About a month ago, I challenged myself to give an approximate ranking of my fifteen favorite video games. By the end of this personal challenge, one third of the titles were those of the mainline Dragon Quest series- and I felt remorse for the ones I left off of the list. If it was not alluded to enough, Dragon Quest is my favorite video game franchise of all time, and as much as I love Final Fantasy and Castlevania- it really isn’t a close contest. Despite my immense infatuation with this franchise, the Monsters subseries is one that I have remarkably little experience with comparably. I have played through Terry’s Wonderland 3D, but no GBC original, DQM2, Caravan Heart, or Joker trilogy quite yet. However, Dragon Quest tickles my brain unlike anything else- so when this title was announced a few months back I was immediately sold.

In the time since its announcement, I have not had the best streak of luck with my personal life, and I have been immensely sick, tired, and in need of an escape. This game also released right at the end of my quarter in college, and between that and my love of the series I used it as an excuse to unwind with a title for a bit, and because of such I have thoroughly sank my teeth into this title. I may lack context of the series as a whole, and certainly lacking enough to tell the nuances and innovations apart from something that has been potentially introduced in the unplayed titles, but I do consider myself an expert on this specific title and have a lot to say about it. If you are a Dragon Quest, monster collector, PS2 or 3DS era JRPG, or cozy game fan- I say just take the plunge on the demo and I am sure you will enjoy it, but if you want to hear the reasoning behind those specific reasons keep reading. Regardless of such, immediately note that I loved this game.

Let me open with an anecdote here. Because of the previously mentioned run-in with illness, one of the effects of such as being a legal inability to drive since I have been on a handful of medications that could very easily make me behind a wheel a danger to myself and/or others. Not good, obviously, so to pick up my pre-order I drove down with my dad. That night as he was going to bed, and as I was playing my game, he stopped by and asked how it was. I simply retorted with “preying on my addictive tendencies”. That sentiment reigned itself truer and truer the longer I played. That sentiment proved itself true by the end as I reached my 100% completed monster compendium. This game is not just fun, it is ridiculously so.

There is a borderline dangerous gameplay loop to be experienced here, one that pushes the limits and expectations of Dragon Quest’s deliciously satisfying party composition, turn based combat mechanics, and attentive exploration in new and inventive ways. While it does not have a cohesive and seamless open overworld found in the mainline titles, every inch of the provided world has some micro-decision to make that can be as simple as checking around a corner for an item, to ones that greatly impact how you experience the game as a whole. The usual trappings of mini-medal hunting and metal slime grinding are here in their fullest and Dragon Quest-iest, but it is accompanied with two monster arenas that give entirely new challenges to encounter, a monster synthesis system that blends the best of Dragon Quest 3, 8, and Shin Megami Tensei’s impressive party growth options, and a simple but effective story that had its hooks in me from beginning to end.

If you are anything like me, you will be absolutely enamored and addicted to adding every monster into your lineup, partially due to the thrill of discovery- and partially due to the slew of options each monster adds to your potential. There is some unprecedented amount of strategy you can pour into this game if you so desire, optimizing each monster to be freakishly strong compared to their standard counterparts. It is never necessary, but it is a testament to how wonderfully this game is open to your input. I played this game in a room with two Slimes, a King Slime, and Platypunk plushes in my peripheral vision- and putting them into virtual tournaments and watching them obliterate the opponents was always satisfying. Outside of the battling, there is still a huge quantity of areas and story dungeons that provide new puzzles, potential party members, and big-hitter bosses to fight. The structure of the game is fairly linear and repetitive, but in a way that is not inherently in a negative context and still provides plenty of choice and approach. In my own time, I brute forced through harder areas and arena battles earlier than intended due to my party optimization allowing me- and it was great!

