kratosauron0

Delay it! It's not ready! Let it come out in June! 
And I know that sounds controversial... but really, the system is launching too soon. Let it come out when it's ready, and that's when it has all of its features.

The Best Buy near my school keeps their section looking nice, but in the DS section, nothing's generally worth buying unless it's on discount, because it's a semi-rare niche title that they for some reason have stock of, but nobody bought. 
At home, the GameStops are better; while they have tons of shovelware, they also at least have the new good recent releases. If only I could say that they keep their used games in good condition, though...

I'm having the same problem here; I can't view the video lists behind the tags in Google Chrome 7.0.517.24 
Works fine in firefox for some reason. 

 The most ironic thing is that the local wireless multiplayer wasn't what got Japan all crazy about Dragon Quest 9.  It was the passive communication Tag mode, which apparently made such an impact that the 3DS is going to include it in the actual hardware, where it will constantly run not unlike how the Wii is constantly on the internet.  

In Japan, Dragon Quest 9 was published by Square Enix like their other usual games.  Nintendo decided to publish Dragon Quest 9 in the US because they saw the phenomenon that occured in Japan with Tag Mode, wanted to try and bring that kind of success to the US, and had the money to put up for a giant marketing push.  Seriously, I don't remember the last time I saw a Nintendo commercial on TV, let alone at the movie theaters.  It seems like that exact opposite happened: if Nintendo didn't pick up Dragon Quest 9 and Square Enix published the game themselves, how much money would they put into advertising?  Would Square Enix hire a marketing company and send QA people all across the country in order to hold modestly sized tag events in order to get people to use the multiplayer features?  I'm less sure, because Square Enix doesn't have nearly the marketing budget of Nintendo, and Dragon Quest has historically performed much worse in America compared to their other flagship franchise, Final Fantasy.  
In Japan, Dragon Quest 9 was published by Square Enix like their other usual games.   It was also developed like any other Dragon Quest game: how could they make a game that would sell millions in Japan?  Therefore, I don't think it's unusual that, despite their best efforts in making the 'westerners' Dragon Quest, they didn't quite get it right.  If it seems unusual that Square Enix would seemingly alienate an entire continent's audience, look at it in reverse: would Rockstar change the Grand Theft Auto formula just to make it sell copies in Japan?  How would that go over in America?  Is that decision really wise? Who in Japan would really care, anyways?
  
In one of the interviews with Yuji Horii on the Dragon Quest IX website, Horii talks about how he tried to incorporate the multiplayer is such a way that a family could play the game together, and parents could directly help their children from within the game, rather than just giving advice from outside.  While I think that this is extremely detached from the reality of gaming culture, especially in America where a generation of adult gamers is only just being created, I think the idea behind it still stands: Yuji Horii wanted to make Dragon Quest 9 a game where people communicated on a level more personal than interacting with strangers over the internet whom you'll never meet again.  And frankly, he succeeded with me; I met 2 people through the Dragon Quest 9 tag events whom I've now met with outside of the Nintendo sanctioned events, just to play Dragon Quest 9 together. 
All that being said, it really would have been great to have wifi functionality within Dragon Quest 9 that incorporated features from the Pokemon games.  We can only imagine how the Dragon Quest multiplayer would have been with Wifi connectivity, voice chat, and maybe even video chat (although looking at when Dragon Quest was developed and released, that last one is most likely a pipe dream from the start).  But with Horii's vision for how multiplayer interaction within Dragon Quest should be, would adding full wifi multiplayer (as opposed to only local wireless) really make people want to meet up, have conversations about the game, and potentially draw more people in?  I think developers are still trying to find a better solution to this, and there definitely isn't going to be a single, uniform solution that can be applied to all cultures.
 
On your other point, it's true that Dragon Quest 9's 'party' is pretty void of personality.  Your main character is the usual silent, goody two-shoes protagonist, while the rest of your party is silent simply because the designers couldn't think of a way to make unique, appropriately assigned personalities that would go with every single possible party member possibility.  So yes, you're left with a party that doesn't talk, let alone make the witty comments of Yangus (DQ8), Bowser (M&L3), or Yosuke (P4).  The characters are akin to those of Dragon Quest 3, where you also rolled your own party, rather than of Dragon Quest 4, 5, and 8, where everyone but the main character was given a name and personality.
On the other hand, I found Dragon Quest 9 to have a ton of charming side characters.  While the story is not nearly as epic as Dragon Quest 5 (I haven't quite finished 8 yet), it is instead interesting in how the side characters interact with the main character.  When playing the main story, the tasks you take up in order to help the people around you feel more significant on a personal level, rather than on a grandiose, world-shattering scale.  It seems that the main star of the game is the world you explore and all the people you end up interacting with it, and in the end, this becomes the motivation to teach the final boss a lesson or two.   And maybe I'm naive, faint of heart, or something, but some of the main story quests were downright heart-wrenching and unexpected in their resolution...

I think having no random encounters is great when it's combined with good dungeon design, which I feel Dragon Quest IX does pretty well.  It's nice that DQ IX allows you to see and pick your battles, but the designers were also smart in using large enemies, very fast enemies, and small, well-placed passages to 'force' people into battles without making them random. 
While it's easier from a technical standpoint to use random battles, it seems that it's much less frustrating to a casual player when it 'seems' that you're choosing your battle.  The best video games always make players feel empowered, while still leading them along; this philosophy can also be said about using non-random battles.

I believe that the % is actually the chances of getting those items. 
Therefore, you will get a Treasure Map 100% of the time, whenever you kill that map's boss.  However, there are still 2 more drops that you have not gotten from the boss.  These are usually 5% or 2% drops that consist of rare items.  Refer to a Hoimi table to get them. 
Or, just kill the boss 50 times and hopefully you'll get the items sooner than that.

How smooth is movement and transition between third and first person views?  And is the action still exploration-focused, or more action-focused?

Yes, you are insane.  Let's make it to 5.
You also need to get the original Shin Megami Tensei: Persona (i.e. Peraona 1), along with Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions, Knights in the Nightmare (for PSP, coming soon) and that Metal Gear game (maybe). 
Unless, of course, you're looking for gameplay in the Persona 3 vein, in which... I can't think of any at this moment.

Strange for a regular journey, but this is all pretty ordinary for Shin Megami Tensei... cause seriously, the world almost ended in the last game