I loved DQ VIII. That was probably the last game that just enveloped every moment of my life. I put in 65 hours to beat it and then immediately started over from the beginning to play through a second time.
For the hero split your points between Courage and either Sword of Spear. Courage will allow you to get the best healing and best offensive spell of the game, as well as the best offensive attack. Sword will give you the best single attacks, but there are a lot of good Spear attacks that can be used on multiple enemies.
For Yangus it's all about Humanity and Scythe attacks. Axe is good too and it's easier to find good axes in your travels as opposed to sickles and scythes, BUT with scythes you'll get access to the stealing skill and that's invaluable once you really get into alchemy.
For Jessica focus on Staff and Sex Appeal (god bless the Japanese devs for this). Staff won't make her a powerful fighter, but you'll get access to stronger spells than she normally would get, and Sex appeal will give her some defensive/healing abilities that are handy to have if Angelo goes down.
And lastly there's Angelo. Make sure you get Charimsa built up because he has some excellent power down abilities that will be very helpful in the second half of the game. As far as the other skills he has more leeway than the other characters. Choose any of them. Staff will make him a better caster, but Sword, Bow, and Fisticuffs will make him a more valuable fighter.
And as far as recommendations for others in the series, I'll be honest, if this game isn't really doing it for you then the others probably won't either. This was the most polished in the series.
Though it is worth mentioning that Dragon Quest V does have probably the best story of the series, so if you like good stories in your games maybe pick up the DS version that just came out. I've said many times that the story in DQV was better than anything that Square did in the 16 bit era.
---
Tell me to get back to rewriting this site so it's not horrible on mobile
Listen to Iced Earth and play Doom
I bought this game off Yodariquo like three years ago. I wanted to like it, but I couldn't stand it. The item management especially bugged me, but I also didn't like how the game dealt with resurrection. A fallen adventurer was pretty much a death sentence for the whole party if you were far from a temple. I tried restarting the game a couple times, but the longest file I ever achieved was 1:10 until I would ragequit. Fast-forward to me watching someone stream a playthrough of DQ8 last week, where I learned that taking ranks in Courage and Humanity made Hero and Yangus learn actual useful spells. Now, I'm not having that bad of a time with this game.
^tl;dr, I learned how to not suck, and actually enjoy the game now.
So let's discuss some Dragon Quest. What other skills should I be taking ranks in? Are certain weapon types better than others (namely, which ones have the highest crit ranges, if any)? What other games in the series should I look into after this?
In return, Jessica Albert:
Listen to Iced Earth and play Doom