The first act of the game is amazing, an absolutely wonderful experience and I tought it could even become one of my favorite RPGs ever; gameplay, music, characters, story (a simple story, but it's episodic nature really made me like it a lot), it was all there. Then comes Act 2 and overall all the last parts of the game. I won't say I hated it, but I had to "force" myself to finish the game. It's still enjoyable, mind you, but it's just a fall from grace compared to the first half of the game. I won't go into more details because I want to avoid spoilers, but exploring the same map AGAIN isn't really my idea of "fun". Overall still a very good game, but it's a shame because it could have very well dethroned Dragon Quest VIII as my favorite DQ, and it failed because of poor design choices at the end.