Last updated on January 3rd, 2026 at 02:51 pm
DRAGON QUEST IV – Roleplaying Game Review
DRAGON QUEST IV is a Roleplaying game from SQUARE ENIX Co., Ltd., first launched in 7th August 2014.
It’s rated 9+ and currently has 129+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes DRAGON QUEST IV Stand Out
Dragon Quest IV, the first instalment in the Zenithian Trilogy, is now out on mobile devices!
This epic adventure, unfolding over five unique chapters, each focusing on a different cast of characters, can now be enjoyed on your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad!
Experience the full epic game with over 40 hours of gameplay in one standalone package!
Download it once, and there’s nothing else to buy, and nothing else to download!
*In-game text is available in English only.
◆ Story
In the far-flung corners of the world, our heroes’ stories are about to unfold…
Chapter 1: Ragnar McRyan and the Case of the Missing Children
Starring Ragnar McRyan, noble knight of bonnie Burland.
Chapter 2: Alena and the Journey to the Tourney
Starring Tsarevna Alena, tomboy princess, Kiryl the priest, her devoted follower, and Borya, the cantankerous conjurer who has watched over Alena since childhood.
Chapter 3: Torneko and the Extravagant Excavation
Starring Torneko Taloon, a weapon merchant chasing his lifelong dream.
Chapter 4: Meena and Maya and the Mahabala Mystery
Starring a pair of gifted sisters —Maya, the most alluring dancer in the entire world, and her fortune-telling sibling Meena—who will stop at nothing to avenge their father’s death.
Chapter 5: The Chosen
Starring a youthful hero destined to deliver the world from disaster.
At long last, the Chosen Ones, inseparably bound together by the thread of fate, set off to face their ultimate enemy!
◆ Game Features
・Party Talk
Chat with your loyal companions any time you like during your adventure!
They’ll tell you all kinds of interesting things, depending on where you are in the story, and what heroic feats you have accomplished!
・360-Degree Views
Rotate your viewpoint in towns and villages through a full 360 degrees to make sure you don’t miss a thing!
・Wagon Quest!
Once you have the wagon, you can take a team of up to ten companions around with you on your adventure, and swap them in and out of your party at will!
・AI Battles
Tired of giving orders? Your faithful companions can be instructed to fight automatically!
Use the various tactics at your disposal to see off even the toughest enemies with ease!
・The Casino
The old series favourite is back! Will you make a killing at the casino?
Try your luck at three fantastic games: slot machines, poker and monster battles!
・Chapter 6?
Experience an extra chapter past the ending and explore a challenging bonus dungeon.
[Supported Operating Systems]
iOS11.0 and above.
[Supported Devices]
iPhone 5S/iPod touch (6th Generation)/iPad (5th Generation) and above.
This Roleplaying game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, DRAGON QUEST IV is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 14th May 2025
Recent improvements include:
Fixed minor bugs.
Download & Availability
DRAGON QUEST IV is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Get DRAGON QUEST IV on App Store
Requirements: Requires iPhone 5s / iPad Air / iPad Air (Cellular) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina, Cellular) / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / iPad Air 2 / iPad Air 2 (Cellular) / iPad Mini 3 or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
We still remember playing this game when it was Dragon Warrior4 on the NES. And then again on the Nintendo DS. Almost a flawless game, just as we remember. One little bug, we cant seem to get Hoffmans place off the ground. Maybe its just us. Otherwise, one of our favorite all-time games.
Its a decent port but lacks modern features.
Dragon Quest 4 is very suitable for newcomers to the series. The difficulty is quite tame in comparison to the other DQ games. The game length is perfect with an average of 30 to 40 hours of gameplay. RPG players will not be disappointed with this one.
Overall its a great game but 4-6 cloud services dont seem to work at all, we recently bought a iPad and wanted to continue our progress but cant due to their being some sort of error. All we ask if Square Enix can fix this problem from such an amazing game.
This is the only version of the game with party chat available in non-Japanese languages, but it doesnt have controller support and relies on on-screen controls without a landscape mode option. The graphics feel like an odd mix of different fidelities that are a bit jarring to us, but otherwise its tolerable.
Need to add the feature of drag anywhere on screen to move.
This game is waaaay too convenient when it comes to long trips or free times, especially since you dont need an internet connection to play.
