The story is pretty good for DQ standards. Still nothing groundbreaking, but good enough to keep me engaged for the majority of the game. It also starts strong by not bothering with letting us play the whole backstory before the name giving journey begins.
The character cast is nice for the most part.

What I don't like about the game is, that the story's pace feels very stretched after about 10 hours in. Additionally I have to add that most of the things, which DQ8 is doing good are executed way better in DQ11.

After playing three Dragon Quest mainline games this month and only having two, ignoring X, left, I really need a longer break from DQ. From the mainline at least.