I finally finished this one. It just goes to show how incredibly slow I am at completing games. This one was released in February of last year... 

What can you say about DQ? The entire series is considered Casual in Japan, and is the gaming equivalent of comfort food. It has many features that modern rpg gamers consider to be throwbacks and hard, but as a whole the game isn't a huge challenge. The whole series is very, very traditional though. Random battles, turn based gameplay, 2d sprites... The only modern-ish thing about it is the 3d environments that they superimpose the 2d sprites onto. 

Despite that, it's a lot of fun. This game failed at being a good one to help me get to sleep though. I typically stayed up until 3AM because of this game. The storyline is excellent, though sad. It's also pretty solitary for most of the first half since your friends tend to come and go, and you're left alone with your monsters that you've captured and raised. It's a generational game, which is usually a bad word in RPGs. This one seems to handle it well, partly because there's such a limited choice in how the later generations turn out. There's a total of 3 generations, the first two of which are predetermined. You start out as a small child though, having a handful of light adventures, but the game gets serious quickly towards the end of the first section.

If you're going to play just one Dragon quest game, go buy the excellent Dragon Quest 8. If you're going to play two though, this is definitely the next best game in the series. (I can't vouch for it being better than DQ6 actually, but hopefully I'll get to play that one soon!) I spent 42 hours on this, but 9-10 of those were spent in the casino playing the slot machines...

9.75/10.