A introdução é longa e lenta ao ponto da letargia, mas a paciência do jogador recompensa.

O sistema de classes (aqui chamadas de Vocações) é legal e permite uma razoável quantidade de customização dos personagens, complementando muito bem o sistema de progressão padrão. Interessantemente, esse sistema tem embutido medidas para desincentivar o grinding: apenas monstros de nível maior ou igual ao dos personagens dão pontos para avançar as vocações, obrigando o jogador a continuar prosseguindo para novas áreas com inimigos mais fortes. Isso se integra muito bem ao excelente mapa, que é um dos melhores da série até o momento. Há dois mundos interconectados para se explorar (o real e o dos sonhos), com mais um (submarino) sendo introduzido depois.

Tão variada quanto a quantidade de mapas é a de veículos, que incluem uma ilha e uma cama voadora. Vários objetivos podem ser cumpridos na ordem que você quiser, o que inicialmente pode até causar uma sensação de desnorteamento. Felizmente a trama te motiva a continuar explorando mesmo quando perdido, seguindo a tradição de Dragon Quest fazer algo simples sem deixar de ser envolvente.

This is so close to being a great Dragon Quest game, but there are just too many little things holding it back. I really enjoyed the first half where things were focused, but it just seemed to fall apart as time went on. About halfway through the game, things open up into a big non-linear McGuffin hunt... or at least that's the intention. In DQ3, anywhere the player goes can lead to progress toward one of the McGuffins. In DQ6 there are plenty of wrong answers. Not only are there far more locations, but there are two different world maps, with even more eventually being piled on later. These combined with the complete lack of direction players are given when they are unceremoniously plopped into the game's second half lead to overwhelming confusion, and no small amount of frustration as players wade through encounters on their way to locations that they may or may not be able to access, and may or may not have an objective for them right now. Navigation of that world is far more difficult than in other DQ games. The player's "vehicles" are different for each of the two overworlds. Just because you can cross water in one world doesn't mean you can in the other. This leads to jumping through a bunch of hoops just to re-earn an ability the game has kind of already given you. Switching between those two worlds can also be a huge hassle, especially early in the game. DQ6 really feels like it's too big and too complicated for its own good.

The halfway point is also where the vocation system comes in, which is nice, but the rest of the game is engineered to drag you through as many battles as possible to make sure you're getting enough points to adequately progress through that system, and combat just isn't interesting at all. If you've ever played any other DQ game, there's nothing here to excite you mechanically. It just ends up feeling like a long grueling slog. I can only ask myself why the vocation system was introduced halfway through rather than from the start. To make matters worse there are a LOT of needlessly frustrating sections of the game that require talking to an NPC, talking to another NPC, running back to the first NPC, and then going back to the second NPC. Things like that. There are also a bunch of instances where players have to speak to every NPC in a town before the plot will advance. The worst example of the NPC backtrack runaround is in one of the game's dungeons where the player is tasked with escorting a cowardly child. Every time the player makes any kind of progress through the dungeon, the kid runs off and hides, thus forcing the player to backtrack through at least one screen's worth of dungeon to find the little shit. At one point he runs all the way to a neighboring town, and the game does not give any hints as to where he's gone. This plays out at least 5 times.

It's unfortunate that so much of this game comes together. The story is pretty interesting, although many details of it do not hold up under scrutiny and thinking about it too hard will only lead to headaches. The small, episodic town stories that DQ so often employs are really quite good here, with a lot of cool and memorable moments, as well as a genuinely cool twist or two. I can't recommend it as a standalone entity, but it's still worth a look for fans of the series.

An underrated installment. While the characters leave a lot to be desired, the scale of the world is vast, the individual towns still have engaging stories, and there are some very interesting twists and plot developments nonetheless. The game's theme is identity, and the game plays with the conflict between the player and their own idea of the hero (or rather how the player gives the hero a personality) and the hero's own personality. Interesting fourth wall breaks are at play here that are unfortunately little noticed and little discussed. Still a great game.

Feels bad giving this game a low ranking because it has a lot of things going for it. The finished product though? Ehhhhhh

The worst thing is definitely its pacing and the handling of the Dream World/Real World switching. The novelty wore off halfway through the game, and I struggled to proceed at several points.

Alltrades Abbey is back but man.... it kinda blows. It takes foreeeeever to level up any classes, and I wish it was just tied to level instead. It seems like they really didn't know what they were doing once you finally defeat the first main villain, and the game just descends into this lackadaisical fetch quest from the second half onwards.

I couldn't bring myself to beat the final boss after losing to it once. I didn't wanna go back and grind. Time for DQ7.