Surprised Like A Dragon sales are lower than others. Been gaming since a kid in the 90s, and it easily ranked in my top 10. It's an instant classic.
Speaking personally as a JRPG fanatic, I've taken a look at the series a bunch of times on Steam, and there are so many obstacles to getting into it: - where do I start? There's a dozen titles and no clear entry point - supposedly the series' genre changed over time? So if you like it in one game it might be a different game in a sequel - it looks weirdly unserious? Like much of the advertising focuses on doing bizar…
The main character essentially hallucinates that he's a character in dragon quest and the bad guys you encounter at first look normal but transform into "sujimon"/monsters during encounters.
The core gameplay is really fun, the writing is top notch (first like a dragon > infinite wealth tho), character classes/"jobs" picked out at an unemployment center are fun/funny, your "mage" is a homeless guy who summons pigeons to attack and uses a bottle of alcohol which he spews into a lighter to cast flames, and the mini games are just there if you want to play them and many are fun.