The reason we made Dragon Quest 9 on Nintendo DS was to allow quick and easy play over local networks. At that time there were not many games using local networks and it was difficult to do so. But with Nintendo DS, the moment you turn the power on you can connect with people. We thought that was an amazing system, and decided we wanted to make Dragon Quest 9 using that ability.
It’s weird, my first JRPG was Phantasy Star on the Master System. I should love DQXI for being such a throwback, but it just seemed all cliches with easy combat and no surprises, but I fell in love with Clair Obscur even though I was awful at parrying.
Even if you’re bad at parrying, it’s still a more fun and active combat system. I want to experience the evolution of gaming. Grinding was put in games to artificially increase their playtime, mindlessly spamming attack to get through easier battles is boring. Let’s keep the good aspects of each iteration and exclude the stuff that’s less fun.