Review by: Brandon "Battle Whip" Cackowski-Schnell

With so many RPG's focusing on moral choices these days, it's refreshing to play a game where your main purpose is to do good deeds for the sake of being good. Don't get me wrong, I love being a renegade as much as the next guy, but at the same time, Dragon Quest IX's cheery tone is just so infectious that I don't mind for one bit that I can't do anything but be good. It certainly doesn't hurt that the game provides one of the best roleplaying experiences of the year in an "as complicated as you want it to be" fashion that's brimming with color, personality and yes, good cheer.

You play an angel, sorry, a Celestrian, an angelic being that acts as the guardian of Angel Falls. As you go about protecting and helping the people of your town you collect benevolessence for your good deeds and offer this magical stuff up to the World Tree so that it can bear fruit and all of the Celestrians can move on into the God's Land. Unfortunately on the day when the tree is supposed to start a-poppin' you instead get knocked out of your heavenly digs and land on Earth with no more angel powers. Soon you hook up with Stella, the fairy driver of the train that was supposed to bear the Celestrians to God's Land and you're off on your way to right all that is wrong with the heavens.

As with every DQ game before it combat is turn based, however in a nice twist, random encounters are a thing of the past. As you travel through the world you'll see beasties roaming about and if you choose to ignore them you can simply wind your way through them and get to your destination. Some monsters will seek you out making a completely fight-free journey a rarity, but even with this you don't feel like you're forced to either fight or flee from battles you didn't want to be in. Of course skipping battles means you won't be gaining experience or money and the battles are rarely punishing outside of boss tussles so even though you don't have to fight, you probably will any way if anything to gain items for the dozens upon dozens of alchemy recipes.

Rather than provide you with a party of characters all with their own motivations, this time you can roll up into the Quester's Rest tavern and order up a custom made set of fellow adventurers. The game comes with pre-generated characters if they don't float your boat you can use the same robust character creation system used to create your main character to come up with the party of your choosing. If you decide while going about your celestial business that your team ain't cutting it, you can order up some new friends. Your character starts off the game as a Minstrel, the Jack of All Trades vocation but early into the story you'll gain the ability to change vocations, a welcome addition even if there is a small cost involved in changing jobs.

Changing vocations requires you to start from scratch in some regards which on the surface may seem like it's a waste of your time but in reality the vocation changing system isn't as strict as it initially appears. Any class specific skills, including stat increases shared between your old and new vocations retain their level and given how many skills the Minstrel vocation shares with the other classes, you're never left starting completely from scratch. Also, any skill points come with you to your new vocation and any you earn in the new job can then be applied to your old job, right where you left off, should you decide to return. This all amounts to an incredibly flexible albeit confusing system where you can play around with new vocations to see what suits you best, taking all of your accumulated skill points with you once you decide on your final career. If you don't care one whit about that stuff you can also just stick to being a Minstrel, create a balanced party and go about your business. The flexibility of the system is such that you never feel like you have to mess with it, however if you want to, the rewards are there.

The notion that it can be played and enjoyed by someone wanting a more accessible experience yet rewarding players willing to put the time and effort into exploring all the game has to offer is the biggest selling point of the game. Too many times games beat you over the head with their complicated bits in an effort to show you how clever the creators are. Not Dragon Quest. If you want to spend time power leveling you can, but you don't have to. If you want to get in battle after battle to gain alchemy ingredients so that you can make the newest and bestest stuff, you can, but you don't have to. If you're not content with the nine vocations and want to work towards the extra vocation variants, you can but you don't have to. Whether you want to scratch the surface or strip mine the hell out of this game there is something for everyone yet at no point does it feel like concessions were made for either end of the gaming spectrum.