I want to write about Dragon Quest IX, because Dragon Quest IX is awesome.

I’ve never been super into the Dragon Quest series. I’ve always appreciated it from afar, mostly because Akira Toriyama is my favorite artist and I’ve always loved his character and monster designs. I was always more of a Final Fantasy guy, because I got into Final Fantasy first.

I found a GameCrazy that had Dragon Quest VII used and I planned on buying it until they handed me the game in a sleeve and told me that they threw away all their game cases to save room. When Dragon Quest VIII came out for the PS2, I bought it, played it and loved it, but I never finished it because it was LOOOOOOONG. I was younger and a bit more impatient then, anyway.

Now that Dragon Quest IX is out, I am so into it it’s not even funny. I usually hate portable RPGs, Pokémon and Final Fantasy III DS aside, but I honestly can’t put the game down. To give you an idea of how hooked on it I am, it’s actually made me stop playing World of Warcraft. Yeah.

Plotwise, it’s your typical Dragon Quest fare. You have a goal pretty much from the outset of the game, and by going to a town, solving its problem, and moving to the town to solve THEIR problem, you get yourself closer to whatever’s threatening the world (I’m only about 20 hours in with a lot of exploring so I don’t even know who’s threatening the world at this point). The battles are traditional and turn-based, and the skill system is nothing to write home about.

And therein lies Dragon Quest IX’s appeal: in an age where games are trying to be so sophisticated, so heavy and so complex, Dragon Quest is familiar. It’s a love letter to the days when an RPG was about stats, not mastering a battle system that requires you to learn about 20 new words made up just for the game and manage another five point systems. If you’ve played a JRPG before, you’ll have no problem getting into DQIX.

People will moan about how the Dragon Quest series refuses to evolve, but the people who are complaining aren’t really the people that the series is made for. If you want an RPG series that reinvents the wheel with every installment, play Final Fantasy. If you want traditional, time-honored gameplay mechanics, play Dragon Quest. As I grow increasingly detached from the Final Fantasy series, I find myself inching closer to the Slime-filled side of the fence.

Like I said before, Akira Toriyama is my favorite artist, so I love the character creation system. It’s very easy to use the tools given to you to create some of his famous characters (It’s really easy to make about half the cast of Dragon Ball) but I really enjoyed creating a party that was unique. I’m always much more engaged in a game when I can design the characters myself (which is part of why I enjoy MMOs) and it’s definitely made my copy of DQIX feel like it’s my own specific adventure.

There are a variety of classes to choose from as well, from RPG staples like warrior, mage and priest to things like minstrel, martial artist and superstar. Each character can switch jobs whenever they like, so you can build up characters with a variety of skills.

Piggybacking on top of that is the fact that you can see all armor on your character. Whatever you equip is actually what your character will be wearing on the world map and in battle. This is cool, because as you level you’ll be coming across better and nicer looking armor, but at the beginning of the game you look like Ye Olde Gap exploded all over you.

My party: Zeth the hero, Quan the martial artist, Starsha the priest and Kyte the mage. Forgive the bad quality, you can’t expect much taking pictures of a DS screen with a cell phone.

One big addition to DQIX is the multiplayer. It’s kind of weird to be playing a turn-based RPG in a multiplayer setting, but it’s actually pretty fun. Christina and I would hook up and go hunting for Metal Slimes, monsters that give a huge amount of experience points when you defeat them. The great part about multiplayer is that the players don’t need to stay together, so we could split up to cover more ground, then when one of us found one, we’d regroup and reap the rewards.

The Dragon Quest series has never caught on in America the same way it has in Japan (where each new installment has to be released on a weekend to keep people from calling out of school or work), so it’s nice to see Nintendo putting so much effort into advertising it. Unlike in Japan where Square Enix is publishing it, it’s published by Nintendo here in the States. I’ve seen two different TV commercials starring Seth Green, and both of them were funny. The Nintendo Channel on the Wii also has a series of videos, including two “Iwata Asks” segments with series creator Yuuji Horii and two full episodes of Nintendo Week dedicated to discussing the game.

It’s a really solid game that does everything right. I played my copy for about an hour before Christina decided she wanted it too (she’d never played a Dragon Quest since the first one on the NES) so it’s definitely got appeal to series newcomers. I really have a hard time putting it down, so if you’re on the fence, definitely pick it up.