Dragon Quest IX : Sentinels of Starry Skies

Developer : Level-5
Publisher : Square Enix, Nintendo
Director : Akihiro Hino, Jin Fujisawa
Producer : Ryutaro Ichimura
Platform : Nintendo DS
Released Date : 11 July 2009
Genre : RPG

Dragon Quest IX is the best dragon quest series so far. Though I have only played Dragon Quest III, IV, V and IX. The storyline is good and interesting. Plus, it is not predictable. 

Storyline (Spoiler Alert): You will play as a Celestrian, an immortal being, with halo and wings. Your duty as an Celestrian is to watch over mortals and bring benevolessence to Ygdrassil. It is believed that when Yggdrasil will bear fruit and lead path to Realm of Almighty. However, when you offered benevolessence to Yggdrasil, a certain event occur causing you to lose you halo and wing. And so, your journey to return to the Observatory begins and you will meet Stella. After collecting enough benevolessence to regain your Celestrian's power, you will be able to reach Observatory. Things are different after the event and Opus Major will make you collect fyggs as what the Yggdrasil asked you to. You will need to complete quest given to you before being able to collect all the fyggs one by one. You will have to return to Observatory when collect them all but will be ambushed by your master, Aquila! In addition to that, the Starlight Express will be attacked by a black dragon, Barbarus, causing you to fall down again. You will reach in a village where they do not trust outsider. You will meet a girl ghost and she will tell you about the past and she is finding for Corvus! In case you don't know or remember, Corvus is Aquila's master. Anyhow, you will one way or another reach Upover and meet another dragon, Greygnarl. This dragon is said to defeat the black dragon 3 centuries back.However, he does not like you and dismiss you. When you return to Upover, Gittish Empire has attack the village. You, of course, will save the village.But thanks to this, Greygnarl agree to see you with certain condition. Then, Barbarus will attack again and you will join Greygnarl on sky to battle against him. Barbarus gain stronger power and attack the village. Greygnarl died protecting the village while you are capture and sent to Gittish Empire Cell. You will surely escape from there but of course with difficulty. After that, you will return to the Observatory and have to depart to Realm of Almighty to give the fyggs to the Almighty One. Believe it or not, Aquila took the fyggs from you and delivered it to Apus Major.But to your surprise, when you enter the temple, it look like the temple has been attacked. You will then offer the fyggs and hear a voice. Soon, you will be summon to the Observatory and the voice you heard is from Yggdrasil. She will inform you about Almighty and yadda yadda yadda. Then, off to Gittingham Palace you go to defeat the Empire! Defeat the Lieutenant and make way to the throne room to meet King Godwyn. Aquila is there too and looks like he deceive everyone so that he can defeat Godwyn. But too bad, he is not strong enough to defeat him so you have to battle against Godwyn. Aquila saves you from being attacked by Godwyn from behind and died in the process. He entrust to you to save the other Celestrians and most importantly, his teacher, Corvus. Corvus has turned evil due to hatred and anger. He will go to Realm of Almighty to be god himself and get rid of mortal together with Barbarus. He will attack and you cannot attack him due to the law of Celestrian. You will then be brought back to Observatory and report the situation to Opus Major. Yggdrasil will then ask you to seek for her and you will be given a fygg and asked to eat it. However, eating it will turn to into a mortal. Good thing the process of turning to mortal is slow so you can ride on the Starlight to Realm of Almighty to defeat Corvus and stop him.Since you manage to defeat him by getting rid of your Celestrian, he will do the same and become complete evil (and green). Then, you will have to pursue him and fight with Barbarus before fighting with Corvus. Even though you defeat him, he will try to destroy the world to make your effort a vain. Serena come and bring him back to conscious and become good back. You will be summon back to Observatory and be ask to go to mortal realm since you are now a mortal. Celestrians will turn into star in the sky.

Graphic: The graphic used in this game is 2.5D where they are combination of 2D and 3D. No matter what, it still look nice to me if you compare with other dragon quest series of another platform like super nintendo.

In this game, you can create the character of your choice with several choices like gender, hair color, hairstyle and so on. Aside from that, you can also create your companion based on how you want it to be. (Look and job)

Not only limited to that, you can choose change your job. Some of the job need to be unlocked before you can go for vocation. Also, each job have two quests at level 15 and 40. Level 15 quests are usually to get armor for the related job where as level 40 is to get a manual for the job.

Each job have different skill which you can allocate point on to them. You can smartly allocate the point and max all the skill.

There are side quest which you can obtain while talking to NPC. Those with quest will have a blue smiley when you go near them.

Something that make me like this game is also because of the equipment. When you change equipment, your character's look will change. I love whenever character look changes so I won't get bored looking at them~

You can also create item and equipment with material which you can collect from the world. You can either create from the recipe you get from bookshelf or try your own luck.