Good gravy, that took forever. The next installment will definitely be shorter.
I was all set to go with Terry - he distinguished himself in DQ6, after all - but as of this writing the people have chosen Jessica.
Edit: As I post this, I see a last-minute rally in favor of Biggdiqs.
Tempting, but...no.But it'll be a while before we get to see how she's doing. First, it's time for...
"This is a story about the royal soldiers of a small country called Burland. One of the royal soldiers is you, Ragnar. One morning, the King summons all the soldiers to the Castle court...."
:The mothers from Izmit Village came to me in tears this morning begging for help.
: As the King of this country, I cannot ignore this problem any longer.
: Find the cause of these disappearances and report to me! Go, my soldiers!
Also a plea from one of the mothers, just for maximum pathos.
About RagnarRagnar is your standard sword-wielding, mustache-wearing, cigar-smoking (I assume) badass. He gets the best weapons and armor in the game, and his Strength and Maximum HP are both fantastic. His everything else is...not so fantastic: lousy Agility, no spells at all, even his Luck is below par. But as long as he has companions to heal him, buff him, and throw spells at the monsters who can't be harmed physically, he can be an absolute killing machine.
Unfortunately for him, his fellow soldiers are all incompetent asstards, so he's going to have to get the job done solo. Should be fun!
Anyway, that's the setup. Children are going missing, no one knows why, and apparently there's no police force so it's the army's job to get to the bottom of things.
But first, we have to come to grips with the central question of the game, the one we'll have to face for every location we enter:
what can we steal from this place?
Well, that certainly looks promising.
As in Dragon Warriors 2 and 3 (and possibly 5 and 6? It's been a while), Dragon Warrior 4 operates on a standardized key-based security system. There are three kinds of keys in the world, each opening a specific set of doors. This door requires the Thief's Key - until we get it, we won't be able to steal anything from the Burland treasury (reasonably enough).
Also, you can see above the standard NES Dragon Quest command menu. You hit 'A', the window opens, you pick the subcommand you want. Most of them do what you'd expect; 'Tactics' is more involved, but it'll be a while before it matters.
Spoiler: this will not be a problem.
Everyone in the castle has something like this to say. Nobody says anything about what they plan to do about it, though; I guess that's someone else's job. It better not be Ragnar; hitting stuff really hard is pretty much his only skill.
Even the guards are getting edgy.
The King will comment on our progress as we investigate, but right now he just gives us (admittedly well-deserved) shit for not having done anything yet.
Random Guard #4 is not exaggerating. Seriously, look at this:
Copper weapon, leather armor, 50 gold pieces, and fuck-all else. That's what the children of Izmit are worth. Monster-killing income is entirely untaxed, though, so at least we can slaughter our way to some decent gear.
The underfunded, slack-ass policing theme continues! This woman knows better than to file an actual missing persons report for her husband; she just mentions it to whoever drops by and hopes for the best. Burland must have been
really peaceful before the recent uptick in monster activity.
This is the NES in the early 90s, so churches are still "Houses of Healing". But they serve the same function as churches do in later DQ games: saving your game, reviving your friends, removing cursed items, and getting un-poisoned for like 3gp less than an antidote from the item shop would cost.
This comes up a couple of times throughout the game, and is never really explained. What keeps monsters out of towns? They don't all have walls, and even if they did lots of monsters can fly.
There are plenty of weapons and armor available, they're just all beyond our means right now. As things stand, we can
almost afford a leather hat. Time to get to the killing.
Welcome to sunny Burland, hemmed in by mountains on three sides. Wander around outdoors long enough...
And some monsters will find you.
The face of evil.
Combat is (for the moment) completely DQ-standard. Ragnar has no magic, and Parrying is pretty much never the right choice, so his options boil down to "Hit something", "Run away", or "Use a medical herb".
But I'll say this for him: he's good at hitting stuff.
Anyway, Ragnar wanders about butchering the local wildlife (Slimes, Stag Beetles, and Giant Worms), and before long...
The first of many. Though at this stage of the game, grinding is more about accumulating money than XP; levels just don't improve your stats as much as good equipment can.
If someone in your party is critically injured, the menu goes green. But as with all console RPGs, complete healing is just a nap away.
Burland after dark.
Monster groups get bigger and nastier at night, and some enemies won't show their faces (or mandibles or pseudopods or whatever) during the day.
Much slaughtering later, we've obtained enough money to buy...
...the Wooden Hat! This is the most advanced head-armor technology that the kingdom of Burland possesses, and it will serve us well throughout the chapter.
Heading north and west from Burland, we come to a cavern. Izmit is on the other side of the river, north and east of where we're standing, and apparently some long-ago Burlandese monarch decided it would be easier to dig
under the river than it would be to, say, build a bridge. This preference for tunnels over bridges exists throughout the world, as we'll see later.
New areas bring new enemies. Diverats sometimes call for help and can apparently fly by flapping their ears, while Babbles are little green assholes who like to dodge attacks and poison people. Fuck Babbles.
