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In "Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies," players begin their adventure as a city guardian who is sent to retrieve a sacred tree's fruits, which have the power to grant wishes. Players travel the world, conquer fearsome monsters and unravel an epic storyline. During their journey, players will encounter mighty opponents in fast-paced battles, and also interact with a colorful cast of characters. "Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies" contains special modes that let players share their adventure with others, allowing up to four players to team up via a local wireless connection and experience the fun of tackling challenging monsters and dungeons cooperatively with their own characters. Players can even leave the game active in their backpacks, pockets or purses and still interact with other players via an interactive "Tag Mode." Information about players' characters can be wirelessly transmitted to others, and treasure maps and customized greetings can be exchanged automatically by players who come within range of one another when their games are set to Tag Mode. Players looking to enjoy a variety of different game activities can take on special side quests. Some of these quests will be earned by progressing through the game, while additional quests will be made available for free download for players with broadband Internet access after the game launches, providing hours of additional content for virtual adventurers to enjoy either on their own or with friends. Some downloadable quests will continue the main storyline of the game, while others offer standalone missions.

Although I'm a bit miffed the chapter 9 has been released in the US before chapter 6 (which still remains promised by Square Enix but still no release date has been revealed to the public yet), this Dragon Quest is by far the best of the current 3 that are available for DS (4,5, and 9).
The numerous additional quests (although some of them quite challenging and maybe a bit too difficult), ability to make items and weapons via "alchemy," the online options, and much more, while still maintaining the features of the previous DQ's makes this an excellent new DQ while not being too far removed from the series. It also has story references to previous chapters, and the encounters are no longer random (you can see your foes as you travel by foot and sometimes avoid them when desired).
In addition to spells you now also have "abilities" which are related to the new skill points (not a new RPG element, however it is new to Dragon Quest), which you receive at certain times when you level up (experience points), and you can choose what attributes to upgrade and the abilities are assigned as you reach different skill levels in each category. Your regular attributes still go up automatically.
You can change your vocation at any time once you reach a certain point in the game.
There are more new elements you'll see for yourself - if you're a Dragon Quest fan, this is a must. A good RPG overall as well.

Well, I played it in Japanese one year ago and I liked it a lot. It was fun looking at all the characters do their fight moves like Active Time Battle (but it is actually old-style take-turn battle). I enjoyed changing vocations and collect skills points to obtain useful skills to make all the characters "all-round" fighters. The story is kinda short, but interesting and the visual and sound are beautiful. You have lots of things to do after you see the ending if you like (I found conquering dungeons boring and quit after two or three dungeons, though).

In this game you are not forced to encounter monsters: you get to choose what kind of monsters you want to fight and I like it a lot. No more "slimes, again?" frustration because you see the monsters walking around as icons and you just need to approach them to initiate fights.

Obtaining enough materials for alchemy was tough. I had to spend so much time to get some rare materials....

Overall, it is different from the other DQs and it was not bad. I like DQ3, DQ4, and DQ5 much more than this, though.

The Good:

The battles are fun. I like the design of interaction among the characters during fights. It's been a while since I played a turn-based RPG that emphasized treating your team as a unit instead of a group of individuals taking their turns. I suppose if you have a team of only warriors, you could treat them are individuals. The boss battles are challenging but not impossible.

The music is fairly good, and the sound effects evoke memories of other Dragon Quest and Dragon Warrior games.

The game play and quest structure is familiar enough to be entertaining. There's a little of the happy tedium of grinding (fighting lots of monsters to boost your experience levels) but not too much as in older RPGs. The class-specific equipment is interesting to mix and match. I also like the ability to change your characters' vocations without losing everything you earned in your previous vocations.

The game has a sense of humor with names: The names of towns and monsters and characters are sometimes funny puns, mash-ups (two or more words stuck together to make one word) or allusions.

The Bad:

First and foremost, only Mark Twain should be allowed to write dialect-ed dialogue. I have no idea what some of the characters are saying. Is the information useful? Who knows, because I can't read hillbilly.

On a related note, there's too much dialogue. When characters talk a lot, there had better be some substance or advance to the story. Too often, the characters just jibber-jabber about nothing.

The story is mostly terrible and watered-down. Celestians? You mean angels, right? The Almighty? Let's just call it God. Politically correct censorship is extremely offensive. It makes me wonder what else did they hold back in the story because they thought I couldn't handle it. Could this have been a thoughtful commentary about the role of religion in people's lives (especially Catholics; who else believes in angels?)? Perhaps, but it's not, because someone's grandma might get offended.

Most of the character designs are ugly. What is the deal with the freaky eyes and hair options? What's wrong with normal looking people in video games?

Overall, the fundamentals of the game are solid and well-crafted, such that the game's annoyances can be overlooked.

So I will spare you all the trivial details and get straight to the point. Decent game and somewhat interesting story - bunch of mini stories thrown together to fill out the main story. The problem I have is the boss fights are less than memorial. I fought maybe seven of them so far and 90% of them are forgettable. Still waiting for the dragon boss to pop up that's in the intro, I mean the game is called Dragon Quest. I am more than half-way through the game and I have yet to even smell a Dragon.

The name of this game sounds epic. The actual game so far (I just got a boat) is anything but epic.

* Maybe I am spoiled after playing Grandia 2 which had some impressive bosses.

I am a big fan of Dragon Quest series, but this game is much more than I was expecting... Probably the best graphics I've ever seen on the DS, nice music, fun story, easy mechanics, a lot of things to do: side quests, treasure hunting, upgrading jobs, what else do you want??

I am really in love with thi game, I just don't want to finish it for a long time. I heard that a lot of new quests will be becoming available through online download.

If you like RPGs and Akira Toriyama's artwork, don't think too much and just buy it... it will never dissappoint you!