I'd add 4 in there as well.  And yes, 7 was a strange one.  Very long. I still enjoyed it though.

Yeah, 4 is okay imo. But, tell me...how did you feel about the backtracking in Dragon Quest VII? I felt it was insanely overbearing. The story does come together nicely but man the backtracking. 

I also have mixed feelings about DQ 11, but possibly for different reasons.

I thought it started out great, and it had so many great moments along the way.  The game has an incredible amount of polish.  I actually do like the battle system for the most part.  It wasn't ZOMG amazing, but overall I liked the battle system.  Lots of the characters I encountered along the way were charming and interesting.

My main beef is that the primary storyline is just way too long.  At a certain point I just found the game to be tedious.  It was weird too, because I might be enjoying a certain moment a lot and I still found the game tedious.  It's well polished, but it's just waaay too long.  I want my main storyline to be shorter.

Ironically, one thing I really like about a RPG game is a lot of optional and post game or end game content.  I can tell DQ 11 had a lot of this, but I didn't bother.  Once I completed the storyline I was done.  I no longer wanted to spend any more time in that game world.  The long storyline ruined all of the optional content that I would normally love in a game.

Older DQ games were shorter.  That is what I want.  Ironically it doesn't need to change more.  It needs to get back to it's roots more.  Modern turn-based RPGs in general are just waaaay too long.

I haven't played the game in over a decade, so I really don't recall.  I also played partially on an emulator (all hail Sony's memory card reader which let me transfer saves from a memory card to my PC) so I did speed up things a little when it came to late-game grinding and whatnot. That might have helped ease the pain.

The only thing about the game that disappointed me was the protagonist.

What are you talking about? The beautifully written text and voice acted lines from the protagonist made the game something I couldn't look away from! ;)

Meh, the protagonist is supposed to be a player avatar. The protagonists in Persona (which Atlus actually calls "protagonists" in its promotional material and in the manuals back when the games still had them) are similarly a blank slate with a little backstory, and are as vocal as Link (almost nothing but grunts and whoops with the occasional yell of "PERSONA!!!")

I'd also add 3 in there. It's pretty beefy for a NES RPG. 

I'd like to see the 3DS version of 7 remastered for Switch. The 3DS remake streamlined a lot of the more tedious aspects of the original release, especially with the Shrine of Mystery.

Kinda the point of DQ. You are the Hero. I think Erdrick is the only named one.

I often find it more immersive when the hero has no name or voice,makes me feel like being a part of the story because i can add my own personal image/characteristics to his blank slate and feel like i connect myself better with the plot.

So yeah,like you said :P