#meena dragon quest

[glassmarcus]

Dragon Quest 4‘s JRPG vibes

So weirdly enough, I had never touched a true Dragon Quest game until this year. Sure I've played the first Dragon Quest Heroes, checked out the Dragon Quest Builders demo, watched like 5 episodes of the Dragon Quest: Adventures of Dai reboot, and played a few matches as The Hero in Super Smash Bros Ultimate, but I never experienced a numbered entry. I’m not sure if you've heard, but Dragon Quest is a bit of a big deal. Even of you don't make full eye contact with the franchise, It's pretty hard to avoid seeing it in your periphery. Dragon Quest was always something that I assumes was up my alley, but I don't want to get sucked in to playing 11 games that aren't all necessarily accessible. So I avoided its gaze. But upon the passing of franchise artist, Akira Toriyama, my attention towards the series became harder to divert.

It was never a question of if I would engage with main line Dragon Quest, but to what degree I would. First of all, its character art is helmed by the GOAT himself, so I was magnetized towards it by default. I'm willing to give everything Toriyama had a hand in a shot. If my Xbox Series S had the ability to play games that aren't Sonic Unleashed, I would have already played Blue Dragon by now. But even beyond wanting to celebrate Toriyama's legacy and appreciating his craft, Dragon Quest was always an inevitability due to its DNA being a part of every Japanese Role Playing Game that came after it. The curiosity is too strong for me to resist.

When the first entry in the series was on sale on the Nintendo Eshop, I pounced at the chance to try it out. My first reaction to this purchase was "Wait, this isn't the NES version". It seemed to be some mobile rerelease of the original game. I didn't research this, I just know in my soul that's what it was. The graphics looked a bit more modern and I assumed there were quality of life additions that would make my journey smoother while still evoking the soul of the original. So I started playing it, and seeing it in motion really caught me off guard. When you combine the constant idle movement of the sprites with the mediocre art, this game becomes profoundly ugly. I was having trouble keeping my dinner down with how ugly it was. I'm talking Greek tragedy where the goddess of beauty gets jealous of someone levels of ugly. My face was scrunched up for the next hour after seeing it. I came to this series because of the art, I wasn't going to subject myself to this much of a downgrade. I had no choice but to accept my lost 3 dollars and drop the playthrough.

I decided to not trust Dragon Quest 2 and 3 on the Wshop a jump straight to Dragon Quest 4: Chapters of the Chosen. Still seeking Quality of Life improvements, I gravitated towards the DS remake. And I was elated to see that this version of the game isn't a hideous chimera of conflicting art directions. It looks good for the most part and the sprite art for Toriyama's designs really shine in the battles. The overworld sprites leave a bit to be desired but I'm sure the original wasn't much better in that regard. Again, not researching this at, it’s just a gut feeling I have.

Going into a popular old school JRPGs such as this, I expected to get closer to the roots of the conventions I've come accustomed to. With Dragon Quest 4, it wasn't just to norms that I saw start to blossom, but the more fringe ideas as well. Dragon Quest 4 has a very odd structure. It's set up like a 5 act saga and it adds such grandeur to the whole journey. And what makes it so different is that the first 4 acts are basically nothing but set up. Each act follows a different group of main characters and their own mini adventures. They're vignettes, but they are also well connected in that they increasing build toward the main scenario in act 5. Each story in Dragon Quest 4: Chapters of the Chosen acts as its own tutorial on how to play a JRPG

Chapter 1 is the base essence of the gameplay loop: Hit creatures that are weaker than you, so that you can get stronger and have more creatures that are weaker than you that you can hit. You play as a knight who can only attack and defend as options. And you won't be defending in this part of the game. It's quite dull, but I will admit there is a satisfaction to just slugging it out with the boss of the chapter after leveling up to the point in which you can do so.

