i tried playing this because i wanted to try playing a dragon quest game. i knew enough about dragon quest beforehand to expect a fairly basic jrpg. but i love a good ol fashioned jrpg, and this one came highly recommended from those who played it as a kid. and yeah, i see why. the protagonist being a fallen angel is conceptually pretty neat. there's plenty of good ol fashioned jrpg charm, plus the ability to completely customize your whole partys appearance, outfits(!!), and vocations, and the entire game has multiplayer support. im sure this would've been my favorite thing ever...if i was 10 years old and had people to co-op with.

as i am not 10, however, this game is just a little too annoying. anything interesting the gameplay has to offer requires grinding: trying out different vocations/skills, doing alchemy (a crafting system i actually find fun, which would be impressive but...) , or even progressing the story. grinding is made annoying by the fact that combat is simplistic without the decency of at least being forgiving. i had to backtrack to revive or heal up my party a good few times...and i personally think a story and combat system as simple as dqix's should at least make itself easy to progress through. the storyline suffers greatly from the fact that none of the player characters have any personality. the writing of other plot-important characters like the wight knight, phleming, or marionette, is often interesting enough, but their stories are so short compared to the amount of time i had to spend mindlessly fighting monsters that it doesn't feel worth it.

i won't rate this game unless i finish it, but right now it'd be about a 2/5. i played up until getting the boat before deciding that if the game was still boring me a solid 90% of the time i should probably go play something else. i might come back to it for completion's sake one day, but this was a pretty disappointing first foray into dragon quest.