Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies

Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies is the ninth installment in the acclaimed Dragon Quest series, developed by Level-5 and published by Square Enix in Japan and Nintendo in North America, Europe and Australia.

Gameplay
In Dragon Quest IX, the user controls a hero and his companions as they travel across the game world fighting villains, solving puzzles, hunting for treasure and more. At the beginning of the game the user is asked to create a character and choose his or her physical characteristics. This will be the main character for the rest of the game. Before the battle with the Wight Knight, the player will be able to enlist up to three companions and assign a vocation for them. At any point in the game the player can choose to replace one of their companions with another one, though they are also warned that in doing so the character being replaced will be lost forever. After reaching a certain point in the game the user will be able to assign different vocations for all four characters.

Battles are turn based like previous installments in the series. Unlike previous Dragon Quest games, however, battles will not randomly commence. Rather, the player will be able to visibly see the enemies on the screen and choose whether or not to battle them. Enemies who are very powerful will chase the player while enemies that aren't powerful will run away. During battles players have multiple options such as attacking, using special abilities or spells, defending themselves, using items or running away. If the entire party is wiped out, they will be brought back to the nearest town and lose half of their coins (coins deposited in a bank are safe). If a battle is successfully won then the player will reap the rewards of the battle including money, experience points and occasionally items (depending on the enemy and their chances of dropping an item). While battling standard enemies is not mandatory it is required in progressing the game due to the experience points they grant the player when defeated. Without these experience points, battles with the game's bosses, which are required, would be impossible to complete.

Plot
The hero starts out as a celestrian, invisible to the human eye, with the hero's mentor Aquilia. They and the other celestrians help the people of the world known as the Protectorate. As the new guardian of Angel Falls, the hero learns how to protect and serve the village, including helping people and talking to deceased spirits. A character named Erinn and her grandfather are traveling to Angel Falls, but a Cruelcumber and two Slimes are ready to ambush them. Aquilia and the hero defeat these creatures, and the player learns combat skills. After collecting benevolessence, a person's gratitude, they return to the celestrian base, the Observatory.

The benevolence the hero gathers causes the World Tree, Yggdrasil, to finally produce the heavenly fruit, the fyggs. These fvggs would allow them to traverse into the Realm of the Almighty.

However, an evil beam of light blasts through the Observatory, and the hero, fyggs, and the celestial train, the Starflight Express, falls down to the Protectorate.

The hero wakes up, half mortal, as he/she is visible and has lost their halo and wings. Erinn said you had crashed into the falls. Then Ivor, a young disrespectful boy asks you to go with him to the passage to Stornway, a city, which was blocked off by an earthquake. There, some soldiers tell the hero and Ivan that the passage will be cleared soon. The soldiers also ask the hero and Ivan if a person named Patty was able to travel to Angel Falls through the Hexagon, however neither of them have heard of her.

Erinn seems concerned for some reason after the hero gets back and tells the hero about a friend of her father, named Patty. She then learns that she tried to go Angel Falls through an ancient ruin called the Hexagon. She almost asks you to go, but says it is too dangerous. The hero still goes to the Hexagon, where Patty is trapped under some rubble. But a monster called the Hexagoon appears and engages the player, yet the hero wins.

After traveling back, Erinn wants to go to Stornway, but is afraid. At night, Stella a fairy girl runs into you, and she doesn't believe you are celestrian. So, with the help of his spirit you find Erinn's father's trophy of the Incredible Inntertainer. Erinn then becomes confident enough to go to Stornway with Patty, and Stella, finally convinced, joins you as well.

Development
On August 19, 2006, series composer Koichi Sugiyama confirmed that Dragon Quest IX is in development. He is quoted by Japanese video game magazine Famitsu as saying "I'm not sure when Dragon Quest IX will be released, but it seems that progress is continually being made. I'm personally excited."

On December 12, 2006, during a press conference celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Dragon Quest franchise, Square Enix announced that Dragon Quest IX will be released exclusively for the Nintendo DS handheld gaming system, making it the first original numbered Dragon Quest title to appear on a handheld. Dragon Quest IX was announced to feature an action-oriented battle system and cooperative multiplayer for up to four players via Wi-Fi, as opposed to the traditional turn-based design of earlier Dragon Quest games. Ultimately, neither of these things came true. Though the final game did contain a four player mode, it was only local.

Early in 2010 Nintendo announced that they would publish the title in North America, Europe and Australia. Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies was featured on the cover of Nintendo Power V257.

The Nintendo version of the game replaced the sword at the end of the game's logo with a T. According to series creator Yuji Horii this was done because Nintendo felt that the sword was too "childish".