You know, I think I've made the 'rank the FFs' topic at least twice at this forum but I've never seen one for the Dragon Quest games. I'm sure not as many people here have played the majority of these games as they have the FF games, but there are 9 of them so it would be interesting to see how people's ranks stack up.

Here's mine:

1. VIII
2. IV
3. V
4. IX
5. III
6. II
7. I
8. VII

Not played: VI

In general I prefer the games with actual characters than blank slates with no dialogue. The two I was the most sure about are VIII being the best and VII the worst. VII was the only game I could never get through. I fell like DQVIII was the FFVII of this series, a breakthrough game taking it to the next level. IX seemed to regress a bit, and it felt more like the other remakes for DS than the sequel to DQVIII.