We chat about videogames and videogame accessories.

I'm perfectly willing to play through a game solely on the strength of the writing, but "compelling dialog, story and characters" is not a category JRPGs often fall into. There are exceptions.

There's probably no point in trying to convince you of this, and I'm not really interested in having an argument about it, but The World Ends With You has compelling characters and a good story, and it's got an equipment-based system rather than a class-based one. It's probably my favorite game on the DS, next to Ghost Trick, and I feel like it makes good use of the limitations of the system. It doesn't feel like it's sacrificing something because it ran out of room fitting in all the other stuff, the way a lot of DS games do. If I were you, I would at least try it for more than five minutes before writing it off.