Only on Chapter 2 so far and enjoying it lots. Nice leveling mechanics, well-made interface, charming characters, and finding the right strategies to pull off combat with different enemies is satisfying. Love it so far.
We want you to introduce a Japanese translation.
Despite, in our opinion, having a weaker story to V, its still the same old Dq we love, this port takes the Ds remake and makes it even easier to access.
We're so glad these games got re-releases on ios or we may never have gotten to play them. While the npc accents may be almost illegible this is a great game with a great story line. Unfortunately there's no auto battle like other dragon quests but that only hinders combat a little bit. This game looks and plays great and is very engaging. We're loving it. @squareenix please release Dragon Quest VII 7 to us in English markets on mobile devices.
And one more thing. Could we have a bundle of DQ series.
People try to make fun or complain about the translation. Theyre too stupid to realize that the developers were trying to give the characters accents…. So sad. Wonderful game. Takes us back, and we appreciate the effort.
Square Enix wants to charge a premium price yet will only provide trash mobile support. The games cloud save function no longer works, so youre stuck playing the game on the device you started on. Apple has expanded controller support, yet Square Enix Dragon Quest games do not support them. Not only that, but these games can only be played in portrait view. Making it awkward playing these games on larger phones or tablets, or even with your device connected to a tv. So Squeenix, either stop the premium price grab, or start providing a game experience that justifies the price. Because right now its almost just another mobile trash game.
We originally played this on the NES. This is much worse. To add dialect and accent, they translated the Japanese to a language (such as Russian) and then translated THAT to English. So there are several idiosyncrasies that just fail, to the point of distracting from the charm of the game. We essentially bought this for Taloons chapter, but it just didnt scratch that nostalgia itch due to the awful translation.
Our understanding is that the game itself is quite good. Sadly, it is hidden behind an imprecise and uncomfortable interface (seriously, iPad players prepare for thumb discomfort) with no controller support, and a cloud sync feature that never actually works. No escape to the iPhone version for these poor despairing thumbs.
Stop forcing us to listen to your stupid in game music and sfx. There is zero purpose for you to force our other audio apps to shutdown when we open this app. We played DQ1-3 for hundreds of hours listening to audible and loved it. But now we CHOOSE to not to open DQ4 simply because our audiobook stops the moment we open DQ4. Please fix this.
Great game, but the grinding is made almost unbearable since you cant mute the sound (without turning your volume all the way down), which also means you cant use your own music (Pandora/Spotify in the background). Super annoying. Many times we sit down to play but give up cause we just want some music playing at the same time. Fix that super frustrating option and Id give at least a 4 star.
Fun game but it is not full functional. ICloud saves does not work in ios 15.2.
The game is fine, but the cloud saves do not work, so youre stuck playing on one device if you own multiple apple products.
Game is a direct port of the DS version but if you want to use it across devices with an iPhone and iPad good luck. Does not download saves from the cloud unlike other games Ive played so.
BROKEN! DONT BUY! CLOUD SAVE BROKEN! Im unable to synchronize cloud saves on our iPhone 12. We shouldnt have to start the game over because we got a new phone. We just want to redownload our old save. Ive tried multiple networks, multiple times of the day, and tried reinstalling. Nothing works.
Thank you for updating this and DQVI! Im now going to greatly consider buying V and VI.
Playing DQ on mobile is very nice. DQ 6 up next.
Great job, but Why no landscape mode? We noticed the same thing with DQ8. Thanks.
30+ hours of fun. The dialogue isnt the result of poor translation. Its simply an artistic effect to give the different regions different accents. We think its cute and not at all difficult to understand.
Our family and we first played DW4 on the Nintendo entertainment system (NES) many years ago. Back then it was a ground breaking game with new gameplay systems and character development. The iOS version is a great improvement over the original, and will be a enjoyable experience for anyone that likes JRPGs.
Just beat it! It took about 35 hours for us. We love this game!! Anyone complaining about the price needs to realize this is a PLATFORM GAME, not some little iphone game. Remember when we paid $50 for a new N64 game? It's like that, but cheaper, and with the convenience of playing from your iphone. 5 stars.
