honestly as someone who did not like dragon quest 9 and who was also initially not a fan of the new character designs for v6 i had seen which were very obviously not done by toriyama if you look at the hair and the eyes for even a second, this one surprised me. some of the best characters in the series writing wise as to be expected from dq10 at this point, as well as some insane high points story wise. the set up for the expansion guarantees that most new concepts and characters probably aren't going to stick around as the game moves forward which is a bummer, and while it hits higher highs than v5 and even surpasses v4 in moments for sure it struggles to be as consistently good as either expansion. however, i'm a lot less cautious about the future of dq10 having played v6 and i'm very excited to play v7, especially with those screens of the expansion's beautiful environments we've been getting in v-jump.