I'm playing on two different games at the same time.
One I am playing during the day: I am up to the Bloomingdale segment there, trying to get a ship
The other I play at night: In Coffinwell about to fight the Ragin' Contagion there.
There's really no learning curve to the game, so as far as getting into the game it's pretty easy. The story kicks off immediately so you're not wandering around talking to people for an hour before the first battle. No previous knowledge of the series is needed, though you may not get a few references that are there strictly for nostalgia and nothing else.
As far as why to play, it's just a very very well polished jRPG. The pacing is near perfect. There's a good straight forward story with a few safe and logical twists. There's an amazing amount of customization that's nearly unseen in the genre, and never been done on a handheld. Character classes can be developed a number of different ways depending on what skills or weapons you choose to focus on. Aesthetics from the way your team members look to what they wear can all be controlled. You're even in charge of how you want to play. Focus on the story, screw around with an endless amount of side quests, or just treasure hunt in all the secret grottos (assuming you can find them).
Finally new content is being added. New quests have shown up miraculously on my DS. DQVC has new items showing up every day. Different travelers even show in the main hotel. And that's not even getting into any of the Wifi multi-player bonuses. Bottom line is after almost 70 hours I've only just now made my way through half of what is offered and for the most part the game still feels pretty fresh.
Last night I finished up the game and overall I was pleased. It was tough not comparing this to DQVIII, but it does so many things different that it was it's own game and deserves to be judged on its own merits. That being said I'm still judging it based on DQVIII so tough crap.
The World Map and Exploration
This is the smallest DQ world since I think DQ II. That being said, most of it was well layed out in the way that areas were connected and how they transitioned from one another. However, I do feel like it was missing something. All over DQVIII and even some of the remakes of earlier games you'd come across solitary buildings, campers, or just random people. There were people outside of the major towns. It kind of made it feel like you weren't the only people in the world who were out and about. Not so much in this game. There weren't those secret hidden chests spread throughout the world either. I miss stuff like that.
On the other side of things, exploring does pay off in a different way since alchemy is such a major part of the game so it's still a valuable and rewarding to part of the game. It was a little hard to keep track of where the most valuable ingredients are though. Still it was a nice change and reason to keep going back out in the field. That being said for 10 I want it to go back to how it was before.
Battles
Battling was better in this game than it ever had been before. No more random battles was great to finally implement. The extra damage for double or triple teaming monsters was a great feature (and helped me destroy the second to last boss in a matter of a few rounds). Hopefully they'll keep all of this for DQ X, as it was all an improvement.
Quests
Ahhhh the "filler." You're either going to love it or hate it. Most of the time it's basically just a distraction and there's not much value to doing a lot of the earlier ones other than just getting your numbers up. And the ones that do offer up good rewards can be so ridiculous in difficulty you have to wonder if it's really worth it. I will say that once you beat the game, the quests become more story driven and are significantly more interesting so I think that'll be worth it in the long run.
Alchemy
Crack-pot has a bigger role than ever. If you want the best equipment in the game, you're making it yourself. Stores carry crap for the most part in this time round. Ingredients are everywhere though and there's no more partial ingredients like there were in DQVIII so that makes it a little easier, but there's almost too much emphasis in this game on it. I don't mind having to make the best weapons, but now and then it's nice to just find a treasure chest that has a kick-ass weapon.
Classes and Class Changes
I'm a little mixed on this. Overall, I think the system was pretty good, but even if you plan it out ahead of time it's tough to carry over skills from one class to another. Dragon Quest VII's class system has this one beaten hands down. The advanced classes can be a little tough to unlock, particularly the later "secret" ones like the Sage which comes into play so late in the game that there's actually no value in changing to it until after you beat the game.
There are some good things about it though. Unlike DQVIII there are no wrong or right skills to level up. For instance if you didn't level up Jessica's Sex Appeal and Staff skills she wasn't nearly as useful. In this game, level up whatever skill you wants - you'll find a good use for them. In fact it was skills that at first appeared useless, the Shield skill and Fan skill that ultimately saved my life in the final battles.
So overall I did enjoy the game. It was still a little disappointing to go backwards in graphics and such though. The last game was simply epic and this one, despite being great never stopped feeling like it was an older game. It almost always felt like a handheld game. Still I'd recommend it to anyone. Probably give it a 9 if I had to put a score on it.