Treasure chests. Stand on them and use the Search command, and they'll give up the loot (or occasionally try to kill you). This one had a medical herb.
This is technically true, but all he actually
does is wander around in circles by the pool of water. There's an exit 5 steps away, but he's just too navigationally challenged to find it. Ragnar, knowing full well that this guy will be of no help even if he does manage to successfully navigate the dread Room With Two Exits, leaves him here. He'll be fine: there's plenty of fresh water, and Diverat haunch is tasty raw.
Murder, loot, murder, o hey stairs. This is maybe 20 steps north of our friend the Lost Soldier.
Now that we're out of the cave, we have a clear shot to Izmit in the northeast. Also pictured: a mysterious tower that wasn't mentioned in our briefing and can't be accessed by land.
Izmit village, now with 50% less children. Let's see if we can't do something about that.
Except not right this second, because we've arrived at night and nothing's open.
One stay at the inn later...
Doh!
Anyway, while we're here we might as well explore a little. The weapon and armor shops have a bunch of excellent gear, far better than anything that can be had in Burland, but it's all ruinously expensive.
In the inn we meet a seer. Good news: there is somebody whose job it is to fix everything. Bad news: she hasn't been born yet, so things are going to get way worse before they get better.
Cut off: "I came to Izmit village too," or something equally inane.As for the tower...how
can we access it? It's surrounded by water so walking is out, and no one in Burland seems to know anything about boats (witness their solution to the river), so sailing is out too. What to do?
For that matter, if the kids are really disappearing into the tower, how are
they getting there?
Enough of that mystery for now, let's solve an easier one: what's this little tunnel behind the church?
Ah. The Izmit town jail. Of course. I guess Izmit is more of a lawless frontier, compared to staid and stately Burland. That would explain why Izmit gets all the good equipment, too.
Even though Ragnar is captain of the royal guards, he doesn't have the authority to free this man. To do that we'd need a Final Key, and it'll be a while before we run into one of those. Someone around here must have one - if not, how'd they create the door in the first place? - but they're not sharing.
That's all we can do in Izmit for now, so it's time to grind outside until night falls. One training montage later...
I stayed up all night fighting monsters so I could talk to you, and this is the best you've got?
The concerned mother manages to be
even more useless. This blase attitude makes total sense under normal circumstances - I'd even go so far as to call it great parenting - but when children are randomly vanishing for no known reason the rules change a bit.
But whatever, let's talk to the children and investigate this big secret.
Not what I was expecting, but it's something, I guess. Although...wait a sec, wasn't Flora's missing husband named Alex?
I'll be damned; her "mention him to random people" strategy worked perfectly.
Shop owners in repose. Also pictured: priests never sleep.
: For what it's worth, buddy, even if monsters did somehow get in here you'd probably be the only survivor. Monsters don't carry Final Keys, after all.
: Gwaaaah!
: That sounded much more reassuring in my head.
Anyhoo, it's back to Burland to inform Flora of the happy-ish news.
And...
...so...
...we...
...do.
I'll just give you the happy reunion scene verbatim:
The loving couple has been reunited through the power of spousal abuse, and we got a clue out of it. All in all, a solid day's work.
To read signs, use the Search command. I remember being utterly confounded by this as a child.
Anyway, we head four steps south...
And four steps east...
And arrive at an ugly little clearing. That black stuff on the left is poison swamp. All in all, not a good place for kids.
Oh yes, here's another first in the DQ series: evil wells. This one isn't just an enemy, either: it can talk, and it beckons us deeper inside.
Jumping down the well brings us into a cave system with lots of branching paths.
At each branch, the voice calls to us again, but doesn't actually specify which way it wants us to go.
But if you pick a direction it doesn't like, it complains.
As long as you stay on the path, there are no monsters; the whole deal is completely child-safe.
But if you wander off, you get jumped. Lethal Gophers are not very dangerous; their thing is that they spend a turn building up power, and then hit for double damage. But that only works if they get two turns to live, and generally they don't.
If you follow the voice's directions all the way, you eventually reach this important-looking thing.
Flying Shoes? Boss. I hate to give up one of my eight inventory slots (the Bag from later DQs had not yet been invented), but I'll gladly accept the power of flight in exchange.
Let's try this shit out.
...g high into the sky.
Only not, because we're indoors and there's a ceiling. Oh well, Ragnar wasn't using his Intelligence stat anyway.
Wandering off the beaten path we find a bunch more monsters, most notably this jackass. Like his cousin the Babble, the Healer is incredibly annoying; Ragnar doesn't do
quite enough damage to one-shot one, so even trivially easy battles like this one can end up taking several turns as the Healer repeatedly heals itself of all damage. If there are other monsters around at the same time, things can get genuinely dangerous.
So, Healers suck and should die. There's one, let's kill it!
...oh.
Healers are jerks in general, but this one seems ok. Shall we take him with us, or leave him behind?
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Topic: Let's Play Dragon Warrior 4! (Read 54220 times)