…our life is officially complete. That's the phrase that keeps coming to mind every since we've conquered one of the greatest video games of ALL TIME!!!!!! ENTER DRAGON QUEST 4 again we would like to start of our review by stating that we have been on a journey to purchase, play, and beat all of the DQ titles available on the App Store, as we've done months back with the Final Fantasy series. The unfortunate thing though about writing all of these reviews, especially when each installment is better that the last, is the simple fact that it becomes nearly impossible at this point to adequately portray the awe-inspiring majesty of each game we review, and we don't think there's a single game that we have ever reviewed in our entire life that we would like to adequately portray said majesty more than the almighty Dragon Quest. Where does one begin when trying to review a game of this magnitude? Well we guess we would have to start by talking about the sheer goose bump-inducing orchestration. Dragon Quest 4, without a shadow of a doubt has some of the very best music we have E-V-E-R come across in any RPG…EVER!!! For instance the music that plays when you sail around in the boat would send such monstrously jovial shivers down our spine every single time we heard it, and if we just happened to be playing with headphones whenever we boarded ship, FUGGEHDUHBOUDIT!! Another mind blowing aspect of the game are the incredibly diverse and wonderfully ethnic dialogue. The writing for this game is over-the-top fantastic that you can almost audibly hear the words in your head. The programmers achieve this feat by adding many different dialects and English translations from many areas across the world, from France to Scotland to Italy to England and so on. By writing out the words in English as it would sound with that foreign accent is just something that needs to be experienced, and it's certainly something we've never seen before we've started playing Dragon Quest. For instance the French people would always say "ze" when they mean "the" and the British sounding natives would say things like "roit" when they mean "right". These are just a few of the thousands of examples but you get our drift. They even went as far as giving the Italian sounding natives horrible English grammar like "we are for having trouble. Can you be helpful of us" it's these subtle yet striking nuances that really make the game stand out. Many people think it's just bad Japanese to English translation, but it's obviously intended for there are many NPC's in the game that speak perfect English. Again, even saying all of these things could never truly justify how perfect this game really is. We are very new to the DQ series so a lot of these things are pretty fresh to us considering this is a completely different monster than Final Fantasy. Speaking of monsters, after you've spent a hard day obliterating a pack orcs or cute squishy slimes, you can sit back and enjoy a quick game of DQ poker, or even a couple go'rounds at a slot machine, maybe even place a few bets on the monster arena, all located at the casino!! Our point is, for those that aren't too particularly keen on grinding till your ears bleed (we for one love to grind), there are a myriad of different mini games and side quests to keep you busy through the roughly 40 hour campaign…which brings us to the story. DQ4's storyline is FAR superior to the previous games. Where Dragon Quest 3's story only became really really interesting and critically important in the last ten or so hours of gameplay, DQ4 has a deeply structured, perfectly written, and wonderfully unique story line all of its own. Comprising of 5 main chapters, you play a unique short quest for the first 4 chapters of the game, playing as all of the main characters you'll eventually meet back up with in chapter 5. It's a lot like FF4:The After Years, in a sense that all of the character's stories intertwine with one another to make a story so very intimate and engaging from beginning to end. Speaking of the end, all we are going to say is that the very moment right before the credits started to roll, was one of the most intensely heartwarming and tearjerking moments we've ever seen…just thinking about it gives us goosebumps. On top of everything else you even got an extra chapter to unlock once you beat the game to keep you occupied for a little bit longer…and don't even get us started on the fantabulous graphics, mainly the enemy animations. Each and every enemy in the game have downright gorgeous animations along with nifty camera play, it really draws you into each battle like never before. Which brings us to the final boss. While we think we had a much tougher time with DQ2&3's final boss, (mostly because we went grinding like crazy in this game so we were pretty well prepared…liquid metal slimes yo!) the final fight in this game is something you have to see to believe. With many different forms and the aforementioned jaw-dropping animations. It was one of the most punishingly brutal, and visually astonishing boss battles we've ever experienced and won't soon forget. Well there you have it. Another long review for a game that truly deserve all the praise you can throw at it, and that's what we try to do every time we write one of these reviews. Although we do love this game very very much…we've been seriously looking forward to the next installment in the series and have no doubt in our mind that it will be even better…Next stop, DRAGON QUEST 5.
Great for official Chinese, wait for more.
It's always been a great game. Some character names changed slightly, but no biggie. Unlike the original version, you can control all of the characters instead of just setting their AI. It's been great replaying one of our all time favorites.
