Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies is a role-playing video game for the Nintendo DS. It is the ninth installment in the acclaimed Dragon Quest series created by Yūji Horii.
The game was developed by Level-5 and published by Square Enix in Japan and by Nintendo in North America and Europe. The game was primarily designed around multiplayer gameplay.
Dragon Quest IX marks several firsts for the main series: it is the first to be initially launched for a handheld system; first to have almost no random encounters by allowing players to see enemies on the map (except when sailing); and the first to be designed primarily with the intent of being a multiplayer video game. In addition, it is the first Dragon Quest title to use a graphical menu system in the Japanese-language version.
Dragon Quest IX was designed to be more difficult than any previous game in the series, including spinoff titles.
