Started a new game on my vacation week – Dragon Quest IX for the Nintendo DS

Good points

• Paper-doll avatar: Essentially, every piece of gear changes the appearance of your characters.  You can also customize your character’s appearance and gender at the beginning of the game.  These are nice, modern touches in an otherwise very traditional RPG.
• Lots to do:  DQ IX certainly gives you a ton of things to do, what with alchemy, character classes,  and tons of sidequests.  There might be more, but I haven’t finished the game yet.
• Serviceable touch controls:  Most stuff is easy to do with the stylus, if that’s what you have handy.  Normal buttons work fine, too…
• Nice graphics:  This game looks great on the DS XL.  Not PSP-quality graphics, but they are vibrant, good-looking, and get the job done.

Bad points

• Characters:  You don’t just create your main character  -you create your other party members out of this air as well.  So, while your party members dutifully follow you around towns/dungeons/etc., they are not characters at all – they’re accessories for the main character.  And speaking of the main character, there isn’t much development there, eithe:  silent protagonist, flimsy backstory,  Suffice it to say that DQ IX is not a character-driven RPG.  Even given the “create your own” nature of the characters, the designers could have created – say – small backstories / dialogue for each class.
• Story:  You could say that DQ IX isn’t really a story-driven RPG, either. I haven’t finished the game, so I can’t pass judgement on the whole story.  However, what has been on offer so far is fairly slow-paced and generic.  There’s just enough story to give you a reason to give the game a reason to exist, but  it’s really the gameplay itself that makes the game entertaining.

Overall (so far)

I’m going to keep playing it.  May not put as many hours into this as I did into Dragon Quest VIII on the PS2, but despite its weaknesses of character and plot – it’s still fun to play.