Chapter 2 adds far more to the basics with party management and magic. In this part of the game you follow the adventures of a Tsarevna and her two vassals. I'm not sure how it works in the original, but in this version you have full control over each party member's actions and those actions are far more varied than just attacking. This is where the battles become even slightly interesting as you have to manage party members hp and mp and figure out which roles they will play in fights.

Chapter 3 introduces an important aspect of all RPGs, the economy. This vignette is about a merchant trying to start his own business, and the only way to do that is by completing quest and selling inventory. Gameplay wise, it's similar to chapter 1 as you only control one character without any magic. But the task you do outside of battles are far more complex and require exploration and knowledge of the world.

Chapter 4...doesn't really have a strong identity of its own. You play as 2 sisters who are both magic users so you aren't doing anything particularly new. The only lesson it serves to teach is how vital item use can be mid battle, as that lesson acts as the bouncer for the real game that comes afterwards.

Chapter 5 is where the game opens up for you to fully explore. It takes a hell of a long time to get going, but I respect the structure. It's very similar to how Mother 3 introduces its party members before chapter 4 starts. I have little doubt that Mother 3 derived its structure from Chapters of the Chosen, unless there's some other older RPG that takes this vignette approach. I'm not expert on the roots of RPG history, I really only know the bullet points. Regardless ,I love seeing connections of mechanics and tropes throughout time.

I played this game mainly for research purposes and I walked away with many mixed conclusions on it. It was pretty much exactly the experience I sought out. Dragon Quest 4 has Immaculate JRPG vibes. It feels like an adventure where anything can happen and it can only achieve this by being unhinged. A lot of modern RPGs have a fair level curve where you can usually beat any enemy you encounter and can avoid the ones you can't beat. Dragon Quest plays by different rules. Every area of this game is a potpourri of monsters of varied strength and composition. Some encounters might be cake walks, others might be marathons. You'll be fighting a couple of weak healing slimes in one battle and then pulling up to a hardened gang of shamans who can Insta-kill you in the next. It is frustrating, but the friction the game provides does a lot to sell this dangerous, yet wondrous dungeon delving world.

The disorganized balancing is but a small piece to the Dragon Quest puzzle. This opposition to the player is baked into every mechanic in the game. Dragon Quest 4 is game composed almost exclusively out of monkey paws. There are a lot of really strong spells your party members can use against monsters and it adds a lot to strategies you can build in fights. But the down side of this is that enemies can use any of these spells, so those same ones can be used against you. I know spamming sleep magic is effective because I've seen the results on both the sending and receiving end.

And it's not just the spells being symmetrical in availability that acts as a double edged sword. The effects of those spells follow that same internal logic. Spells can miss you seemingly at random, but your spells can just as easily fail. Even the ability to resurrect party members isn't guaranteed on both sides. My favorite example has to be the bounce spell. It reflects spells back at the caster and can be a great counter to magic attacks. It is not however, a good counter to healing magic, as that is also reflected. Characters with this buff cannot be healed sometimes. When you cast bounce, you need to be sure your character doesn't need anymore buffs afterwards and that you have plenty of healing items to use instead. It adds this risk and reward to the spell and ends up being far more interesting than if the spell only worked with damaging spells.

Keeping up to date with the best equipment available is vital to your success in this game, so it's only natural that the most brutal double edge sword can be a literal double edge sword. Cursed items are an RPG staple. Them being present in Chapters of the Chosen is no surprise, but the commitment to the permanency is still appreciated. You will get a debuff if you have a cursed weapon, and you will not be able to unequip them. There may be some way to cleanse the curse, probably at a church or something, but when I encountered it I didn't know how and just had to adapt and accept that my tank would always go last in turn order.

