I bought this game today. I'm enjoying it, although I've only played it for about 2 hours so far.

@pikmaniac: You can choose your character's gender at the start.

Is there an online thread for this?

Not that I can actually get my bloody DS online.

It's not nessesary. The multiplayer options are strictly offline, so other than that there's just a downloadable shop that updates daily.

Oh yeah my dad bring these today to me! (or I hope so)

Just in case anyone cares, the Wi-Fi shop has changed it's theme from items on the Alchaid campaign to the Summer Fayre, which is focusing more on clothing than alchemy items. Today I got an Ice Shield which has 18 defence and 2.5% block chance and a Seabreeze skirt (17 defence,12 Magical Mending) for my priest. Also today there's a good defensive shirt (25 defence) and discounted Boomer Briefs (8 defense, 4 magical might and 4 magical mending for only 210 G!) in case anyone cares.

This game is awesome!

can you move diagonaly?

i just returned from the gamespot map event, and i also got some stickers, a poster, and a slime t-shirt

yep.

good

I want these NOW!!!!!! IT looks so but so AWESOME!!!!! and you can mode diagonaly OMG!!!!

I'm hooked on this game. I normally really don't care for RPGs, but this has me somehow. Despite being really, really RPGish. It has to be some kind of psychic witchcraft, Squeenix has possessed me D:

We... i mean they wouldn't do something like that.
(Actually, i think Nintendo published it in America.)

It is the MAGIC of dragon quest IX!

Do you get actually useful alchemy recipes at some point? Because I'm in Bloomingdale now and so far all the recipes I've found where for stuff that I could just buy in the same area where I found the recipe or even worse. I don't see the point in using alchemy for your equipment and search for all the ingredients if you can just buy the stuff already when you find the recipe...

@Roopa132 - The short answer is everywhere. Whereever you see a bookshelf, examine it and you'll probably find anywhere from 3-10 recipies in it. You can use alchemy to make either cheaper or better weapons and equipment. Pretty soon in your game they'll start selling strong medicines and stuff like that. The only problem is it's way more expensive than a few medicinal herbs. So, ultimately alchemy can be helpful if you're willing to put some time into finding the items and alchemising them in Stornway, but it can be ignored pretty easily.

I've been thinking of getting Dragon Quest IX but I have one concern. The only other 'proper' RPG I've played at
any real length is Golden Sun, and even though I love less serious RPGs like Pokémon and the Mario RPGs I'm obviously a little new to the genre. Is Dragon Quest IX a good place to start? 

Also, are there any off-putting difficulty spikes or overly hard battles? I had problems with some bosses in Golden Sun, one of which I never managed to beat and made me eventually give up on playing it. I don't want to buy Dragon Quest only to have that happen again!

@ NFreak007 The good thing about dragon quest is that if you level up on a regular basis the fights are never to hard. I have found this version of dragon quest to be a little bit easier then most so far but I'm not that far into the game yet. But I believe this would be easier then golden sun. This game does not have the depth of puzzle solving that golden sun has. So yes I would give it a try for many hours of enjoyment!

Can someone butter me up and convince me that I should buy this?

Well labrat7 it is a really long game which is good because some people including myself don't want to buy that many DS games anymore in anticipation for the 3DS. Also I never liked RPGs like Final Fantasy etc. (Well the old Final Fantasys that actually still were "real" RPGs with turn based battles and all the stats and that stuff) but I really like Dragon Quest IX. It is really beginner friendly for people who never really played RPGs before. Since I'm one of those persons I can't say how good it is if you're an experienced RPG player who played all the top RPGs and stuff.

But it's just fun to create your own character and being able to create all of your group members as well (although you can just recruit premade ones if you're lazy but the creator is really fun) and you'll get over a thousand weapons and armor to choose from and dozens of spells and abilities and some weapons have special abilities if you use them as items in the battle (like summoning whirlwinds that attack all enemies; those attacks aren't that strong but they don't use mana either) so the battles don't get boring because you don't always have to use the same attack.

And while I don't find the main story particularly interesting I like to talk to every NPC I meet and the Quests are really fun. Also there are plenty of cutscenes (whether it's a major event or just visiting a new town for the first time).
And actually the whole world looks great and is really big. And it's not boring either there are fields, meadows, flowers, forests, mountains, swamps, deserts, snow etc.

Also the fights are entertaining to watch with the camera moving and changing angles all the time and because since it's turn based you select what your 4 members do and then can lean back and watch the fight going on with nice animation and the monsters and your group actually running around and running to the target to attack or to heal instead of just being cardboard cutouts who can hit the enemies while standing 20ft away * cough* Pokémon *cough * And all the animations of spells, weapon attacks, shield blocks, and all the special attacks look great.

Well I could go on but I think this post is long enough If you have any questions then ask.