dragon quest 9 is allright but i don't think there is anything that sticks out and elevate it out of other DS rpg, it's just kinda solid and bland and full of dumb puns... the beginning of the game is also quite easy, i didn't realize you could hire new character at the bar, went solo for quite a while and still was able to play through a big portion of the game before having to make a party
if there is an awfull bit that comes with the postgame, there is a lot of postgame content but it's all hidden in a way that it make reaching it super annoying, first of all it comes into the form of free DLC quest, now that the game is super old you can download all of the quest in a single swoop but back in the day they would be drip-feed to the player to ensure nobody would dare to sell it's copy...
most of these DLC quest involve using the random dungeon feature, at a certain point of the game you'll get a map indicating a location in the world map and going there give you access to a randomly created dungeon which comes with enemies not found in the normal game and of course the stuff you need to clear the DLC quest but of course what you get into a random dungeon is random so if you don't find what you are looking for you have to finish the random dungeon you created so you can create a new dungeon and it's so annoying
you can actualy trade random dungeons with other players but good luck finding one! if you are playing on a flashcart or emu i think someone wrote a program where you can actualy build your own random dungeon which at least spares a lot of pain...
...then comes legacy bosses, for some reason DQ9 has all of the final bosses from the previous DQ, that fat pink guy from DQ8? he's here, the final boss from the original game? he's here too... now all of these bosses have unique equipment to drop but the drop rates sucks ball, so everytime you defeat one of them their level goes up one, and they become a little stronger and their drop rates improve a little and this too is a huge and annoying waste of time
