Legacy of the Wizard NES

Oh man...you kids don't know how lucky you are...Back in the day there was no internet and gaming magazines couldnt cover everything...some stuff you had to find out for yourself.  Some stuff you find out...you don't want to find out.  Sometimes a friend of yours is reading the manual at school and the game looks amazing and sometimes you go out to toys "r" us and spend odd job money on a hunk of monkey shit.  That's what happened here.

So that's our start screen-not the worst we've seen on NES so you still think you're getting what's on the cover.

then we choose our character from a family of...uh heroes.  There is Xemn, Meyna, Lyll, Jiela, Douel, and Poochi the family pet...yeah you read that.  What does this family have in common? they were all seemingly named by a dyslexic drunk during Mardi Gras.  

So now we're ready to hit the dungeons in search of four fabled crowns that this family wants for some unknown reason.  But I mean LOOK at this?  Who designs this shit?  We have ladders going to nowhere-dunno who that's supposed to fool.  Did the level designer just have to hit a ladder quote or something?  Why not make this game top down and just make actual real obstacles?  The NES was known for platformers and this game tried real bad to be one.  Usually platformers consist of jumping and attacking.  This game consists of jumping and sucking a log of donkey shit.  What did they learn? Falcom (the maker) learned that American gaming was far different from Japanese gaming.

I mean look at this.  This doesnt even look fun.  The problem here is that not every Japanese game should have made the hop across the pond.  All you japan fans out there who think they always do it better need to take a note...we ONLY get what they get right.  Miserable failures are vaulted and buried.  But this was back in the day when no one really knew what would be a success and what wouldnt.  This game is a failed experiment.  In those days if you grew up in an Asian neighborhood like I did you saw a lot of this kinda shit in the school yard.  After having my money stolen in exchange for this game I avoided any recommendations based solely on seeing manuals in people's backpacks.

Today we're looking at Dragon Warrior IV for the NES.  If this flew under your radar I don't know what to say but stop reading this and go to ebay right now.  It commands money that is comparable and sometimes surpasses modern day games.  There are a few reasons-it is retro not easily had and it is amazingly awesome...if you like RPGs anyway.  If you're an RPG player you will more than likely love the hell out of this game.

Enix before they merged with square made some games that didnt mess around.  Dragon warrior was one of the first games of that type to hit a console in such a way.  The sequels always improved and expanded and never disappointed...well maybe a little but they still blew you away.

The overview of this game is that it is five stories that all interlace and for the time it was done in a pretty amazing way.  Chapter 1 as a kid was the most boring to me and a poor choice to start the game with.  It's standard crap.  You're Ragnar the knight captain and you have to investigate the disappearance of the neighborhood children.  There is very little map to explore and you have to level like mad just to get to anywhere interesting.  But as an adult I understand why they chose this as the first chapter.  It is the most Dragon warrior like chapter of them all-knights, wizards, heroics etc.

The game handles like any other RPG so controls and stuff arent an issue here.  There isnt much clunkiness going on in menu screens either...not much.  The difficulty and balance are harmonious although later in the game it is possible to wander off your ship into an ass kicking of unfair proportions.  Death can be very expensive in this game so that part does kind of suck.  The over world map I mean you cant TELL whats going to be in the battle screen.  You find out.

The world was pretty damned big for a NES game too.  There were no shortage of dungeons and caves to crawl around in and even a giant statue you had to use to cross a body of water-pretty bad ass for its day.  The music with the exception of the airship music blows you away-it hits the right emotions.  The flow of the game is fairly fast paced even when you're chasing down a mandatory sidequest (which again was a fairly new idea).  DWIV ushered in or at least did well many things we still see in modern RPGs.

The imagery and graphics in the game are wonderful.  Every little detail they could put into this game was indeed put into this game.  Enix took no short cuts and did it right in almost every way.

As mentioned it is split into five chapters.  In the final chapter you collect all the characters from the previous ones to join your quest.  You can only decide what the main character does in battle.  All the guys you picked up along the way that have super duper spells and bad ass abilities? it's up to the computer to decide how to use them.  This makes no sense since each character had command calls for their own adventure...why did they remove the coding for them in chapter 5?  Was it to further make you feel like the main character?  Who knows.  Poor decision to do so if they could have let you control them all.

But that's it that's my only complaint aside from that this game is one of the best games on NES and has aged wonderfully.  The difficulty is not as bad as I remember as a kid...course I am a hell of a lot more tactical now.

I'm not going to rate graphics and sound and gameplay like a bunch of other guys do...no.  I mean it's retro so just saying the graphics are good/bad is enough really.   I recommend getting a copy if you collect and playing the ROM next time you want an old school RPG that won't disappoint.