While the hours I spent between story beats simply walking, scouting, and leveling around the seasonally-changing worlds in a way that didn’t serve pacing particularly well, I still really enjoyed the story. Terry’s Wonderland had a really solid story hook, but until the end was almost exclusively gameplay driven with only flavor-text and occasional character interactions. This game, conversely, has full cutscenes, unique stories for each area, and side characters to explore alongside you. If you have played Dragon Quest IV- a favorite game of all time contender of mine- you will be fairly familiar with many of the events that take place, but seeing them recontextualized in this pseudo-prequel is a ton of fun. This is definitely an alternate take on the characters, but I prefer that for how it allows for new and creative explorations of it all. The added flavor of playing as a villainous character in a Dragon Quest game in general is a lot of fun, too.

Something that I did not expect but felt right at home with was how this game felt. Many games of many eras feel different to play for various reasons- and modern JRPGs have a unique feel to them just as ones from past generations have. It’s difficult to describe without just feeling it yourself, but something about this game feels like it is a lost JRPG from a distant era- and I fell in love with that as a JRPG enthusiast. If not already for the dungeon design and monster synthesis, the rotating of the camera with the shoulder buttons, way you move, openness in choice, and environment design heavily reminded me of my time with games like Shin Megami Tensei III and IV, along with Dragon Quest VIII and other PS2 or 3DS JRPGs. It is incredibly refreshing that something new like this could be so evocative of that era, and I would love to see more new JRPGs that retain that feel when games like Final Fantasy XVI and Shin Megami Tensei V, for example, certainly did not.

The other aspect that remained from the PS2 era unfortunately is the presentation, because this game is definitely not a Triple-A title to say the least. The art direction is stellar, and all the monsters and characters have great designs, models, and animations- but goodness the environments are rough. While Dragon Quest XI S is ironically the stellar example of Nintendo Switch optimization, this game looks like it would’ve been right at home next to something like a resolution-boosted DQVIII via emulator. Again, I quite enjoyed that and found it refreshing, and even then there are aspects of it I found impressive like the seamless season switching, but for every impressive part of the presentation there is a lineup of framerate dips and loading screens that take the attention. The worst of it, unfortunately is the horrendous amount of times the game flat-out crashed. I am thankful for the generous autosaving, but a patch needs to come out that lets other players avoid the dozens of crashes that plagued this game for myself.

My other major gripe with this title is the RNG you have to deal with if you decide to be a completionist. I saw that you could unlock final bosses of previous DQ titles and that hook made me enamored to the point I couldn’t resist completion. It was satisfying to synthesize the big baddies- but the hours of walking around and grinding were not the most fun part of this experience. The very worst of it shows itself through the egg hunting- good god the egg hunting. There are probably 15 or so monsters that can only be found in eggs, which require a quantity of fights to respawn, and then are randomly peppered around the map for you to find and hope you get what you want. Some of these exclusive monsters took hours to find, and it doesn’t matter where you stand theologically you will be praying to the RNgods by the time you reach the compendium completion process. You’ll even need duplicates of some of the egg exclusives for full completion. Good luck!

Despite that, however, the game is still so much fun it hardly dented my enjoyment. This game is so entertaining, addictive, and endearing that I could easily have sunk in plenty more hours if there was more content to be squeezed out. This game doesn’t quite hit the highs of the incredibly dense and thoughtful DQ Builders 2 or Rocket Slime, but in terms of this specific gameplay loop (technical issues aside) I couldn’t really have asked for more. I loved Terry’s Wonderland, but this is the title that has truly cemented me in and made me excited for the next entry and to catch up on my Monsters backlog. This game was worth every penny, but when tech patches come out to fix the issues, any ports to more powerful platforms, or even a “professional” version akin to the Joker titles to add even more to this title it is absolutely worth the time and money investment. It has been confirmed that there are more DQ Monsters games coming in the future, so I don’t need to beg for sequel sales as I have with some other titles- but until then I will be clearing my backlog and preparing for the next time I get to scout slimes until sunset once more. I loved this game, and I hope anyone who plays it does too.

I've never seen a modern 3D rpg replicate so perfectly the vibes of, like, random mid-tier Game Boy rpgs like Robopon or Legend of The River King. From the extremely abstracted, yet somehow small and isolated, environments, to the wordy yet breezy and somewhat hollow structure of the game itself, which mainly exists just to prop up the excellent monster battler mechanics. All those are vibes that I thought were lost to time, and seeing them resurface here put a nostalgic smile on my face.

