LogFAQs > #947119810

To sum up DQIX:

10% of it is barebones story
40% of it quest spam, a significant amount of which gives little to no reward
50% postgame grind in a semi-repetitive cycle

Half the quests are effectively the same quest repeated dozens of times. The other half have ridiculous requirements to fulfill them that force you to pointlessly grind, like the one that requires you to kill 3 Golems... Specifically with critical hits landing the killing blow, and critical hits executed by abilities don't count.

It's certainly playable, but by DQ standards it's pretty disastrous. It's a Dragon Quest game in name only.

V is good, but I struggled to get into VI and I didn't really get anywhere. VII I never finished because I got caught up in grinding classes before my exp got too high to do it. The Alltrades scenario is flat out unfair to the player, but otherwise the game seemed alright.

---

So a planet's somewhere out there, their history the same as ours is written. The only difference is that... Everyone's a kitten!