I spent the most hours ever playing this great RPG game. If you liked DQ IV and V, you will like DQ VI also.
I really enjoyed playing Dragon Quest VI. It is a great old school RPG with a gripping storyline. The game starts out with you and two of your fellow adventurers getting ready to fight the powerful Dread Fiend. Upon completion of that battle you awake in your room and are not sure where you are. The game's storyline takes you on adventures through three different worlds including the real world, the dream world, and the celetial world. Different locations from each of these worlds are unlocked as you progress through the storyline.
You start out the game by yourself, but you meet up with your previous two fellow adventurers and then other characters along the way. Dragon Quest games use a wagon to hold your party of characters that you can swap out during battle. Characters can change vocations like warrior, mage, priest, dancer, etc. You can not change vocations until you find the Alltrades Abbey in the dream world. I messed up by not changing my vocations until later in the game which caused me to spend more time later in the game leveling up the vocations to get ready for the tougher bosses. Certain vocations only open up when you have mastered other vocations.
The game is relatively easy to follow where you need to go next, but later in the game it got a little more confusing on what the next step was. Certain areas of the game do not open up until you have completed certain task or obtained different modes of transport. I did enjoy the variety you get later in the game where you can travel under water. There is a lot to explore under water, but the enemies are tough. Like the previous games, there are interesting mini games (slots at the casino) and side adventures (fashion show) you can experience that help you get different items. There is still the Medal King that you can trade mini-medals to get rare items.
The visual presentation of the game is smooth. The graphics are just sprite based 2D graphics, but they look crisp on the DS. They did a really good job with laying out the towns and dungeons using both the bottom and top screen on the DS. You don't use the stylus pen for anything in this game, but don't forget about the shoulder buttons which are used to rotate the camera. The graphics look the same as DQ IV and V. The music is great.
This was a great game that was hard to put down. It was a lot of fun exploring throughout the different worlds. I would highly recommend it to any Dragon Quest fan and anyone else who enjoys a good RPG game. I liked this game a lot more than Dragon Quest IX.