Dragon Quest IX is a modern old school JRPG. The presence and incredible importance of churches is what leads me to this conclusion. Actually, I'm kind of surprised that the churches aren't the only way to revive fallen party members, given what they're needed for in the game. Case in point: You need to go see a priest to figure out how much experience a character needs to level up. There's no status screen for that here.
Yet, as much as I find this delegation and concentration of features otherwise taken for granted in other games annoying, such a system really adds to an RPG. Take character revival, for example. When your spell caster finally learns the revive spell, or you find a reliable source of a game's reviving item, you really feel like you've accomplished something - at last you're free from the tyranny of the game's administrative center!
No doubt the people at Level-5 knew this. Maybe that's why you need to go to a priest to figure out how much grinding you've yet to do: they didn't want their world's churches to become irrelevant.
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