Way back in the day, when I first got into RPGs, Japan was almost like the Promised Land. While we were lucky to see more than a copy of Final Fantasy Mystic Quest, they had games to spare.  They loved them so much, legend stated that no RPG could be released on a weekday, essentially elevating release day to a holiday or borderline religious festival!  The really weird thing?  While the majority of that might be… arguable, that last bit is actually true. Back in 1988, a game came out for the NES that convinced great swathes of the population to pull a sickie and wait in line outside their local game shop.  You read that right: not football, not tennis, a game.  The Japanese government stepped in and politely suggested that Enix, the game’s producers and publishers, try to avoid bringing the country’s workforce to a screeching halt in future.  That game was Dragon Quest III, part of a series that soundly beats the Final Fantasy juggernaut into second place in Japan with the back of its hand.  Yet, strangely, the series is almost unheard of amongst the general populace in the West, while even your Grandmother probably knows that Aeris dies in FF7.  Well, Square Enix are looking to change that with their latest magnum opus – Dragon Quest IX: Sentinal of the Starry Skies.

You start off by creating your character, choosing their gender, hairstyle and colour and so on.  As the game opens, you are an angel charged with protecting a nearby village.  The angels are trying to help the World Tree, Yggdrasil, grow, and the only way to do that is by collecting benevolessence, a force created by helping others.  Just as it seems like they’re about to achieve their goal, the angels are attacked and scattered.  When the player finally reawakens, it’s back in the village they were protecting earlier but, more importantly, it’s without their wings and halo.  And so, you go forward, helping people while trying to figure out what’s causing the recent disasters on the mortal plane.

First things first, Dragon Quest is as Old School as it gets.  If you like Final Fantasy’s endless attempts at reinventing the RPG wheel, you may be put off at first glance.  The Dragon Quest series has always been about refinement rather than reinvention, and while it does make a few concessions to modern preferences (being able to see enemies on the world map rather than random encounters, for example), there’s a lot you’ll already have seen a dozen times or more by now.  Of course, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.  That sense of immediately knowing what to do and how everything works is certainly welcome, especially in an age where every game feels the need to walk you through an hour’s worth of tutorial stages.

Combat is spruced up from previous installments.  Rather than everything taking place on a static screen as viewed through your character’s eyes, the battles are played out for you, as you get to see your character run up and smack your foes in the face.  Other than that, there are few surprises: you select your attacks, spells and skills, you and the enemy trade hits until one of you falls over, you walk away with the spoils, assuming you’re still capable of walking.

The really big change, however, is the focus on multiplayer.  You can invite other players into your game to allow you all to team up and fight bosses, help out friends and so on.  Every player controls their own character in combat, so be sure everyone knows what they’re doing before you start.  The problem is, only the host can continue their storyline, everyone is a visitor to their game.  So if you think you can coast by on another player’s game as they rip up everything while you sit back and suck up the XP, think again.  Similarly, you can’t just start up a team game and play through as a group, a painfully wasted opportunity and an addition that could’ve made this one of the absolute must-have games on the DS.

Probably the one place they could’ve definitely updated things is with te story.  Your character, well, doesn’t have any.  DQ determinedly sticks with the Silent Protagonist, so anyone looking for their new favourite tortured hero with a dark past is going to have to look elsewhere.  It’s the people around you who get the depth and advancement, and while helping out NPCs is nice and all, you don’t exactly feel like the star of the show.  Similarly, the story isn’t a huge departure from anything seen in the past.  There’s a few twists along the way, but again, nothing massively shocking is likely to happen.  You’ll enjoy the story, but in a way, it’s not really the driving force behind the game.  You’ll be compelled to continue because you enjoy the game, rather than uncovering the terrible secret behind the events of X years previous.

Dragon Quest IX is as traditional and as uncomplicated as it gets.  And in a way, it’s almost refreshing.  RPGs today have this schizophrenic relationship with their past, simultaneously ashamed of what they used to be while, distancing themselves as much as possible while at the same time, referring to it with obsessive attention to detail.  It’s almost a joy to see a game embrace its heritage, rather than pretending it never used to be something so base and loathesome.  If, like me, you’re a long-time RPG fan, you’ll want to pick this up to remind yourself of the days when you could spend countless hours talking to every villager, grinding levels and punching adorable monsters in the face.  And if you’re looking for something different from the current crop of games, ironically, this will probably be exactly the sort of thing you’re looking for.  They don’t make them like this too often these days and it’s a shame.  The genre needs to stop looking forward so much and take a moment to look at what it already has and what can be done with it.  Dragon Quest IX is a perfect example that you don’t have to push forward boundaries in order to make the best game you can.

Now, where the hell can I find a Slime plush around here…

+ A classic slice of RPG gameplay
+ Not a game you’re likely to finish any time soon

- Multiplayer, while a nice idea, seems unfinished
- Possibly a litle too retro for some tastes

Score : 8/10