Good game but we can only rate these 4 stars due to lack of difficulty. There is none. Great story and plenty to do but we wish there was a difficulty setting because there is no way to lose a battle. Without a challenge we just dread getting into battles because they just seem to be time wasters. Maybe eventually they will add harder difficulty options but until then 4* is all we can rate. Once again not a bad game we love this series but even the originals are way too easy. Feels like a beginners or an rpg geared to kids as an intro to rpgs.
Loving playing this but we wish we could listen to podcasts while we play like with DQ1-3.
Please update this game for iPhone X users so that its full screen! Thanks.
The iOS versions of 1-3 were improvements in our opinion, particularly 2 and 3. Not so on 4. The gameplay and graphics are wonky and the translation is HORRIBLE. Really, really bad. To the point where we take screenshots of the dialogue because its so terrible that it is hilarious. Still enjoyable, but holy god you can tell they put far less effort into this port than they did for the incredibly simple DW1.
Im a huge fan of the dragon warrior dragon quest series. Played the originals when we were a wee lad. Loved them, we were excited to replay on the iOS. 1 2 and 3 were amazing. But this translation is so terrible. Some of the words are not even words. If this is your first dragon quest game Id skip this and play dragon quest three instead.
There was so much potential in this iOS release as Dragon Quest IV is probably one of the finest in the series. When it originally came out, it was part of Enix's A-list RPGs. This release however, does not do justice to the franchise or the game. We've seen other review praise the new translations, particularly the "ethnic" anglicizations of the different regions. This detracts so much from the story however, as it causes you to stop and dissect each sentence like a poor-man's woolseyism. It's poor translation on the scale of "All your base are belong to us now". Weird word usage that doesn't belong, such as "Your extinct mother…" Instead of saying "Your dead mother." It's truly atrocious. The name changes are also unusual. It detracts less than the ethnic translations but it seems pointless. Why change names? These are established characters. It would be one thing if the hardware limited the original game's naming system, but often that wasn't the case. Changing Taloon (6 letters) to his first name Torneko (7 letters) perhaps might have made sense. But Nara and Mara COULD have been named their reworked names, Maya and Meena, but they weren't. So why change back? We don't buy the argument that Mara and Nara are confusing, because Maya and Meena don't make it clearer. We think the worst offender is renaming Cristo, to Kiryl or something dumb like that. The item and monster name changes are seemingly pointless as well. Some of them are genuinely worse than the original names. Happily, some of these weren't changed. The game's one improvement is the graphics. It does look better than its 8-bit source material. And we think they stayed fairly true to most of the character designs. We will give the artists a star for that. They've also cut some of the grinding out which is good as well. But the UI for spells is atrocious to navigate on mobile and the control pad is so loose and wonky. The number of times we've walked around something instead of over it because the control pad is so loose was disappointing. We fee this has to do with the 8-direction pad replacing the 4-direction control. The "3D" aspect also seems pointless in all but two or three spots through the whole game. Makes us think they could have just changed the view in these specific areas and saved the hassle of having the 3D "camera" at all. It's playable to someone who has played the original and remembers the story and character and spells and can easily refresh their memory. It's not preferable to the original though and for people new to the game, it can be confusing. We wouldn't recommend this as a first time play-through. Just play the NES if you can.
The worst is that there is no sign of failure of cloud saving, instead it says cloud saving succeeded. We always save to cloud and just a go, we deleted the app and re-downloaded it, and guest what? No save exists. Unbelievable…. We were at the right before the castle of Death Pissaro. Ive lost 20 hours of gameplay, and ended up watching Youtube for the games ending. Pathetic.
We purchased it but couldn't install this game. :( we can't play it please fix it.
We like Dragon quest series a lot. But we want to read the subtitles in Spanish like on final fantasy.. We hope square add Spanish on this fabulous serie.
