It seems that the recently released ‘Dragon Quest IX’ in Japan is real hit and miss with gamers.

Firstly it is estimated that Dragon Quest IX managed to move 2,877,000 units on it’s first day on sale. That’s a crazy number! Remember these are only estimates so far so take them with a pinch of salt, however if true then it will have the best first day sales of any game in the country, beating ‘Final Fantasy VIII’ which was the previous day-one top-seller at 2.5 million units.

However impressive the sales figures are, the Amazon Japan website user-reviews are not quite as good:

• 5 stars (67 votes)
• 4 stars (57)
• 3 stars (70)
• 2 stars (86)
• 1 star (223)

So out of 503 reviews, 44% of them only received 1 Star, not good in anybody’s book. The average rating is 2.5 stars. Gamers are complaining about all aspects of the game from graphics, save slots, costumes to the fact that the game is on DS in the first place. The last point leads me on to a point that could be attributing to this.

Many long time Dragon Quest fans in Japan were very unhappy with Square Enix when they announced the latest title to be on a handheld, especially the DS with its lack of horsepower. The Amazon reviews could be a planned exodus of these gamers showing their dislike of Square Enix’s decision.

Or maybe it’s just crap!

Update – According to Enterbrain, the total number of copies sold was 2,343,440 in two days!