It’s not often that a long, interesting RPG hits the DS, so I felt I should check this one out. I’m not a big fan of the series, and Square Enix itself is pretty difficult to comprehend: you have Square, which is going rapidly downhill and tends to focus on making a game into a film; and you have Enix, which is going rapidly uphill and is sticking to making RPGs. Still, they have a history of making fairly decent games.

Dragon Quest 9 is easy to play with both the stylus and buttons. The game play is pretty much the same as any turn-based RPG. In fact, it’s pretty stereotypical in terms of characters- you have your aggressive guy who fancies some slut who fancies you, the teacher who is nothing like people describe, and the protagonist who doesn’t speak. It’s really difficult to grow to appreciate one-dimensional characters in games, especially when whoever translated it doesn’t seem to understand slang. I just can’t really like a character who says, “You can be properly weird.” However, the story is a lot different from the usual “big company/royalty being poo heads- go kill stuff” situation we usually have to deal with.

The story sees you, a guardian, learning from some bald guy- who is really strict, according to everyone you speak to. However, he treats you better than I treat my own son. I suppose that wouldn’t be hard, seeing as I don’t have a son, but still- you get the point. So, the bald guy takes you around and you help people by killing enemies. Eventually you are entrusted to defend the village by yourself, and you have to do little things to help the people, like pick up horse poo. Yeah, I’m not kidding. He doesn’t even put it in a bin- he just eats it or something.

After a somewhat disturbing start to the game, there is a lovely little cut-scene with a terrific art style and brilliant music accompanying. Then the game takes a more serious tone- a giant flying train crashes into the land you’re protecting. You end up on the ground in the town you started in, without wings, and with everyone being able to see you (being a guardian, you were invisible and had wings.)

There are other unique aspects to this game, as well. There’s a lot of customization, for one- with literally thousands of items, this game really took customization to a new level. You can choose your character’s eye color, hair style and color, all the basics- all of which, in true RPG style, look like the stupidest things ever. They either look like a person has just chopped your hair off using a hedge trimmer, or like you fell out of Dragonball Z. Another difference between this game and your average RPG is the way enemies act towards you. Usually in an RPG of this scale by Square Enix, the enemies would appear randomly, whereas in this game they actually appear on screen before the battle, and will charge at you, ignore you, or even occasionally run from you. But, to my surprise, I found this system to be pretty stupid. A turn-based RPG is usually slow-paced, but this one mixes fast and slow. It just doesn’t work in this case.

My verdict on this game is that it’s a classic-style RPG, which many people do miss now, but it’s nothing too special

Games: Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies, Platforms: DS, Genres: RPG, Publishers: Square Enix Nintendo, Developers: Level-5 Square Enix