If this game is an example, yes. If not, probably.

'non kiddy'.  So says the person with the avatar of Vash the Stampede.  May I remind you that an entire genre of Anime (Shonen), including the author of Trigun, took HEAVY insperation from Akira Toriyama.

But as for your 'grinding' comment, its been said time and time again.  If you limit yourself to grinding, that's your own fault.  Dragon Quest can be played without having to grind.  But it takes more than just limiting yourself to using atk/buff/heal.

What is this BS?

The Shounen genre never was inspired by Akira Toriyama, and Shounen was a manga genre far before being an anime genre. I'm not even sure the first Akira Toriyama manga were Shounen.

Apart from that, I agree that DQ, past DQ I and DQ II, do not require grinding. You have to grind if you want to power level or beat everything in the game, that's all. Just like a FF game in fact. But you don't need to grind at all to finish the game.

Anyway, I don't know why people lose their time with the haters. The guys that made these reviews are loosers, as are most of the guys in the FF-DQ war. This war is going on at least since I've known about FF, so it started at least with the launch of FFIV, and I'm sure it was there before, as I'd heard about it going onfor years back then.

I thought it had disappeared with Squaresoft and Enix merge, but it seems like the stupid haters are still there.

I should have known, with people saying lots of stupid things like FF is about graphics or cut scenes (which IMO is just plain false). I usually don't comment about it, as people saying that obviously discovered FF at the earliest with FFVII on PS1.

Perhaps the war had really toned down. But with DQ on the DS and FF on PS3, the odds are high for DQ to deliver and grow, and for FF to fall hard (though putting it on XB360 lowered the odds for that scenario). So it reignited this stupid war, with haters going in hyperbole saying DQ gets bad reviews.

But the sales will speak for themselves, DQ has a good chance to become the lead franchise (in sales), puzzling the stupid Square Enix boss in the process, as I'm sure they want FF to be the lead JRPG series.

We'll see.

The authors for One Piece/Bleach/Naruto and many other Shonen all cite Akira Toriyama as their main influences for wanting to get into the Manga industry.  Akira Toriyama and Eiichiro Oda (author of One Piece) even have a series they did together in Shonen Jump called Cross Epoch melding the characters of Dragon Ball and One Piece (think Chrono Trigger and those two stories).  While there were other Shonen mangas before Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball has arguably been the most influential and popular Shonen in Japans history.  And one of the 5 most influential Manga/Anime in history.

Anyway, I don't think DQ is going to overtake FF in sales.  With SE making 15+ FF games a year now.  They only release about 2-3 DQ games a year tops.  And only one main DQ game every 4-5 years.

I think that may be why I respect the DQ series a lot more...

Do I think DQ9 look over simplified and childish? I do, but I think the same of all Toriyama stuff. I'm not a fan of his work at all.

That said, it isn't going to stop from playing, and most likely enjoying, the game. I should still be able to criticize the art style and not be flamed by elitists.

That was a poor choice of words on my part. What I meant to say was more like this:

I don't understand how DQ9, which apparently greatly resembles the older games in terms of art style, is now suddenly 'kiddy', when (at least some of) the art of the series has been drawn by Toriyama, whose style isn't exactly grim and gritty in the first place. Hell, the series has always looked light-hearted, so why is it such a problem now?

It's not really the fact that you can beat the game without grinding - it's that DQ8 (at least) seems to drown you in random encounters after every few steps you take. Yes, you can run from the fights, but from what I can remember that fails more often than not and gives the enemies free hits, so you're better off fighting anyway, which results in grinding.

the game were abit overboard, they look like kids, in DQ 8 they looked more mature.

i don't understand the sudden change? because it's in the DS? it looks like the move annoy alot of people.

It looks like every other Dragon Quest game to me, and the second best quality wise in terms of graphic capabilities. I'll be buying the game even if it got a 4 as an average. I enjoyed both IV and V remakes, and will most likely enjoy this too. No Amazon review will tell me otherwise.

That, I agree! Toriyama is a veryyyy overrated character designer, that once in a while has his glimpses of genius.

DQ9 is not genius, at all... but is the first artwork he created that I like for someeeeeeeeeeeeee years....