Having never played a Dragon Quest title before, I was a bit apprehensive about giving this one a go. It’s the ninth title in a well-established series with its own niche and well-carved out audience, supposedly not fitting for newbies. Or so I was told. However, I was pleasantly surprised to find that DQIX is a game with such simplistic gameplay that I was sucked away from my editorial duties for this very site due to severe addiction.

It all started when I chose my little character and got him setup and into his journey. What followed was a trip through what can only be described as an epic adventure. It may not be the quintessential Japanese RPG, but its so feature complete and really does feel like a full console title in the palm of your hand. Level-5 and Square Enix really have worked hard on this one to make it accessible. The closest thing I normally get to a Japanese RPG is Pokemon, which is a series that has made trade-offs to appeal to a western audience. DQIX doesn’t dilute itself to appeal to these shores, but aims to entice us through other means.

The gameplay is ultimately the staple for a great deal of RPGs – go to place X, fight off monsters with a turn-based party-based battle system, upgrade, grind and kill the boss. The beauty with DQIX is that it’s all so easy to keep on playing. There’s no silly rhythmic timing needed or random button presses to ensure critical hits, it’s just focused on giving you a fun experience. That’s not to say it’s easy. I admit that I died on plenty of occasions when I was trying to work my way around the nuances of bosses and trying to explore obscure locations in the over-world.

Talking of which, the over-world is interesting in that it’s presented well but isn’t very deep. You’ll only see it when you have to travel to a different location most of the time. However, there is a lot to do here and the game loves sending you off on wild goose chases everywhere. Whenever you go to a new place, no sooner than after you’ve checked out the village shops you’re asked to go rescue someone or stop some crazy lunatic in the nearby dungeon/tower/basement. Your character already has enough to deal with in the game (he’s a celestrian that fell to Earth during a massive fight between some very important characters) without having to sort out everyone else’s problems, but yet he has to trek on.

In many games, this would undo the experience. People would sense the melodrama like a green elephant in a prison yard. However with DQIX, the game knows it’s being pompous and conveys that through some intelligent writing. There’s self-depreciating humour in abundance and you can tell the localisation team had a lot of fun when scripting the experience. Some moments get so random they wouldn’t be out of place in a Monty Python film. It’s so refreshing to see a game making use of localisation as a tool to produce humour, but it works. There’s also the inclusion of text-based regional dialects, and that never fails to produce a hint of a smile when talking to random folk.

According to some fanboys, the Dragon Quest series is famed for having good music. IX’s music is fairly good, if repetitive. It uses some songs from past games in the series, so for a newcomer like me it’s nice to hear what past games may have sounded like. There’s no voice acting at all, sticking to the same line as the majority of DS titles. However, the presentation is competent. Menus are a bit fiddly and have the typical hard to read Japanese-esque font, but they do the job reasonably well. Regardless, the main centrepiece for this game is its visuals. It just looks beautiful. From the inventive enemies through to some tasteful sepia-toned nostalgia cutscenes, everything helps to create a believable cell-shaded world. Some cutscenes devolve into full blown anime segments, and while they’re entertaining, they can take a little away from the game’s visual impact.

There are other things, like local 4-player co-op and downloadable quests over the Nintendo Wi-Fi connection too. Only having local co-op is disappointing, but it works well enough and brings a lot of tension into some of the fights. Downloadable quests are handled remarkably well, and prove to be equally as frustratingly difficult as side-quests already included in the game.

Verdict: Dragon Quest IX is an exhausting experience. It will keep you locked to your DS for at least a solid week and won’t let you go, even for pasta. It’s one of the best non-Pokemon RPGs on the system and is surprisingly approachable. However, there are a few out of date complexities and the amount of grinding needed to take down the more challenging bosses can be frustrating (as well as bad for your hands. Crushing them in a vice would be less painful).