Dragon Quest IX is actually pretty compelling when the plot's happening as you play. It feels much more like you're making actual progress rather than just wandering around.
That's not to say wandering around the game's world map isn't fun or interesting in and of itself, but there's definitely a sense of things moving forward when you keep running into cutscenes. And when the prices of weapons and armor pass into the 10,000+ gold range.
Part of why I'm grateful for the game's story having kicked in again is that it distracts from the grind of combat.
Dragon Quest IX isn't really an RPG that requires a lot of strategy when it comes to battles. Attack the enemy hard, watch your party members' HP and heal them when it's low. During boss battles, do the same, but throw in some stat-boosting spells to hit harder and to be able to take more hits.
So far elemental weaknesses are minimal and the benefits of exploiting them seem limited. Grouping the monsters into families (demons, dragons, insects, etc.) is definitely neat, but basing weaknesses on those families is meaningless.
Hiding this information in the game's bestiary (accessed through a sequence of menus) doesn't help matters either.
I would make a comparison to Pokemon and how easy it is to guess type and then know weaknesses, but it's hard to say just what all demons are weak to (crackle magic, since it's ice and they're fire?).
At any rate, the route to Upover winds around and around so much you'd think it were the last town in the game. All this talk of the Gittish Empire suggests otherwise, though. I know I've sailed past a mountain-locked land before, and that must've been it.
Well, onward and upward.
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