a great journey about self discovery with the expected dragon quest flair, one of the better parties in the series, and some beautiful overworld environment art all but completely make up for a bad fan translation and a lack of worthwhile villains after mudo. the reveal about the lower and upper worlds is one of my favorite concepts in the series and i had enough of a good time that the 6 hero isn't even my least favorite hero design in the series anymore. dragon quest 6 and 7 are forever proof that 90% of the time if a game is a "black sheep" of a jrpg series it's actually pretty good and that some gamers just get scared when a game stops holding their hand or has a slower pace to let itself breathe