Okay so after two hours I am having a blast! I don't enjoy Musou games but this gives the impression that it's more than just your average Musou. Equipment upgrades, leveling, party switching, skill upgrades, big boss battles etc.
The game is buttery smooth on PS4 with lots of enemies on screen and lots of destruction going on. The art style is fantastic.
I would kill for a traditional DQ RPG that looks like this. The monsters are easily recognisable for someone who has only played a few DQ games before such as myself.
The monster summoning system is really interesting. On some quests where you have to protect your "base" (not sure what they actually call it) you can kill some big Golems and then pick up their monster coin to summon them so they can protect the base for you while you run off and focus on other areas. You can heal them by picking up more of the same monster coins or you can dismiss them entirely in favour of other monsters that you wish to summon. Very nice.
My absolute favourite thing about the game so far though has to be the overworld music in DQ2 playing after every successful quest. It's my favourite piece of music from the series (from what I've listened to) so it's just great. You can listen to it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jnAZSbmeuU#t=257
Definitely digging deep into this!