Finished Dragon Quest 7 3DS and it's pretty much a better Dragon Quest 6. It improves on every criticism i had with 6. One of them being how a lot of 6 was just running around, bumping into areas and having these contained plots that had next to nothing with the setup of the game. 7 fixes this with its setup, either by having these self-contained story advance the main plot in some way or give more insight to the backstory of the world, giving more context to the setup of the game.
The vocation system also got tweaked in several ways. Some redudant abilities got removed, some new ones were introduced that are pretty useful, and it also takes less grinding to max out vocations (even if the final ones have rather ridiculous battles requirements).
Game also introduces a ton of new monster vocations (6 only had two with Dragon and Metal King Slime), which i have mixed feelings on. On battle they are amazing, specially the fact all of the skills from them you learn stay forever on the character (characters only learn permanently the skills of the basic human vocations, meaning you lose the skills of intermediate and advanced classes when you change to another intermediate or advanced class, i.e, going from Champion to Hero causes the character to "forget" all the Champion exclusive skills like Blade of Ultimate Power when they become a Hero), meaning you can have advanced human vocations using exclusive skills from another advanced human vocation. Like a Champion using the Hero's Omniheal by learning it from the Platinum King Jewel's monster vocation.
But on the other hand, having to have the heart of the monster to be able to become a basic monster vocation and you have no clue which basic ones you need to become an intermediate or advanced one (game gives no clue as far as i'm aware unlike with the human vocations. I pretty much had to search online for the monster vocations requirement for the later classes) is annoying. You do get a lot of monster hearts for the basic monster vocations from treasure chests, but some are only obtainable from enemies with an abysmal drop rate. You do get some monster hearts for intermediate monster vocations from treasure chests, allowing you to skip having to max out basic monster vocations, so there's that.
In terms of story it's the usual affair when it comes to Dragon Quest. I did like a lot of these self contained stories and some of the main characters. Music was pretty good, even if i got sick of the main battle theme since you battle a lot, specially if you are grinding for the advanced classes.
Dragon Quest 7 is pretty much the regular stuff when it comes to Dragon Quest games, but it's very enjoyable to me. There's just something about these games that even after playing several, i don't get bored. Something very rare when it comes to JRPGs, and it's why i'm not surprised Japan is crazy about this franchise. Something so satisfying and charming about its simplicity.