Well, I'm converted! This was my first Dragon Quest game, and I can safely say that I regret not giving these games more attention sooner! Dragon Quest's strongest and most enduring quality is that it doesn't try to be anything other than the most quintessential JRPG, and it is only striving to refine and perfect that tried and true formula.

While i can totally see people writing this off as overly vanilla, it's anything but. Everything about this game is so endearing, it's almost intoxicating. Rab and Sylvando are absolute MVPs.

Clocking in at 81 hours upon defeating the Act 3 boss and obtaining the true ending, at no point did I ever feel the game was dragging along, which says a lot about a JRPG as this genre is packed with games that end up bring glorified endurance tests. With additional playthroughs, I will most likely be bumping this up to 5 stars.

The game seems pretty interesting, I have some high level nitpicks as a huge dune fan with how some things are implemented, but what really makes this game very difficult to enjoy is the AI.
I finished 3 games (and started a couple more) and every single time the AI just didn't bother me in the slightest. It feels like a solo game with the other factions just existing for me to plunder and exploit and to serve as a timer for me to eventually lose if I don't win quickly enough.
It's probably pretty fun in multiplayer but I don't really play rts games as pvp in multiplayer and also good luck finding a game in like 4 months.