Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies

Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies
2009
Nintendo DS
Developed by Level-5
Published by Square Enix (jp) and Nintendo (na/eu)





Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies was the first mainline entry of the franchise to be developed for a handheld, instead of a home console, following the drastic increase of popularity of handheld devices in Japan since Nintendo DS and Playstation Portable releases. The transitioning to handheld devices didn't have any negative impact in the quality of the game, though. Of course, the graphics were not as good as they were in Dragon Quest VIII, but all the other aspects did not suffer any loss despite the game being on a system with far less resources.

Keeping up with the series tradition, Dragon Quest IX presents a large world with plenty to explore, and many sidequests to challenge the player out of the main story. Sentinels of the Starry Skies manages to keep a good balance between the main plot and other features of the game. While not very deep, the main story is original and engaging.

Characters ready for a fight. Graphics are not the best, but
they are adequate for the system and the art style of the game.

The story revolves around the Celestrians, who are some kind of guardian angels living in a place called The Observatory and who protect and help the humans, getting some kind of energy called benevolessence in return for their good actions. Their objective is to obtain enough benevolessence, so the sacred tree Yggdrasil can produce fyggs that will allow the Celestrians to move permanently to the Realm of the Almighty, which is their heaven. The main character is responsible for helping people from a small village named Angel Falls and collecting benevolesscence. However, his/her life is drastically changed after the Celestrian meet up with opposing forces, and the main character is sent into a quest that spans the human world, the Observatory and the Realm of the Almighty. Although the storytelling is sparse compared to other major RPG franchises like Final Fantasy or Tales of, the flow of the main story is quite good, not allowing the player to be bored or confused with a convoluted plot.

The world is filled with different locations and colorful characters that provide many interesting sidequests to enrich the playing experience. While the main story is interesting enough, Dragon Quest IX has a lot more to offer to those with time and patience to spend countless hours in a single game. The main advantage of Dragon Quest IX over many games with similar quest systems is that the quests are usually better developed than the average. Instead of the traditional quest system where you go to a "quest center" and receive quests like "someone asked you to gather some item/kill some monster, report back to receive your reward", the quests in Dragon Quest IX are offered by NPCs around the world and often provide some story development. This makes the quests attractive not only because of the rewards they may provide, but because they enrich the gaming experience.

The enemies being shown in the overworld map
is a refreshing change.

The other traditional aspect of Dragon Quest games, which is the combat, is largely unchanged from the other installments. The combat is turn-based, and the battles are semi-random (the enemies appear on the screen and can be avoided, but they are spawned randomly). The tactics are simple and rely heaviy on buffs, debuffs and status effects. There is not a lot of variation in the tactics, but the player needs to have at least one solid strategy in order to beat the boss battles and survive in the long dungeons.



Dragon Quest IX is somewhat different from other installments of the series as it lets the player to create as many characters as they want, and all the playable characters are created by the player. There is also some character customization, allowing the player to choose the characters' classes and allocating skill points to unlock new skills as they level up. It is important to note that the game isn't difficult, so the player doesn't need to worry a lot about choosing some specific classes. If you have some variety and decent levels, the challenges of the main story won't be very difficult to overcome.

All multiplayer interactions are available from the same inn.

One novelty for the series is the online component. It is possible to join other players in a cooperative play. You can either accept other players to help you in your quests or join other players' games and help them in their quests. You can also obtain quests, exclusive items and even characters and bosses from previous Dragon Quest games to enhance your gaming experience. The multiplayer mode is not intrusive, though, you can play the game as a single-player game without any notable loss. Unfortunately, Nintendo closed the DS Wifi Connection in 2014, so the players will have to use action replay codes in order to obtain the extra items and quests instead.

So, in essence, Dragon Quest IX is a lot like other Dragon Quest titles: the safest place to go when you are willing to have a well-crafted traditional RPG experience, without surprises or risks. This is what makes Dragon Quest so distinctive among the other RPG franchises, and what explains its success. Yuji Horii and Akira Toriyama partnership keeps working so well after all those years because they focus on what they are good making, and the result is that Dragon Quest IX lives up to the expectations of the fans of the RPG series and also are certain to please other RPG fans that have never delved into one of the biggest and most important gaming franchises ever created.