That game isn't as hard as some people say. After your first playthrough it's not so bad the second time around.
You haven't played hard until you tried it on the Master Ninja difficulty.
More recently I wasted 46 hours playing Dragon Quest VIII. When I started I was very bored with it but I slowly got addicted. Eventually I realized what a shitty story this game had and how lame the battles were and just stopped playing.
This was the first Dragon Quest game I have ever played...