To be fair, this stuff can either be good or bad depending on your tastes. It can maybe come off as cheap in what's supposed to be a "modern 3d game for grown ups". But, like, it is definitely a very Distinct vibe, and you gotta at least respect it for that.

I didn't really want to stick with it for 40 hours. Which is also true of a lot of those mid-tier game boy rpgs it reminds me of. But what I've played I enjoyed thoroughly. Which is also true of a lot of those mid-tier game boy rpgs it reminds me of.

This was my first Dragon Quest Monsters game, and my like 4th dragon quest game in general. As a whole the game is fine, as least to me but I'll go into detail later on about my gripes. For the positives: The voice acting was very well done and I love that Dragon Quest's voice acting just HAS to be british. Dragon quest music is always good (if a bit repetitive) and the environments were varied despite each area having multiple levels you'll be going through as you progress. Giving the player access to Zoom pretty much near the onset of the game was also a VERY good decision. The dungeons in the later few levels I thought were not very good as then consisted of a lot of running back and forth through it to get done correctly. I will always love Akira Toriyama's designs, its why I even played the series to begin with. Yes I grew up with Dragon Ball, so the artstyle is comforting to me. I'm gonna buy that upcoming Sandland game for this reason alone. Syncing is also very in depth, to the point where I think its a boon and detriment, more detail on the later later, but you can easily make monsters into your perfect or near perfect specimen if you put in the effort.

People have compared it to pokemon but I think its much much closer to at least smt nocture (only real smt I've played to compare) or Digimon Cyber Sleuth. The main loop of the game is going around the maps as you make your way towards the dungeon to fight the boss, getting monsters to join due to "show of force" based on your party stats, monster types and enemy status, fusion monsters together to get completely different things along with inheritable skills and abilities. If you put in the work, your stuff is strong. One of my monsters was taking 1 damage from the final boss for instance. Other than fighting with monsters you capture, there isn't much other comparisons to pokemon. Actually thats not true, the game runs about as well as Scarlet on a good day. Its not as glitchy though so it has that going for it.

Speaking of performance, its the main reason for the score. It gave me eye strain and then a headache that continued into the following day. This not occur when playing it in the inferior handheld mode of the switch so I unfortunately had to break my "Switch doesn't leave the dock" stance and settle for playing it that way. The game itself just felt very tedious half the time. Like it felt way worse than what I remember from Cyber Sleuth when it came to upgrading monsters. It might have just been because I was trying to get high level monsters too early but even later in the game I just felt like the entire synthesis system was more arduous than it needed to be unless you buy that mole hole dlc (which my impatient ass did, I apologize). Not like you can ignore it either because in true Dragon Quest fashion, it had that spike which lead to my only game over. It was a cheap shot, dumb back to back boss stuff that I beat on the second try so the cheap shot was the only reason I lost. ITS NOT A COPE! I could typically beat all normal encounters in a turn so I never felt outclassed but I couldn't be bothered to make more than one monster above A rank (the third highest) just because of how tiresome I found it all even with the mole hole cuz its has its own issues outside of it being a dlc. When I played there was basically no information on the game in general so I had to scour forums like it was the mid 2000's again for synth trees which rarely ever yielded fruit. Shoutouts to metalkid for their great site that had lots of information which I learned existed pretty much at the end of my playthrough.

As for the story, its not much but it was rather engaging. Not that I expect a grandiose plot from a dragon quest game but it might also have to do with me not having played or knowing anything about 4. The game loves to throw choices at you and aside from the one the decides your starter, every choice the game gives shouldn't even have options. It should have just played the scene out without the unnecessary input. At one point I initially made the right choice at one point but since they aren't choices at all so I had to go thorough the rigamarole of the "incorrect choice" and then go and DO THE CHOICE I INITIALLY PICKED. I assume that was something related to DQ4 given its outcome but as I said above I haven't played that one.

If you are someone who lives for the grind or like monster catching/collecting games then by all means pick this game up as my gripes most likely do not concern you, but do be warned of its performance if you are someone who cares about that. Nintendo's next console can't come soon enough.

