Psaving Psaro (original) (raw)

Dragon Quest IV was pretty amazing when I played it on the NES, so I made sure to pick up a copy of the DS remake in 2008, after which I played through most of the game and then set it aside indefinitely. I have a habit of doing things like that. It might not be a bad idea to do a replay, but I have other things I want to do first. One addition to this version is that there’s a sixth chapter, accessible after you beat Psaro, although it doesn’t exactly follow it narratively. Instead, it reverts you back to your last save, but with some things changed, most notably a big fissure having opened at the altar in the Azimuth. I looked this up, and I’m not really sure how anyone could find it on their own without going back to every single town. It leads to a bonus dungeon that, like the ones in the Game Boy Advance Final Fantasy, has different environments on pretty much every floor, including some houses. At the bottom, you come across two guys called Chow Mein and Foo Young, who apparently spend most of their time arguing about chickens and eggs.

They’re not particularly antagonistic, but that doesn’t mean they hold back; it’s a pretty difficult battle. At least it lets you access your reserve characters in the wagon. During the fight, instead of the normal fight theme, it plays the casino music. Defeating these two allows a flower to grow on the World Tree, which only blooms once every thousand years, and can bring people back from types of death that normal spells or Yggdrasil Leaves cannot. You use it to resurrect Psaro’s girlfriend Rose, and she joins you to confront the villain in Nadiria (although she doesn’t fight in battles), convincing him to team up with you. Yes, this is the guy who murdered everyone in the hero’s home village, but these things can happen. He was already the first main villain in the series to have enough character development to be somewhat sympathetic. He hates humans, but that’s partially because they would try to torment Rose to get her to cry ruby teardops, and he seems to be respected among his monster followers and the animals he gave the power of speech. One of his top officers, Aamon, reveals when you fight him that he was responsible for Rose’s death, having disguised himself as a human to lead a party to kidnap her, so that he can goad Psaro into taking his place as a super-evolved supervillain.

The bonus content builds on this by having Aamon take over as ruler of the monsters and use the Secret of Evolution on himself, making him the official final boss.

He takes a similar form to Psaro, as everyone knows the ultimate goal of evolution is to turn into a giant creature with knee spikes and a face on your chest. He has fewer forms than Psaro, and doesn’t seem to be as powerful until the final one, but it’s mitigated by how you can’t access reserve members during this fight. Getting Psaro as a playable character is pretty cool, and he has access to some abilities that didn’t originally exist until later DQ games. The downside is that you really don’t have any dungeons to traverse after getting him, so you’re mostly just going to be using him for grinding. After beating Aamon, you go through the same basic ending as before. Psaro refuses to enter Zenithia, but the Zenith Dragon acknowledges his contribution anyway, and you see Psaro and Rose watching your balloon as you float over Rosehill. By the way, Aamon is named after a being from demonology, probably derived from the Egyptian god Amon, often depicted as a wolf with a snake tail.

The earlier English translation called him Radimvice, and in Japanese he’s just “Evil Priest.” In later appearances, his evolved form is called Ashtaroth, another traditional demon.

The other main addition to the DS version is the immigrant town, which is established in the desert where a bazaar is held in Chapter 2 by Hank Hoffman Jr., an innkeeper’s son who joins your party for a little while as an uncontrollable character. The town that develops over time is pretty common in RPGs, and one of them is part of the plot in DQ3. You can recruit people from various places in the world to live there, and residents include plays on Rocky and Adrian, Elvis, Marie Curie, and political philosopher Leo Strauss.

You find out over time that the site used to be the location of a country called Pioniria, ruled by a sultan who accidentally triggered a genie’s curse. The town eventually develops into a castle, and the sultan is restored.

The guy who came there specifically to be king doesn’t seem to mind this. For that matter, isn’t the desert part of Zamoksva? When the Tsar returns, what does he think of this restored kingdom showing up in his land? I’ve also read that you can get a cross-dressing version of Psaro to live there if you beat Chow Mein and Foo Young a few more times.

Once was enough for me, at least for the time being.

This entry was posted in African, Animals, Dragon Quest, Egyptian, Focus on the Foes, Humor, Magic, Monsters, Music, Mythology, Names, Religion, Video Games and tagged aamon, amon, ashtaroth, chow mein, demons, dragon quest iii, dragon quest iv, dragons, elves, foo young, hank hoffman jr, jinn, pioniria, psaro, radimvice, rosehill, secret of evolution, zenith dragon, zenithia. Bookmark the permalink.