The adaptation to the brutal old RPG design sensibilities is what makes this game enjoyable. If there was no memorable adversity, I would have just been bored. Modern RPGs, hell, even just slightly later RPGs than this one, have more interesting battle mechanics and satisfying traversal. They don't really need this kind of design to be fun and would probably just get in the way. If Octopath Traveler pulled some of the shit this game pulled, I would have never gotten through it. I know this for certain because the secret final boss feels like some early JRPG bullshit and I never actually beat it because the 60 hours of game prior to that were relatively friction-less. I feel like there's a balance between mechanical smoothness and roughness that I want games to have.

I don't think Dragon Quest 4 comes close to hitting this balance, I still had fun with it. I don’t know if it is good or bad, but it's funny and charming, which I think are all I really require to like a game. its consistency in its mechanics and indifference to the player feels brutal, but that only strengthens the contrast from the surface level coziness of the setting. That dissonance is where I think the essence of classic JPRGs comes from. If this story had a dark and grim tone, but was mechanically the same, I wouldn't fuck with it. But it's a colorful world filled with goofy Akira Toriyama Monsters. So when I get jumped by a gang of Giant Slimes and get party wiped, I can really help but smile along with them.

[bikwin5]

early chapter 5

[ticosanchezz]

Chapters of the Chosen

[xbuster]

DQまとめ by Mahoshiki

[spacevixenmusic]

Pour one out for every time my heart skipped a beat while watching Dragon Quest: The Adventure of Dai (1991) and thinking I was finally about to see a DQ4 character but got juked.

See, part of the reason I put this anime on my list oh so many years ago now is because I grew up with the Dragon Warrior games on NES, and 4 in particular was one of my world-reshaping JRPGs (I feel like most everyone has at least one JRPG they played in their childhood or teen years that completely rocked them to their core; this was one of mine). In the early 00s when I learned what Google Image Search was, I got really into looking for fan art of characters I had only seen previously as pixel sprites. And while looking up DQ4 characters (I only knew their early NA translation names, not the modern ones they have today), I saw an image of what I THOUGHT must have been a screenshot from an anime featuring two of my favorite characters from DQ4. I only saw that one image by itself and nothing else like it, so I figured if it was a screenshot it must have only been like one scene in one episode, so it probably wasn't a big deal, but it was still cool and stuck in my memory for years.

Eventually, I found out that there was in fact a Dragon Quest anime, about original characters and an original plot with no direct ties to any of the games I grew up with. But it sounded like it could be fun nonetheless, and hey, maybe it still did have that screenshot after all! So now here I am in 2023, finally got around to watching it and keeping my eyes peeled for that so-called screenshot, just in case. This is also a big reason I watched the 91 anime instead of the new 2020 one, even though the 91 version doesn't cover the complete manga series. I've been catching all the little references to DQ trivia and monsters that I know along the way, but it's been mostly centered on stuff from DQ 1-3, with 4 mostly only reflected in the background music (which in hindsight makes sense, given that the game debuted around 1990, and the anime aired in 91-92, adapted from a manga that started in 89).

Anyway, I'm 99% positive now that what I saw back then was not, in fact, a screenshot of Mara and Nara (oh sorry, guess I should use their modern names now - Maya and Meena Mahabala), but just a really cool fan art. A mild disappointment, but I can't fault the anime for that. Now I wonder if I can still dig up that fan art to show what I was talking about...

[higadoyrinon]

Our fourth Dragon Quest 4 promo was Meena and Maya!

[z-raven]

My fav characters in Dragon Quest Heroes 2.

A lot of DQIV representation in this game, but hey that is fine, even though I never played IV.

Teresa , Desdemona, Alena, Maya, Meena, and Jessica

[grottosconvoy]

Day 1 V.S Day 622

I’ve taken several breaks over the span of several months and yet I still manage to get sucked back into this game anytime I dare open it up again.

