I started Dragon Quest 8 on 3DS last week. I'm now about 10 hours in and I like it pretty well so far. The enemy animations are fantastic. I'm a little annoyed by just how quickly the game has started using palette-swap enemies, though. It feels weird to go from one area to the next and find a portion of the enemies look almost exactly the same but a bit harder. And the color changes aren't always that blatant, either. So that feels like a questionable design choice to me. But otherwise the game is lots of fun. I've managed to get people killed pretty regularly and I'm spending too much money to play with the alchemy sub-system. That said, grinding is mostly fun. The Tension system, where you "charge" your power for a big attack, is kind of cool, but also feels a little too necessary. At least with the lead character I feel like I'm constantly charging prior to attacking unless the enemies are pushovers. I do really like the skills system and how each skill has incremental ability and boost unlocks. The music is a mixed bag. On the one hand, they are recognizable and classic tunes. On the other hand there's not enough new music. On yet another hand they sometimes sound very "cheap General MIDI" (and at other times they sound pretty good). The voicework and localization is, on the whole, pretty darn good, so that's nice.
So far the game is balancing complexity and simplicity nicely. It also balances seriousness and silliness well. It feels like a more measured and conservative take than Final Fantasy and I think it really benefits from that maturity. At least until you see Jessica's outfit... I cannot take that character seriously due to the problematic design. Ah well...