Dragon Warrior IV is the localised American version of Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen. It’s an RPG, developed by Chunsoft and initially published by Enix in 1990 in Japan (and 1992 in North America).

What makes this fourth Dragon Warrior game different to previous games in the series is that the story is divided into five different chapters. Each chapter follows the fortunes of a different playable character (under your control), with the fifth chapter being told from the hero’s perspective.

The game has day and night cycles, turn-based combat (a standard of the series and something that the original Dragon Quest pioneered), and the ability to travel by ship (and hot air balloon). It has relatively basic graphics, but is still very absorbing to play – mostly because the combat and levelling are compelling, as they always are in Dragon Quest games, and because the monster designs are interesting (and probably familiar to anyone who’s played a more recent Dragon Quest game).

This game was the last Dragon Warrior game released on the NES, with subsequent titles in the series (Dragon Quest V and VI) coming out on the Super Famicom (and not getting official English language releases until decades later).

Dragon Warrior IV was re-made for the PlayStation and the Nintendo DS, and of course the Dragon Quest series continues to be a ‘thing’ to this day (the last game in the series – at the time of writing – being Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age, which was released in 2020). While Dragon Warrior IV (and its predecessors) are now quite dated, they’re still very good games, and would probably be enjoyed by anyone who likes old school, turn-based JRPGs or the history of the Dragon Quest series in general.

More: Dragon Quest IV on Wikipedia
More: The Dragon Quest series on thekingofgrabs.com