You canāt pick a Dragon Quest with particularly more personality than the others, because they all have the same personality and thatās actually the entire point.
I do not like this series much. Watch how Iāll still be able to talk about every single one now because Iām a monster
1 is the most archaic JRPG, it is you vs the grind. There is something cathartic about the pleasure of getting levels and new armor but you might start hating the lack of meaning in your life halfway through
2 adds party members and is the only Dragon quest that made me make meaningful interesting choices in battle. (!) Otherwise itās just too old, too plain
3 adds a real old job system similar to FF1! IIRC you just stay in one job until level 50 and then you change jobs. There are no skill points. Itās not a very interesting system but the game uses it well enough. One of the jobs is Jester / Goof-off / Fucking Loser. It has poor stats and wastes turns in battle, but is needed to unlock the best class later on. Or something
4 is probably the one with the most personality. Or at least the neatest one. It has a decent tragic figure for a bad guy (usually DQ has evil alien demons as final bosses) plus multiple different scenarios with different characters. In the merchant one the goal is to get fucking rich. Fun!
5 treats its plot with a lot more care than the others but itās still a really generic JRPG childrenās story from 1992 with your father dying, a part where you choose your waifu, dragons etc. People love it and I donāt get it.
6 is one I had to play with gamefaqs open next to me all the time. There are two alternate dimensions but they are really similar? Thereās a new job system and itās like FF5ās if it blew and all the jobs / skills had no personality?
Cool fake ending though
7 is a monstrosity. Its length is palatable thanks to its episodic nature. It takes 120 hours to finish it in a straight line, like 30 to unlock jobs, 2 to get to a fight?
Also God looks like Santa and you can fight him
I do have immense respect for this game
8 was the best thing at release when its 3d environments were amazing. It would probably be shit in 2016 on a mobile device.
I remember Trode being pretty funny and likable but he might look too much like Pepe the frog to be cool in 2016
9 I canāt remember anything about it really. It did feel like something slightly different from the others. They made it an action RPG before enough people complained and made them change back
Rocket Slime is the best