Boy, I sure wish there was more talk about Dragon Quest IX! When I was a teenager I knew I loved Pokemon, and would read about Pokemon when I wasn’t playing it on my DS hidden behind my AP World History textbook so my parents wouldn’t know I was in the battle tower (I passed the AP test with a 4, thank you very much). I knew it was a JRPG, and I wanted to dive deeper into the genre. After even more reading about the subject on the internet (instead of studying), I learned that Dragon Quest was a foundational JRPG series, and I had seen these commercials while watching Regular Show with my little brother:
I bought the game and fell in love with the wacky world, interesting and slow storytelling, character design, and deep mechanics. I played the game for over 300 hours!!! It’s mechanically complex in ways that are hard to describe in a forum post. You create a party of 4 (including creating their names and looks. Fun!) and choose their classes. You can change classes and level up to earn skill points and skills carry over between classes. It scratched an itch my teenage self didn’t know existed, and informed a lot of what I like about video games now. Also, making your own Akira Toriyama-esque characters is a delight, and I can’t believe that it has been forgotten (or, perhaps, it is not as good as I choose to remember it).
I have played other Dragon Quests with more developed characters and party members: IV, V, VI, VIII, and XIS, and I like a well-developed party! XIS has some of my favorite, most touching moments in video games because those characters are written so well. However, I still remember the names, roles, and looks of all my characters in IX. They were my party—unique, adventurous, and often hilariously overleveled, even for many of the post-game dungeons. I also think that having gear being visual is a great design choice that more JRPGs should do. I was disappointed by the lack of this feature in Chrono Trigger DS (I understand now, as an adult, why this is the way that it is), and overjoyed that it existed in Xenoblade Chronicles.
There are definitely better DQ games to start out with. DQXIS is the obvious choice. It’s a good game! However, Dragon Quest IX is a delightful, dare I say underrated, entry in the series.