>>53876147Dragon Quest Monsters 2 are the pinnacle of the series, in my opinion. They're vastly superior to the first games. I honestly don't know the difference between Cobi's Journey and Tara's Adventure. I think they were just trying to cash-in on the two versions thing, so maybe some different monsters?
DQJ, again is rather underwhelming, but DQJ2 is decent if you can out aside how ugly it looks.
tl:dr
If you've only tried DQM1, I'd recommend to anyone reading this to start with 2 Tara, or Cobi before giving up on it.