Dragon Quest IX Basics

What Is Dragon Quest IX?

Dragon Quest IX is the most recent game in the epic Japanese RPG (JRPG) series from Square-Enix. Dragon Quest is easily the most popular RPG series in its home country of Japan (yes, even bigger than Final Fantasy... much bigger, in fact), and holds a high level of popularity elsewhere in the world as well, especially in North America and Europe. The franchise itself is an old one, and dates back nearly twenty-five years. The original Dragon Quest game launched on Famicom in 1986, and American gamers got it a couple of years later, when the renamed Dragon Warrior was released on the NES in 1989. Ever since, Dragon Warrior/Quest has held a special place in the hearts of RPG gamers around the world.

Enix was the company originally responsible for the series, but when they combined with their arch-rival Japanese RPG developer Square early in the 21st century (thus becoming Square-Enix), the series had new life breathed into it. Lagging in popularity and exposure outside of Japan, Dragon Warrior VII (PSX) and Dragon Quest VIII (PS2) were released Stateside, but only to extremely limited success. It seems that all of that's changed now with Dragon Quest IX, however. With Dragon Quest IX's release on the Nintendo DS -- perhaps the most-owned console or handheld in existence -- the Dragon Quest series was suddenly prepared to reach the largest audience it ever had. And now that the game is out around the world, it has certainly reached a large audience, indeed (with the game selling well over four million units in Japan alone).

But Dragon Quest IX isn't for everyone. It's an old-school RPG, just like every other game in the core Dragon Quest series. This may be a turn-off for some, because the game can be quite difficult, especially if you don't take the time to level-up your characters, earn money for better equipment, et cetera. A full play-through of Dragon Quest IX is also an incredible time-sink, requiring at minimum a lengthy one-hundred hours to see through from beginning to end. But if you're still interested, you should keep reading. Our complete Basics section has a lot to offer the novice and intermediate Dragon Quest gamer alike. Even those who consider themselves experts at the series will no doubt benefit from brushing up on all this Basics section (and guide as a whole) has to offer. So without further delay, let's get to it!

How Do You Play?

In premise, playing Dragon Quest IX is extremely straight-forward, and easy to get a grasp on. It's all of the ancillary things you have to pay close attention to that can quickly spiral your Dragon Quest IX adventure into oblivion. At the start of the game (as outlined in our Walkthrough), you'll take control of the main character. Unlike many other Dragon Quest titles, the main character in Dragon Quest IX is totally customizable. You can make the character male or female, name him or her, and even change each aspect of the character's appearance. Regardless of how you create your character, however, one thing remains static, and that's who your character is. Your character is a Celestrian, an angel of sorts who watches over the mortals in the land known by the Celestrians as The Protectorate. Typically, Celestrians themselves live in a location known as the Observatory.

After going through the early story (again, outlined in-depth in our Walkthrough), you'll finally get to spread your wings a little bit (not literally, of course). You'll finally reach the first town in the game, Angel Falls, and will be able to explore that town, speak to its residents, and earn both main quests and Side Quests, and finally get out to the world map. The world map is where a lot of the action in Dragon Quest IX takes place. It's here that you'll be able to travel from one location to another (such as from a town to a dungeon, or a cave to a castle, and so on and so forth). The world map also provides you one of the primary locations for random encounters to take place.

Random encounters are at the heart of a grinding JRPG like Dragon Quest IX, because that's where you'll be able to fight enemies in order to become stronger. Defeating enemies in Dragon Quest IX earns you experience points and gold. Experience points are given to active characters in your party to make them stronger statistically, while gold is used to purchase items for your inventory and equipment that will supplement your character's strengths. So that's basically the entire gist of Dragon Quest IX. You move from town to town, city to city and castle to castle, questing and adventuring in dangerous locales like caves and dungeons, fending off enemies and completing tasks that will allow you to progress the story. As you move through the game, enemies will become stronger, but so too will your party (as well as the equipment they have access to), allowing you to keep pace. Simple, right? Well as we said earlier, in premise, it is. But in practice, the game can be a lot more difficult. So keep reading.

Managing Your Party

Very early on in the game, you won't have a party, so you don't have to worry too much about this at first. But when you finally reach Stornway, you'll be able to use that town's inn to begin recruiting party members at will. You should start recruiting in earnest as soon as you're able to, because buffing out your party with more players will make your life easier. Don't bother trying to get past Stornway without a full party of four players (the main character plus three random recruits). It's a waste of your time and energy, and you'll find that if you try to proceed further without a full party, you'll eventually reach a wall. Don't bother reaching that wall; succumb to the temptations, and recruit away.

Now, there are two general ways you can go about recruiting characters and managing your party. You can either recruit a static three characters that you will take with you for the rest of your adventure. Or, you can recruit and create more than three characters, and constantly swap them in and out of your party as needed. The former suggestion is the direction you should go in; trying to level-up more than three characters aside from your main character isn't a wise use of time, and will make a ridiculously meaty 100+ hour experience even longer, to the point of being unbearable. So definitely take three characters as soon as you reach Stornway, and stick with them indefinitely. Then, you'll only have to worry about a limited number of characters with which to outfit with the best weapons and equipment.

When you create your characters, you'll need to choose their classes, and you'll be stuck with these classes until you reach Alltrades Abbey later on in the game. With your main character being a combat-ready Minstrel, we recommend that you create a Warrior, White Mage and Black Mage. This will give your party plenty of balance until you reach the point that you can make your characters any class. But you should generally stick with the mantra of having two melee strikers and two magic users in your party at all times. Balance is the key when managing your party, and upsetting that balance can make the game extremely difficult, or worse yet when you get deep in the game, outright unplayable. While you shouldn't be afraid to try out new classes (in fact, we encourage you to do so, to see what works best for you), never lose sight of the end goal of party balance.