Dragon Quest IX... anybody playing it?
 

I picked it up in the shop to keep myself occupied on a train journey to Sheffield and now I'm hooked. Must say I'm impressed. The world of DQIX is huge, the customisation is extensive and varied and there is a surprising degree of freedom early on in the game by old-fashioned JRPG standards. You can choose whichever group of warriors you like and while I must admit there are some balancing issues with this, it's nothing that a good bit of grinding can't handle.

It was a strange choice to release this game on the DS, what with its predecessor having been released on the PS2, but for everything it lacks in hardware, it makes up for in polish. Invisible walls are never present without good reason and they have done away with random encounters. I would recommend this to most gamers, even casuals.