[popculturebuffet]

Theevan Review (Patreon Review for Emma Fici)

It's been a long year. While we're almost at the end and film has never been better, a combination of Disney being homophobic, warner bros burning the house down, and the worry the republicans would hyjack the goverment (they haven't.. for now).. it's been a LOT. I"m fairly exausted coming out of it and I STILL have a month to go. It has not been great. So naturally finding out what Emma intended for my patreon review, the Looney Tunes Special carnival of the animals, gave me almost nothing to work with wasn't great. Thankfully Emma, one of my patreons and closest friends, is a VERY understanding person, so she was fine with switching and since we were well past thanksgiving, that mean ti twas a free for all.. and that meant I got Theevan instead. And boy was this a nice early christmas present. Theevan... is what was as far as I can tell a student project done in blender by Indian Animated Danan Thiakanathan about ten years ago, that he turned from a student film into a full film in 1 and a half years. And that's part of the problem: that's a fairly short time for an indie animation, and it's clear Danan was so eager to get the film out. .he didn't really beta test it enough. As such it is one of the most memetically jank peices of animation out there: characters move their arms weird like their being posed, theevan's mom I guess meena has hair that looks like she hsaved all but a few strands off and never flows right, and theevan himself has expressions that look like an alien is going to burst from him and reveal it's true form any moment. It's not great and while I can't falt Danan's inexperince, I can fault him for getting a bit too eager. Trust me I know what it's like to want to get your project done now and some reviews i've regretted because I sent them out too soon or didn't have the time. It's why when you have al lthe time you need you should treasure it, use it well and use it wisely. That said even if Theevan was beauitfully animated... it's still a fairly simple story of a child who looks about 34 going on a quest to revive his mom after she leaves on "the ship" which I thought was you know going to be a metaphor for death or something but is an actual ship.. only for a dragon to kill it. Except the dragon might be her? Oh and he gets mugged by goblins because why not, meets a giant dragon being that looks like him, the dragon who may be his mom is killed, he get shis wish.. then falls off a cliff and falls into the water opening some kind of egg. My exact reaction

I didn't even mention the paper mache dragon he just flies around on. I get this was a university project.. but even for an experimental film it's pretty nonsensical. It's just kinda danan doing random shit. It's why THIS was hard to review too:

It was a fun bunch of stuff. I haven't gotten to bring it up a ton but I fucking love goblins so if you give me a bunch of goblins mugging a bald 12 year old whose clearly going through a big type situation for no reason, i'm going to love it. And honestly I can't mock the guys passion. I love animation, and love reviewing it and while critisims of "well then make your own thing then" don't hold weight with me, I can respect someone going out and doing it. Theevan may be weird, it may be majestic, but this man went out, made his vision, and put it out with no fear or shame. It's what makes the best so bad it's good stuff to me: when the creator isn't doing it to make it bad on purpose, or isn't a dick, but simply has genuine passion, heart and dedication. Theevan is a mess. I could barely make this much sense of it.. but it made me smile in a year where this medium's been in deep shit and my anxiety and workload has been getting to me. And that.. that's worth something.

[patchun]

I am really enjoying Dragon Quest 4. Might end up being one of my favorite JRPGs of all time. These characters are really resonating with me, Torneko and Alena are fantastic and I've just started Maya and Meena's chapter.

This is like that one Switch game where you play as a bunch of different people before getting together but seemingly better executed and the first of its kind!

[oldthe-nothing-maker]

This game was the first game that made me cry! I think my young self would have killed to draw these ladies like this ahah

[jayramsart]

Dragon Quest 35th Anniversary, anyone?

[videogamequeens]

[flappingdragonquest-imagines]

so uh, I did a ✨ thing ✨

[questersrest]

Steam trading card artwork for Dragon Quest Heroes II: Twin Kings and the Prophecy's End

In case the images get scaled down or compressed, the original size (1920x1080) images can be found here:

Lazarel • Teresa • Desdemona • Cesar • Maribel • Ruff • Torneko • Carver • Angelo

[stardust-lightning]

It finally happened last night

Rivals is truly gone for good

This was what greets you when you try to get into it now

Rip 2017-2021