Down by the Riverside
South of the village of Riverside is an overworld area we haven't paid much attention to yet. We can get to this area in two ways: either by simply sailing south of Riverside, or by warping to the west side of the island via the locked shrine near Soretta. But actually the latter doesn't work, because it just puts us in a place enclosed by mountains. This leaves me wondering if, at some point, we will lose our ship and be forced to travel here on foot.
Anyway, just a few paces south of Riverside is a shrine bordering a river. Across the river is another shrine, and apparently going in this direction will get us to a Monster Castle. But there's no way to cross the river! So we check out the shrine instead.
Here there is a little cottage with a priest, and this curious golden statue. I thought maybe we'd have to use one of our mysterious story items on this statue, but when we approach it...
It's a dungeon! The overworld sprite severely underrepresented how huge this statue actually is! I love how they used a limited tileset to communicate the statue's feet. I guess we enter via the bottom of the skirt.
The interior has what is, so far, a totally unique tileset! This dungeon is also unique - up to this point - in that we can't warp out of it. There are also only a couple of areas where we can dive off the side, and they're way up at the top. So we've got a job ahead of us.
The scariest foe keeping us from this goal are the Blizzardmen, a palette swap of the Burning Warriors we first saw back in the lighthouse. They sometimes appear in groups of three, and they have a high chance of casting zaki (instant death) on the first round of combat. Drac doesn't know a revival spell yet, so I either have to bring two healers or hope against hope their spell doesn't hit Minnea on the first round. And since DQ's revival spells always have a chance of failure, yeah.
The first several trips don't go too well.
But it's worth noting how idiosyncratic this dungeon is! We haven't seen a lot of "real place" feelin' dungeons in Dragon Quest yet - the design is usually communicated through a gimmick like slide tiles or through enemy sets. The river colossus has areas that communicate what part of the statue you're exploring - you go out a door onto the statue's left hand, later you have to jump out the statue's right eye to land on its right hand. And eventually, you get to the cranium:
"There's a lever. Pull it?"
If you choose "yes," the colossus picks up its feet and marches across the river, carrying you and your friends with it. Once it finishes its journey, you can dive out the ears and land on the overworld. What a cool dungeon!!!!!
Death Palace
Walking around on the other side of the river is nearly as stressful as the inside of the colossus, because (1) the same enemy set is present and (2) your wagon doesn't follow you here. So you can't just switch out party members if you lose one. Fortunately, it's a fairly short hike to the east side of the island, where we do, in fact, find a monster castle.
In my first pass through this castle, I tried talking to the monsters and they all attacked me. So I snuck around in the dark and looted the treasure room. But it turned out that this was the place I'm supposed to use the transformation staff that we found earlier! I might have realized this before I came out here if I'd gone to Rosary Hill first, but more on that later.
The transformation staff turns the whole party into a random NPC (duplicated four times), and if that NPC is a monster, the characters in Death Palace are friendly to you. There's all sorts of fun stuff to see in Death Palace - monsters complaining about their jobs, monsters taking naps, people locked in the dungeon waiting to be cooked and eaten...oh wait, that's not fun. But the people do use the standard Looney Tunes "Don't eat me! I taste terrible!" dialogue, which makes it feel more comedic than horrifying. Although there is a priest in one cell who merely begs god for deliverance. Okay, it's pretty horrifying.
But even if you unlock their cells, they just wander around aimlessly, so we check out the rest of the dungeon.
Here's one of my favorite bits. There's a skeleton lying on the ground in one of these bedrooms. When you talk to him, it initially gives you the standard "there's no response..." you get when you try talking to a corpse. But then it leaps to its feet!
The skeleton was a monster!
* "Don't wake me up! I'm sleepy. Mumble mumble..."
