I've played every DQ game except VI and a couple side games (like the Fushigi no Dungeon games).  Basically I just think DQVII was the weakest for exactly what I said.  The Shards mechanic, and a great deal of the worlds layout, limited your exploration and forced you to grind in areas.  Which isn't the case in other games.  It wouldn't have been a big problem if the game had been a more linear focused game such as with DQIV or V.  But they also included the job system, which pretty much made 'grinding' enevitable since large chunks of the game had very few battles and were story based, yet you were expected to keep leveing your party to take on ever-increasing boss fights and lopsided enemy swarms.  Not to mention, characters keep getting pulled out of your party for 'story' reasons.

Its little wonder the game is so long and considered by many to be the hardest Dragon Quest.

Now, I may have some rather noted annoyanced with the game, but that's not to say it was bad.  I just consider it to be the 'oddball' of the series.  They were trying to do unique things, and some things worked well.  The game probably just needed to either not have the shards mechanic or not have a job class system.  Both together was just too much at once.  Heck, this is why past games had to invent new concepts, like Dragon Quest V adding monster collection to replace party members who leave the party or Dragon Quest IV splitting the story into chapters.  And hence why Dragon Quest VIII opted for a more exploration based/skill based system, while still having a large 80 hour story.  And Dragon Quest IX mixed the job/class system with the skill system and exploration of Dragon Quest VIII.

Which for the record, I spent 160 hours on both Dragon Quest VII and VIII, but in Dragon Quest VIII, it was by choice.

@ Kenryoku_Maxis

I've played through VII twice (89 hours and 71 hours) and, to be honest, most of what you're complaining about never affected me. I don't remember ever being put in a difficult position regarding grinding, and I've never had any issues balancing the job system and the shard system. I see VII as a DQ that contains more of everything. More battles, a longer story, more areas to explore, more dungeons to conquer...sure the pacing was incredibly slow and losing party members without much notice was slightly annoying, but the game itself, at least to me, functioned much like any other DQ that came before it, just on a much larger scale.

If anything, IX is the oddball. A shortened main storyline and a heavy emphasis on timewasters such as quests and treasure grottoes? I'm pretty sure that it's the first mainline game where players are expected to spend more time on non-story oriented post-game content than they do on the main quest. I enjoyed the game immensely, but if any DQ game should be called an oddball, it should definitely be IX IMHO.

Eh......VII was obese, at least that's how I see it; Too much padding and not enough of that DQ feeling. Aira and Melvin were pretty interesting though, especially next to Maribel.

Can you expand on that? I never had that issue, so I'm just curious what aspects of the game didn't feel like Dragon Quest to you.

Calm down. Everyone has different opinions. Let's not turn this into those Final Fantasy threads of which one is better. To me, Dragon quest VIII is the worst and VI and IX are AMAZING.

*Sigh*

It's still 2 days away for the game to release here in Europe and some of you guys are already finishing it, not fair  

I realize he's entitled to his opinion, and I was perfectly calm when I wrote that. What he said just piqued my curiosity.

@Cactus

I was just comparing Dragon Quest VII to the others based on what I was saying in my first post.  Its Exploration and NPC interaction (aka the way a Dragon Quest game tells its story).  Two of the three things Yuji Horii has laid out are the key things for a Dragon Quest game.  And if you look at Dragon Quest VII, it is much more linear than the other games in the series because of your need to collect Shards.  As well as their emphasis on story.

There's nothing wrong with that by itself.  However, the added inclusion of the job system once again causes a problem.  Because, as we've seen in past games that used the job system, you need a lot of room to explore the world to level your characters. Or else 'grinding' ensues. Just look to the recent Dragon Quest IX as a perfect example.  And unfortunately, in Dragon Quest VII, you had a very linear storyline with very limited areas to explore.  Some areas were literally go from point A to Point B and defeat a boss.

The game probably would have been more balanced if they followed a formula like Dragon Quest IV with set character classes or Drago nQuest V where you could capture monsters.

That's a fair critisicm, but VII eventually opens up, allowing near total freedom, much like how all other DQ games start with a small area of the world to explore and gradually allow the player to see more and more. I agree that it's probably the most linear game in the series though (or at least, the first big chunk of the game is).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-BoRYawqbE&videos=hnDyEEwwlCc

Here's Stella's summon attack from Monster battle road 2, incase anyone is curious

http://www.youtube.com/user/makikaigod0000#p/u/12/UFCMRdLG8sE Every other female character.