The choice of platform for an upcoming game must be an incredibly difficult decision to make. Factors such as market penetration, hardware capabilities, the producer’s vision for the game, and budget all come in to play. It’s probably even more difficult for a huge publisher’s next AAA title—but it was probably one of the hardest decisions ever for Square Enix, as Dragon Quest is basically the single most popular video game franchise in Japan, and is the second most popular for the company in North America (behind only Final Fantasy). This was not a decision to be made lightly.

The platform of choice for this ninth installment in the now classic series was, of course, the Nintendo DS. When it was first revealed in December of 2006 that Dragon Quest was “coming home” to Nintendo (it had been on Sony consoles for a while), fans were terribly excited, but many speculated that the choice to go handheld was a bad one, and represented a form of “selling out”. For a bit, there were rumors that Dragon Quest IX would be released for both DS and Wii, but those turned out to be false. Even the producer of the series, Yuji Horii, admitted that the hardware limitations of the DS would present some challenges. In the end, fans were left crossing their fingers, hoping that the DS was the right place for the next installment.

For those who are unfamiliar with the franchise, it helps to understand what a huge release Dragon Quest VIII was. The eighth installment was, by every account, a grand and sweeping game. The game basically represented the highest state of the art that was possible on the PlayStation 2. The entire game’s soundtrack was performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the voice acting was absolutely top-notch (voice acted as well as, if not better than, most big-budget Hollywood animated films), and the cel-shaded 2D/3D graphics were spectacular. Playing Dragon Quest VIII was like playing a beautiful hand-drawn movie. I’ve often said that Dragon Quest VIII may possibly be my number one favorite gaming experience of all time.

Generally, sequels are meant to improve upon their predecessors in every way—especially in gaming. Is it possible, then, to top the amazing experience that was Dragon Quest VIII on a hardware platform that is in almost every way completely different from the PlayStation 2? It depends on what you’re looking for.

I went into this review as a terribly excited fan. I was one of those who wasn’t thrilled about the choice of platform for this release, but the four long years of waiting were enough to build my anticipation up enough to overlook it and give it the benefit of the doubt.

It begins

From the moment the first strains of the iconic main theme song started, my joy turned to horror. Where was the London Philharmonic? Where were the strains of the trumpets? It was like a cheesy mid-90s MIDI rendition of the theme song—much like the experience of playing the Star Wars games on the Super Nintendo. The music is an integral part of the experience, and already, five seconds into powering it up, the cracks in the facade were starting to show.

Dragon Quest IX departs from the series in one major way: It allows you to completely customize your party, including your hero. You have full control over the sex and appearance of your main hero. For those who prefer to personalize the experience, this is a delightful new feature. However, the (in my opinion, major) downside of this is the lack of any character development at all. One of the most beautiful things about Dragon Quest VIII was its vibrant characters (Yangus woz quite a wrecker, guv). This also means there can be no voice acting. For some, this is no big deal, but for those of us who really enjoyed the cinematic treatment of the previous game, it’s a big loss.

After creating your hero, you are launched into the story. The story is as deep and involved as previous Dragon Quest games, and in this sense the game is worthy of the legacy of its forefathers. You start the game as a Celestrian (read: Angel), a divine being with wings, invisible to mortals, and responsible for the care and safekeeping of a village. Each village has a Celestrian protecting them, and when a Celestrian does things like protect the village from monsters, answer prayers, find lost pets, and other good deeds, the faith and prayers of the mortals manifest as an ethereal essence called “Benevolessence”, which you can collect and bring back to the heavenly realm above. The game launches into a sweeping tale of struggle between deities, a divine love story, and all manner of intrigue and betrayal. It even brings some relatively surprising plot twists. You, of course, are at the center of all this.

The combat system is relatively unchanged from all previous iterations in that it is, at the core, the same comfortable tried-and-true turn-based system. It’s like a comforting blanket in a world that has changed so much. What is different is that the encounters are only somewhat randomized: Much like the named monsters in Dragon Quest VIII, you can see the monsters on the world map and possibly avoid them if you’d prefer not to fight. Some monsters are persistent and will chase you, while others (mostly weaker ones) will run away at the first sight of you. It’s a refreshing way to pace your combat mood. If you feel like grinding, you can. If you feel like getting to an objective without fighting, you have a better chance at being able to do that, too.

What’s really new about IX is the character job/class system. At some point early on in the story, you can change your class. When you change class, you start over at level one, but you retain all the special class skills (but not spells) you’ve earned by leveling up your previous job. For example, as a martial artist you may learn the Psyche Up skill to increase your tension, then switch over to Warrior but keep the ability to Psyche Up. This opens the doors to an enormous amount of customization. You can even master weapons to the point of becoming “Omnivocational”, meaning you lose the class restrictions for weapon use. Sword-wielding Mages who can steal items, heal themselves, and ratchet up their own tension? Definitely possible, given enough time investment. You keep your levels in your previous jobs, so there is really no penalty for switching. Later on, you may gain the ability to switch classes on the fly, and in the endgame you can use one party build for grinding through dungeons and then switch to another for the end bosses. There are a lot of possibilities and it keeps the game fresh and exciting long past the time when you’ve completed the main story.

The other really, really new thing about this iteration is the multiplayer aspect. For the first time in Dragon Quest, you can play the entire game in co-op mode if you’d like (and happen to have friends with DSes and the game). Truly, full-on co-op: each of you moves your hero independently and fights on their own. This is a major new feature that cannot be overlooked as one of the prime reasons why the DS was chosen as the platform for this title.

