The only one I've played was DQVIII. I did enjoy it for quite a while as the characters, visuals, and music were all enjoyable. There was also some novelty in playing a JRPG that wasn't afraid to be hard at the time, but that wore off about half way through the game.

I've never finished largely because of that actually. I'm not a huge fan of constantly having to level grind and there was a lot of it in this game. To me, a well balanced game would be challenging without level grinding but doable with the right preparation and strategy. Level grinding would only be necessary for those who aren't very good at that aspect of the game then and need to level up to overpower a certain area or boss. This wasn't really the case from what I remember of VIII sadly, and if I had to pick between a game that goes too far into the challenging side of things and requires level grinding or one that goes too far the other way and is too easy, I'd probably go with something that's a little too easy but less tedious to be honest because the level grind absolutely kills the pacing for me.