Yuji Horii

For 'Dragon Quest IX,' one of the biggest things was being able to create your own character and your party members, too. The importance of it is that you can customize the face, the name, or something like that, so the party members are really a reflection of you. It becomes more of your own experience.

I wonder sometimes why the U.S. reviewers are more negative towards turn-based battle systems.

In Japan, there's a TV series called Jin. It deals with time travel. I like stories about time travel. It's a story about people living in modern day that travel back to the Edo era. Those things really interest me.

It is difficult to meet fan expectations, especially when people say, 'Oh, the last one was the best one.' It creates more pressure each time for the next game to top the last one.

Where 'Dragon Quest Monsters' originated from was 'Dragon Quest V,' where you had a monster befriending system as a main part: you could actually befriend monsters and have them fight on behalf of your party, as part of your party.