As my first JRPG, this game holds a special place in my heart, despite its flaws. As a kid, even I could comprehend the story, surprisingly, and I found it enjoyable. The combat mechanics are fine tuned and near perfection, in my opinion, but the coup de grace generation is too random for my tastes.

Obviously being a DS game, the visuals look how you'd expect them to, but I find a certain charm in them, thanks to Akira Toriyama's ageless art style. The sound design is also top notch. Sometimes I boot up my copy just to hear the theme song, wonderfully compressed onto a DS cartridge.

Dragon Quest remains the top dog of JRPGs with the ninth entry, and I certainly need to indulge the series more to fully enjoy it.

Battle systems that display action on the top screen and data on the bottom, or which distribute either of those across both screens, will render that game borderline unusable without exception.

Gave up right at the start after being plopped into a sky palace and instructed to speak to the headmaster. Never found him/her. Instead talked to a bunch of the same NPC copy pasted throughout the place offering only ludicrously frivolous dialogue (such as "this is a dead end") and going back and forth across the terrible map comprised of artitrary deviations and locked doors.