Dragon Quest 9: final verdict
So I’ll keep this short as most of my DQ9 thoughts can be found here. I beat Dragon Quest 9 on Saturday night, just over 40 hours. The final boss is woefully easy, and really is sadly a let down to the whole experience. The game could most likely be completed in 30 hours if you do no side quests or alchemy, and neither are really required for the story. Having said that, there is a ton of post game (and non-linear) content to be had outside the main story, as per the multiplayer focus, and definitely doing a bit post-game is required to get the full experience. (As per the usual DQ style)
I guess my complaint is that there are so many awesome job classes, abilities and equipment, but you don’t *need* any of it to finish the story. Not even close, in fact my party was lacking such abilities as ‘Kazing’ and ‘Kaboom’ at the time of beating the final boss, in fact I learned ‘Multiheal’ about 5 minutes before reaching it. I’d love to alchemize more awesome weapons, build up a couple Sages, and teach my hero a fourth skill set (he already had Paladin, Warrior and Minstrel) but theres no point. No motivation to grind (didn’t sign up for an MMO) and with tons of great games to play and very little time to play them… no thanks. The story should have been at least 50% longer, at least to cover more of the character building the game possess.
Having said all that, it’s a great game, and worth your 40 USD and 40+ hours of time. I’ll say it thusly:
upside
- Solid story, albeit short
- Great classic music and sounds
- Excellent character design and visuals
downside
- Main story is hardly challenging (and short)
- No point to building awesome characters
- Focus on multiplayer and MMO-esque fetch quests
Buy it, play it, but I pray DQ X is single player only and more of a throw back to the story length of DQ7 and story depth of DQ8.