Okay, so this is partially a rebuttal to Llama56's review, because it contained an inaccuracie, and our anally corrective self can't let ignorance stand, and we rest until we set the record straight. We don't really care that the review is from a long time ago. What part of "anally corrective" don't you get? Right, so he said that Alena's chapter was poorly translated, and that it seemed that it was, quote, "written by Japanese middle-school students using Google translate." Well, our good ungulate, you are WRONG. See, the folks of Maestral are supposed to be a Russian analogue, and they speak like a Russian whose first language isn't English. It's why their speech is often peppered with Russian words and such. Thus, that section of the game ISN'T poorly translated, because it's MEANT TO BE THAT WAY. Alena and her fellow countrymen don't speak English very well, hence the broken "translation." Because they're Russian. It's the same reason people from Bonnie Scotla- er, Burland say "Och" and pronounce "tower" tur. Just imagine that Alena and everyone in Maestral sounds like Yakov Smirnoff, and you'll be good. Anyway, 'bout the game itself: it's 'effen brilliant. This version is a port of the Nintendo DS version (which itself was a remake of the PS2 remake), but with the added (re)addition of party chat, which are fun little conversations the party members will have and really fleshes out there characters. It was, for only Goddess knows why, cut out from the NTSC version of the DS port. (What makes it even stranger is that the DS remakes of V and VI had party chat, making it's absence in IV especially odd.) we have the DS version, and we can say that the iOS version is MUCH BETTER, solely because of the party chat. Seriously, that sh is awesome. Besides that, DQIV also has, in our opinion, some of the best characters and music in the entire series, and one of the better stories in the series. The battle music and Alena's theme are our favorites, and character-wise, Alena, Ragnar, and Psaro are our among our top personal favorite video game characters of all time. Anyway, if you're a Dragon Quest or JRPG fan, then you owe it to yourself to get this game. That's a fancy word for hoofed mammals like horses and llamas and the like. We try to use it when ever possible. ** That's the name of Alena's homeland. Yes, we are that much of a nerd.
This is the best version of the DQIV remakes. It looks beautiful and since it originally ran "full-screen" (we.e. Using both screens) on the Nintendo DS, it is perfectly suited for portrait mode. It's like joining the two screens together and upgrading the speed and resolution. It is a little weird playing with a touchscreen, but you can play it one-handed on your phone, and it's beautiful on iPad. DQIV was a revolution at the time, adding characters with personalities and a chapter structure. This game is a real joy to play.
Only 1 glitch (with DS version too)— Kabuff increases all members DEF by 100%— it's supposed to be 50 (25 DQ 5 and later) this makes the game too easy after you learn the ability.
Love that they are making the dragon quest games for the phone now. We grew up with these and they still hold up 20 years later. Looking forward to them them releasing the rest. We've went 1 thru 4 and about to head on to 5.
Hands down one of our new favorite dragon quest games so far! We so far boughten 1-4 and going to get 5 and hoping for 6 to come out!!! And also hoping for a dragon quest monsters.
This game is addicting. We played DQ1 when we were a kid. Came free with a subscription to Nintendo Power. This game is a whole lot better. It's very long, took us awhile to beat. Very interesting story. We liked how there were different story lines for each characters, then merged them all together. Grinding was easy with the AI selection. We just control one character and the others just Attack. We were usually half asleep while grinding. Worth every penny. On to the next one.
This is the third time we have owned this game and played through it! Not to mention that it is a very fun game with a good story and neat characters, but the port to iOS is wonderful! We love the Cloud Save function that works between our iPad and iPhone so we can play anywhere. We don't necessarily like that we have to manually click "Cloud Save" in order to sync with the cloud, but it's a minor inconvenience at best. Great job SquareEnix! Please do as good a job with DQV and DQVI if and when you port them! Those were great games when we played them on the DS and we look forward to them again on iOS.
Works perfect on our Iphone6 Plus! We remembered this game on our friend's Super Famicom. Really happy we're able to play this game even after 15+ years later! Put in around 20 hrs and so far it's been great! Autosave and Cloud Save are both great adds! With Cloud Save we're able to switch between our iPad and iPhone seamlessly! This is how all FF and DragonQuests should port from now on.
A gorgeous port of the Nintendo DS version. This is a classic, grind-heavy RPG with a great story and memorable characters. The battles have animated monsters, unlike some of the preceding Dragon Quest iOS ports. Be aware – if you play the game on an iPad instead of an iPhone, the battle window may cover most of the battle scene, partially obscuring the enemies. Aside from that, enjoy the beautiful graphics, music and stories! Cheers.
Finally English fans have the chance to experience Dragon Quest IV in all its glory! The DS remake had party talk removed in the English release. Thank the Goddess that the universe has corrected this awful mistake on the App Store.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 1.1.3
- Size: 539.54 MB
- iOS: 11.0 or later
- Languages: EN
- Content Advisory: Infrequent/Mild Cartoon or Fantasy Violence
- Developer: [SQUARE ENIX Co., Ltd.]()
Last updated: 14th May 2025 | Genre: Roleplaying | Developer: SQUARE ENIX Co., Ltd.