Although not as popular as rival RPG series “Final Fantasy,” the “Dragon Warrior/Quest” series by publisher/developer Square Enix has long been met with praise in its homeland of Japan since its 8-bit origins in 1986. Since then, a handful of the titles have made it here, received with critical praise despite only moderate popularity. The latest title is the DS-only remake of the series’ fourth installment, originally appearing on the NES.

Perhaps saying “remake” is a bit deceiving. While “Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen” has clearly been upgraded since its 1990 debut, the major makeover came when the game was released on the PlayStation a decade later — in actuality, the DS version is more of a tweaked portable than anything.

In its time, “Chapters” was one of the top role playing games — though to be fair, there weren’t that many of them — but now has some hiccups transitioning into the present day. The essential problem is that when attempting to update the game while maintaining the original old-school feel, Enix placed much more emphasis on the latter goal. The result is a game that feels too outdated.

I can deal with having to go to the chapel to save or bring a character back from the dead. I can deal with the necessity of grinding levels at time and the absence of your characters from the screen during actual battles. However it’s much harder to cope with sound effects that are absurdly antiquated and obnoxious, a lack of auto-battle mode for the copious amount of random battles, a lack of enemy targeting and a general excess of dialogue-boxes for any given event.

That said, “Chapters” still offers a pretty standard RPG experience that is entirely playable. As suggested in the title, the game progresses through vignettes of several different characters, none of whom is the main hero but all eventually reunite with said hero in the final and longest chapter of the game. While the “Chapters” port really brings nothing to gaming at this point in time, fans of the series will no doubt pounce at the chance to relive it. But, generally speaking, while “Chapters” is good for a nostalgic, old-school experience, it can’t hold its own against many other RPGs on the DS, especially in the wake of Square’s other recent remake “Final Fantasy IV.”

Which brings us to a disconcerting thought. Where are all the system’s original RPGs? While it’s no doubt fun to replay classics on the mini-screen, it raises questions on the stagnant state of current RPG production for the DS. It also reeks of egregious cash-in franchising. And although Square Enix is the most notorious for this (with more on the way with the port of “Chrono Trigger”), Nippon Ichi and Nintendo are guilty too. Do we really need yet another port of the same freakin’ “Disgaea” game? Has the creativity and innovation of the portable gaming industry really been so evaporated that it has to rely on re-releasing tried-and-true templates?

One can only hope that instead of remaking, repackaging, tweaking and porting more shoddy RPG classics for the DS that game developers concentrate more of their efforts on pushing the envelope and creating new classics.