Near the napping skeleton is a rogue armor who tells us we're late for the "meeting" upstairs. So we head up there and find ourselves in the castle throne room, where there's a group of monsters all waiting in their seats. We take a place and, after a moment, someone warps in. It's Pisaro! He asks for a report, and we hear news that "Hell Emperor Estark," a baddie we haven't heard of yet, has been revived in the Attemto Mines. Pisaro orders his troops to move out to Attemto.
Can I just say - this whole segment is SO COOL. I love how it shows the movements of the game's antagonists like this. And the idea of there being all these disparate rulers from hell that Pisaro is trying to either gather up or ally with hints at a much larger world that we haven't seen yet.
DQIV does a great job of making you feel like you're part of an ongoing story, and living in a world full of moving parts that grow and change over time. This is the first DQ game that has given me that sense of story that I've often felt in later JRPGs. It's great! It's one reason I've been unable to put this game down.
Anyway, now that we know where Pisaro is going, we can head him off at the pass. But I decide to go somewhere else first, just on a hunch.
Rosary Hill
Last time we were in Gardenburg, the queen told us there was a place south of the castle known as "Rosary Hill." The area around the castle only contains the cave where we fought Bakota, so I start sailing around the middle of the continent trying to find a village I haven't seen yet. And, sure enough, I find one!
Rosary Hill is one of the tiniest villages we've seen yet, and hey, it's inhabited by tiny people (they refer to themselves as hobbits!). Amusingly, a single old man operates the town's church, item shop, weapon shop, and armor shop all by himself, and he does it by rushing from storefront to storefront. You have to catch him at the appropriate counter to get the service you need.
The hobbits in this village tell us that the tower at the north end of town is home to an elf named Rosary whose tears are said to transform into rubies. A ghost on the village outskirts tells us many come to this town to try to bully Rosary into crying out gemstones so they can get rich. And indeed, there's a knight staying at the inn who tells us he's straight up here to get them rubies. And on the north side of town is that same tower we saw in the dream at Imar.
If we go to the tower at night, we can even see Rosary leaning out the window, just like in the dream. But there seems to be no way to get to her - the main entrance has no upstairs access. A boy in the village tells us he's heard there's a secret entrance to the tower somewhere, and the nun inside says the place was built by Pisaro, who incorporated hidden rooms.
At this point I remembered that, in the dream sequence, Pisaro goes to the tower's top floor via secret stairway on the grounds. But investigating the ground yields nothing. So I went back to Imar and had the dream sequence one more time, and this time, I noticed the strange flute jingle that plays just before the stairs appear.
Hey! I have a strange flute!
And sure enough, playing the flute outside the castle reveals the stairs! Up at the top, we find that Rosary's room is guarded by a boss known as the
Pisaro Knight. This guy looks like just another Rogue Armor palette swap, but he's got tons of HP and gives us 6,000+ XP for beating him, so it's clearly meant to be a climactic battle. But he's ultimately pretty easy to defeat.
Inside, we find Rosary. The poor elf is still grieving over Pisaro, whose actions she can no longer condone. She tells us up front that Pisaro and Despisaro are one and the same, and she wishes for nothing more than for us to crush his ambitions. With those words she sheds a single tear, which transforms into a ruby that dissolves in Drac's hand.
Beyond this, Rosary's slime handservant also tells us where to find the transformation staff, and that we could use it to infiltrate Death Palace. I guess the game probably meant for me to do this area first!
Anyway, next we'll go see about this Estark fella. In closing, the Pisaro Knight has a great name in the English versions:
Now, as for our list of loose ends:
Shrine South of Endor
Sky Armor
Sky Shield
Sky Helm
- Sky Sword
Shrine North of Soretta (warp gates)
Gardenburg
- Riverside (sealed "vehicles")
Mini-Medals
Magma Staff
Jail Key
Monster Castle Near Riverside
- Gold Ring (Frenor)
- Mountainous island at the center of the world map
- Treasure area on map
Strange flute
- Thirst stone
- Bag from Riverside
Rosary Hill
Transform Staff
- Hell Emperor Estark