of the club comes out to witness the hubbub. Cut to the back room, where they are meeting and talking all serious. Cut to a scene in some underground passageway, where the two sisters are fighting monsters. After they win, they are at their father's grave, vowing to find his enemy who killed him. And that's the end!

Since I picked male for the DS, I'll use female here. And my last random name for this Let's Play series is...Sophronia Palamara. The first name won't fit squarely into four kana, so I use パラマラ [paramara], which will.

Basically, as far as I can tell everything is about the same between the DS and PlayStation. From here on out, I'll only be noting sizable differences between any of the versions, so I'll spend the majority of the writing on the English editions.

Below is an updated table of name changes. I will be listing all character names, regardless of importance, including the "Lore" category drawn from bookshelves in the remakes, along with all spell names. Because there are so many items and monsters, I'll only be listing key items and boss monsters, along with certain items whose names were changed drastically.

Name Changes
NES (U)	NES (J)	NDS (U)	PS (J)
* denotes an entry which was not significantly changed from the previous version in the same language. Blank entries either have not appeared yet or were not named in that version.
Atlas
Burland	バトランド [batorando]	*	*
Izmit	イムル [imuru]	Strathbaile	*
		Strathbaile Burrow
		Loch Tur
Who's Who
		Eliza	シンシア [shinshia]
Ragnar	ライアン　[raian]	Ragnar McRyan	*
		King Burnard
Flora	フレイ [furei]	Aigneas	*
Alex	アレクス [arekusu]	Angus (nickname: Angie)	*
Pocos	ププル [pupuru]	Willy Wally	*
Lore
		Roburt the Burruce	バトレア [batorea]
Armory
Thorn Whip	いばらのむち [ibara no muchi]	Divine dagger	せいなるナイフ [sei naru naifu]
Boomerang	ブーメラン [būmeran]	Hunter's bow	クロスボウ [kurosubō]