Character growth,while definitely not as essential as most other RPG's,is pretty much luck based
Offensive Magic isn't very effective
A shortcut for weapon swapping would be nice
Slow magic animations

Undercook and unbalanced combat
Some labyrinthian dungeons
Half of the cast is a bit underdeveloped
"Tell,don't show" nature of the 2nd disc

Some important skills being activated randomly
Lack of class mixing
Mostly mediocre map design and lack of variety in the objectives
Unnecesseirly long and tough final dungeon

Chapter 22 without a stave user is total bullshit
Except for main character and a few standouts,cast of characters aren't very memorable

Turn system is usually unfair
Hit rates are absolutely awful

Terrible difficulty balancing
Some of the classes that requires a ton of grinding are near useless
Also,too much grinding for classes

Some conclusions in the story are a little rushed
Character progression is very,very basic

Uhhh.....character interactions might have been a bit better i guess?

Pep system is a great idea,pretty similar to Chrono Trigger's double and triple tech system,but it activates randomly,so ultimately it adds next to nothing to the combat

And why did they had to add the Jade bunny girl arc?

Due to the way class system works,you have too many skills to use and a solid %80 percent of them are useless
Also battles are a bit too slow,and towns visually look a bit too samey for DQ standards

Smirk system kinda sucks ass,and the overworld is confusing to explore

Character development isn't very rewarding compare to other metroidvanias,pretty much nothing about your movement changes
Artifact quest is boring as hell

Second half of the story and cast feels like a downgrade from the first 5 chapters