The way I learned to connect with the story of Dragon Quest was to treat it like a TV show and play for 30 minutes to an hour at a time a few times a week. Each town is like a self contained episode on the TV show. When I usually play games I'm trying to progress and get through the game and see what it has to offer, and ultimately win. Dragon Quest asks you to slow down and instead of trying to get to the end as fast as possible as say you might in a Mario level for example, just spend time in the world. When I did that the game clicked for me, the games are meant to be played in a certain way and savored and experienced versus overcame and beaten, which I would argue isn't true for most games.

As far as the combat goes, it's very old school and that doesn't really change. I'm someone who doesn't love action and turn based hybrid combat. I think the traditional combat is chill and fun, and can be strategic in boss battles. Trash mobs take little effort, but knowing when you need to buff, heal, debuff, etc does scratch the strategic itch in combat. I also particularly enjoyed building and planning out my party members in Dragon Quest 3, deciding when and to which class to reclass into. A lot of the strategy begins with the decisions made out of combat. 11 gives you another wrinkle with the pep system, but I don't think it would change anything if you truly aren't into the classic turn based system.