Dragon Quest IV originally came out for the NES back in the very early 90's, then was remade for the PS (Japan only) about ten years later. Now, thankfully, they have decided to rerelease it to the US market on the DS.

Graphically, it doesn't look too different from the original game. The characters are all still sprites on a 2D world. They look really good on the DS screen, though. The lines are sharp and the colors are bright. When you get the close-ups in battle, they are quite beautiful looking. The monsters still look the same as they have in every Dragon Quest game that I've played. Akira Toriyama's creations are beautiful.

Background music is very pretty. It is so much more exciting and less bland than music on some current games. Each chapter is set in a different area, so you get different music in their scenes. You also get the little noises, like footsteps on stairs and door openings, that are missing from lots of more modern games.

The translations could be difficult to read at times, especially when they were trying to get across a different accent with the spelling. Statements like "your poor extinct mother" and "I wish I am not born in here" make it difficult to not laugh sometimes. Mostly you could figure out what they were trying to say, though.

The gameplay in Dragon Quest IV: Chapter of the Chosen is slightly different from most RPG's. Usually you get one set of characters and that's who you play with for the entire game. In Dragon Quest IV, each of the five chapters brings new characters for you to play with. The chapters are not necessarily equal in length. All of the characters from the first four chapters will come together in the fifth one though, so it's not like you're done with them when their chapter is over. The whole point of the story is for the people from the first four chapters to find the person in the fifth chapter.

In each chapter, you will have one or more characters to battle with. You can find out where you're supposed to go by just wandering around and talking to the various people that you meet in the towns. There are three types of areas in Dragon Quest IV, the towns, the world map, and the dungeons. When you are in town, you are safe from attack. There are no random monsters in towns. Each town has several buildings possibly including a church, an inn, a weapon shop, a defensive gear shop, an item shop, and random people's dwellings. If there is an inn, you can rest there for a fee. The churches provide you a save point. The shops allow you to buy items.

Once you leave the safety of the towns, you can be randomly attacked anywhere on the world map or in the dungeons. The dungeons can be nice, however, because there tend to be chests scattered around them with helpful healing items, armor, and weapons. You should always look for chests and open them. One note about dungeons, if you're underground or in a cave, don't use a chimera wing to try and whisk you out. You'll only hit your head on the ceiling and waste the wing.

If you die in battle, you need to go back to a town to bring party members back to life. To bring one or more party members back from the dead, just go to a church and choose resurrection. If all party members die, you end up back at the last church saved at. You will have to bring all party members but the main one back to life. You will lose half your gold when all party members die (except when carrying the steel strong box). You will retain knowledge of any map areas that you explored before you died and any levels and experience that you gained, but you will also be out all the items that you used since your last save. Sometimes I found it was just better to load from the last save rather than lose half my gold.

Like most RPG's, Dragon Quest IV: Chapter of the Chosen can be as difficult or as easy as you want it to be. If you want a challenge, then you can just run straight through to the end without leveling up at all. You will probably have a difficult time with the bosses if you are 2 or 3 levels under what you need to be to win. If you want it to be easy, then you can spend a lot of time fighting creatures in the dungeons to get more experience. I did find that the game was pretty good at keeping you near the level you needed to be. It would have taken a long time to get to a much higher level than you should be because you just don't get enough experience off of the monsters that are available.

One thing that is more difficult to deal with than some of the newer games is the death of a party member. In some more current games, you've got plenty of items to bring someone back to life or they even automatically come back with 1 hit point so you just have to heal them. In Dragon Quest IV, you have to make your way back to a church to bring them back to life. If you're at the bottom of a dungeon with only two characters to begin with and you let one of them die, chances are pretty good that you're not going to make it out of there alive. You have to be really careful about death.

I was pleased that it was relatively easy to find your way around. Since the world map showed me where I was in relation to where I needed to go and the people in the villages were really helpful in telling you what direction you needed to go, I rarely got lost, which is a miracle for me. The dungeons and cave did have branching paths, but they weren't so confusing that you couldn't remember where you'd been and where you needed to go. Overall, the game is very well laid out.

Dragon Quest IV: Chapter of the Chosen is played entirely using the D-pad and the buttons. The touch screen is not used in any way, which makes sense since it's a port from a previous system that didn't have touch capabilities. As you would guess, the D-pad moves you around the screen and the buttons are used for talking to people, picking up objects, and attacking in battle. One really nice feature is that you can turn the screen using the shoulder buttons. This made it really easy to see some of the hidden doorways that you had to walk through.

I have thoroughly enjoyed playing Dragon Quest IV. It is really great to see an old game being brought back. The nostalgia alone is worth playing. If you're one of those people that have to have the latest graphics and is dying to use the touch screen for everything, then you're probably not going to enjoy Dragon Quest IV very much. If you liked it when it first came out, or you're missing the sprites of yesterday, you're really going to enjoy this game. As an added bonus, there is a new dungeon available at the end of the game that wasn't there for the previous versions. So go get Dragon Quest IV today. It's definitely worth the time and money.