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The story
Released on the Nintendo DS, Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies put adventure-sharing via StreetPass and multiplayer front and center, and at launch it logged some of the best domestic sales in the series’ history. At the same time, opinions on it within the series are sharply divided, and a thread on 5ch’s Nanademo Jikkyou G (a general “let’s-react-live” board) debated the question of why 9 gets called the weakest entry in the series. Many posters pointed to a thin story, characterless party members, and graphics that fell short, while others pushed back by citing the StreetPass experience of the era and praising the supporting cast — making clear that reactions depend heavily on when and how someone played it.
What people said
Its popularity came mostly from being a DS communication gadget, not from being a solid mainline Dragon Quest game.
Graphics.
It's bad enough that you'd think Horii (the series' creator) handed the script off to a ghostwriter.
Yeah, that's fair.
7 and 8 were decent enough, but I can't even recall what 9's story was about.
By the time you get to 9, aside from the broad outline, it's mostly staff writing it, not Horii himself.
That's a big part of it.
As an experience at the time, it was fun.
But as a game, it was boring.
Honestly, you never see a 9 thread get lively.
Things to talk about…
All I can come up with is the tanned fairy… and that "Choo Choo Train" dance bit… that's about it.
This is exactly why it's unpopular — fans who randomly start trashing other entries in threads that have nothing to do with them.
But what I actually enjoyed was the StreetPass stuff and hanging out with friends — playing it now, it's kind of mediocre as a game.
My close friend group was all playing it, so I played it too.
But even back then, I liked 7 and 8, which I'd played before, better.
They should've used that leftover material for 9 instead.
I get that.
But if it moved as briskly as the "Reimagined"-style remake, I feel like they wouldn't have needed to cut any episodes.
If 9 and 10 had been spin-offs, they might be rated differently.
I get the occasional urge to replay 1 through 8, and 11, but never 9.
The graphics were about what you'd expect for a DS game, though.
Without StreetPass it's a pretty hollow game.
Though online infrastructure has come a long way since then, so they could probably build something enjoyable in a different form than StreetPass.
Don't put out a mainline game that stops being fun just a few years later.
Same goes for me with Dragon Quest in general.
I'd rather a game be complete in itself the moment you buy the cartridge.
11 was basically doing the "this — this is exactly what I wanted" thing, right.
There's no story development or content to make up for that.
The graphics are bad.
It's not enjoyable to play years later.
A fair assessment.
It's probably just a certain generation rating it through nostalgia goggles.
It wasn't bad, but it wasn't the kind of content that belonged in a Dragon Quest game.
Sure enough, here comes a fanboy who can only fire off "no friends" jabs, lol.
Nothing lands less than that one when it comes to Dragon Quest 9.
Same here — I only remember it if someone brings it up.
I remember most other entries decently well, but 9 barely left a mark.
Like, no — just let it be a game.
Fine if they'd done that as a spin-off or a separate game.
But wasting one of the precious numbered entries on 9 really stings.
She got bashed back then, but she's a good kid.
In the ending she worried about you so much — it was really cute.
Sandy even made a guest appearance in the DQ8 remake.
As a character, she wasn't bad at all.
Jokes like the EXILE reference are painfully cringe. (EXILE is a Japanese dance/vocal group DQ9 apparently riffed on)
Stuff like that drags the rating down too.
Tough on the introverts, huh.
Maybe Horii had already run dry by this point.
11 was fun, but it was more of a greatest-hits culmination of past entries.
Still, I'm sure they'll make something good again next time.
Meanwhile 3 never had that problem.
Well obviously having infinite combinations is going to feel completely different from fixed, job-specific looks.
Background and Key Points of This Debate
Released in 2009 for the Nintendo DS, Dragon Quest IX sold itself on letting players freely change party members’ appearance and job class, alongside StreetPass-based item trading and rescue features. That was an unusual design choice for the series — while it logged some of the best domestic sales in series history at the time, it draws frequent criticism when measured against more traditional RPG yardsticks like narrative arc and attachment to fixed characters. What split the thread was how to separate those huge sales figures from an assessment of the game itself — opinions diverged over whether to factor in the StreetPass-dependent, platform-specific experience of that era. One point worth noting, though not explicitly raised in the thread’s replies, is that taking high sales at face value as a measure of quality can be misleading.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Nanademo Jikkyou G) thread “Why Dragon Quest 9 Is Called the Worst Entry in the Series.”
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