The graphics quality has taken a major hit. This is where the DS truly shows its weakness; in almost every way, this game looks like a lo-fi rendition of Dragon Quest VIII. The formerly smooth, hand-drawn lines are now aliased, the spell effects display horrible artifacting, and the few full-motion cinematics are reminiscent of the old “super compressed” PlayStation 1 videos—macroblocking galore. There were even some graphic bugs (bugs are almost unheard of in games of this caliber): One certain feature allows you to zoom in to your character. Your character scales correctly, but NPCs do not; if you happen to be standing by an NPC when you do a zoom, prepare for absolutely unforgivable pixelation of the NPC sprites.

The graphics are very jarring at first, but once you get over it, the story and charming gameplay are enough to overcome the discomfort at the low production quality. Well, perhaps it’s unfair to say “low production quality.” I suppose, all things considered, that the production quality is as high as it could have been. It’s the hardware that has hobbled these geniuses and artisans, not their skills or lack of budget or time constraints.

The amount of detail that has gone into all the little things that make Dragon Quest so endearing is still here: each and every item has a charming description; a nice new feature is that every single equippable item shows up on your character sprite properly. This allows for a bit of fashion engineering, and even factors in to certain quests—there is a hidden stat for attractiveness, and some quests want you to dress strangely or attractively to meet the requirements. Every enemy has a full entry in the bestiary as well, and in a delightful nod to completionists, you are able to fill in each entry with extra information using a certain character skill.

The main storyline of the game lasts about 30-40 hours if you plow through and don’t do any quests or grinding. This is where Dragon Quest IX’s true beauty comes in, however.

The endgame to end all endgames

In what must be the most thorough end-game ever conceived in an RPG, it is possible to invest hundreds of hours into the game after the story has ended. Those of us with Video Game OCD are sure to find endless ways to while away our time. I don’t even know where to begin with endgame content, as there is so much of it. First of all, through a “treasure map” system (which includes DLC), you have essentially infinite randomized dungeons at your disposal. Each dungeon has three “big” treasures to uncover, with some certain percentage of finding each item; just as a fictional example, there could be a 95% chance you’ll get another treasure map, a 3% chance you’ll get some gauntlets, and a 2% chance of getting a rare crafting orb.

And you’ll be compelled to run them over and over again because the only way to get some of the highest level items is through Alchemy (crafting), and the highest level crafting materials are only available in the high level dungeons. In addition, each dungeon has an end boss of varying difficulties, and that boss also may drop something very rare. Because the dungeons are randomized, the boredom factor is mitigated.

You can continually upgrade your hero and other party members’ skills as well, via the previously mentioned job system. Perhaps you want your high-level Paladin to also be able to identify monsters (a high-level Thief ability) and use the super-amazing boomerang you happened to find. You can basically start from scratch as a low-level Thief (but with awesome Paladin abilities) and grind up high enough to become Omnivocational with the boomerang as well as gaining the Eye for Trouble ability before switching back to Paladin. Some of the highest-level bosses require a multitude of skills and abilities to take down, so it becomes a game unto itself to craft the most heroic character you possibly can.

Speaking of high-level bosses, there are even legacy bosses included as a nod to long-time fans. The end bosses from every previous Dragon Quest game are all in here, from the DragonLord all the way up to Dhoulmagus and Rhapthorne.

The world size increases significantly in the endgame, as you can eventually gain access to the ability to fly around the world map and discover many new locations. Shops carry new weapons and armor, and there is even a new class to unlock.

There are endless amounts of quests to complete post-game as well. I say “endless” because more can be added via DLC. The quests are usually the same variety; either find this thing or kill this monster, but they vary widely in that the means you use to complete the objective matters. For example, saying “kill ten slimes” is simple, but quests may ask you to kill them using a certain weapon, or after being charged up with a certain skill, or blocking certain attacks from said slimes. They become quite complicated once you factor in all the potential variables, and some of the quests had me pulling my hair out, such as killing a high-level boss with a low-level skill—you had to calculate how much damage you had already done to him and then get ready to strike the killing blow with a spell that only does a very tiny amount of damage. It was quite a balancing act.

Worth the wait

Dragon Quest IX is a delightful game. There’s no way I could have spent 120 hours playing it (and I still want to play more) if it were bad. Will it usurp the throne that Dragon Quest VIII currently holds in my heart as one of my favorite games of all time? It’s doubtful. I haven’t played Dragon Quest VIII in years, but I still fondly remember the characters, the music, and the story. Yangus, Jessica, and the Cursed King and his tragic daughter are part of my gamer DNA at this point, and Dragon Quest IX simply lacks any memorable characters (other than perhaps “Stella”, the cute young Celestrian fairy that accompanies you). In addition, as trivial as it may sound, the music is so incredibly important to me that the lack of an orchestral soundtrack is a major blow to my overall experience. Dragon Quest VIII set the bar perhaps too high in this regard. You can’t, after all, have the London Philharmonic perform for every game you make.

On a side note, it’s interesting to contrast the arguably continual decline of Final Fantasy to the ever-increasing interest in Dragon Quest. Many long-time fervent Final Fantasy fans are becoming increasingly uninterested in further FF installments, as the games are getting more and more screwy and linear. Dragon Quest is taking the seemingly opposite approach and becoming more and more open-ended, while still having a comprehensible storyline and simple gameplay. For me, at least, it has already supplanted Final Fantasy in my mind as the quintessential RPG experience I crave.

Perhaps Dragon Quest VIII was the last of its breed. Perhaps we’ll never see another single-player, set-character Dragon Quest game. If so, that’s sad, but if the upcoming Dragon Quest X takes what IX did right (especially the sheer size of the game and the endless playability factors), then Dragon Quest has a bright future, indeed.

Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies is available now for the Nintendo DS from Amazon and other retailers.

Disclosure reminder: Nintendo provided a copy of the game for us to review. We received no compensation other than the game cartridge. See our full FTC disclosure here.