Unless you like your monster-catching games full of grind and devoid of heart and soul, I'd avoid Dragon Quest's attempt at Pokémon. However, they did manage to emulate Pokémon's recent frame rate drops and added their own awful voice acting and excessive loading screens. As for the creatures you'll be adding to your four-person squad, you'll change your members so regularly that it'll be hard to get attached to any of them. This is because monsters are separated into in-game tiers, with higher tiers eclipsing the lower ones in viability. This also has the horrible side effect that even if you find a creature you are fond of, you won't be able to keep it in your party for long. You know it's poorly planned when the default names of some monsters are longer than the character limit for names, causing them to cut off.

Really fun monster battle gameplay with tons of neat ways to customize your team, with a very extensive synthesis system that will keep you busy for hours! However, the story was a pretty massive let-down. I’ve wanted a game where you get to see the events of Dragon Quest IV unfold from Psaro’s point of view for a while now, so I was stoked when this got revealed. However, you might as well hardly play as him. First of all, he’s a silent, nameable protagonist which… just boggles my mind, to say the least. He’s still very much the same character as the Psaro from Dragon Quest IV, so I don’t get why they turned him into a silent protagonist who hardly emotes instead of the extremely rash and hot-headed character he is in Dragon Quest IV. There’s also a lot of story changes to make Psaro more of an admirable anti-hero which I think is lame. He already was! His story is tragic! You don’t need to change events that already happened in Dragon Quest IV to make Psaro look like a good guy! He isn’t! He kills people for no reason!

Was going to 100% this one but got tired of grinding for the X Rank monsters, as much as I’d love to have Zoma and Estark on my team </3

Positives
- boss battles are frequently challenging and exciting
- synthesis is an engaging system, as it rewards the player with either stronger versions of existing monsters or completely new ones
- talents can be freely transferred from one monster to another through synthesis, granting a sufficient amount of customization
- traits allow each monster to feel unique
- excellent monster variety, which includes a plethora of returning classics, alongside a selection of original creatures

Negatives
- occasional crashes
- underwhelming graphics and art style, due to most explorable areas boasting an unpleasant color palette, poor textures and noticeable object pop-in
- inconsistent frame rate, with significant drops during season and weather changes
- animations for several monsters feel incredibly limited
- forgettable soundtrack, comprised of an excessive amount of reused tracks from previous Dragon Quest games
- mediocre voice acting from both the English and Japanese versions
- mostly uninteresting main story and characters
- Psaro being a silent protagonist is detrimental to his character development, as it prevents any understanding of his thought process and motivations
- choices are meaningless, since the overall story progression is the same, regardless of which option was selected
- certain dungeon puzzles are extremely tedious because of the abundant amount of aggressive enemies scattered throughout
- some high ranking monsters are disappointing in terms of overall strength, considering the amount of time required to synthesize each one
- egg exclusive monsters make completing the monsterpedia more time-consuming than necessary

Dragon Quest 4 is my favorite DQ, it got me into the series, and while I haven't played much of the DQM games (I played a good chunk of the first one in anticipation), I had a feeling that the format of a Monsters game would take the wind out of the sails of the promise of a retelling DQ4 from Psaro's perspective... which it did. But that's okay, the game is fun fan fiction of DQ4 with lots of interesting wrinkles in the lore of Zenithia, and I did enjoy the fan service given, even if it was all a bit hamfisted. It helps that the core of the game is a satisfying, frictionless gameplay loop of ascending your roster of monsters to newer heights. Don't regret my time at all with this one, even if it wasn't quite what I wanted from the premise.

This truly had the makings of a great game, and in some regards, it does shine. Unfortunately, this needed more time in the oven, as it didn't live up to the expectations of its predecessors.

This is still a fun game; the synthesis and monster fusion mechanics are the best they have ever been, the world is vibrant and interesting, and the combat is strategic and calculated. The biggest downside to this is the story and characterization. Not that I was expecting a glorious tale, however, Dragon Quest has a reputation for light-hearted yet deep stories of heroes and monsters in a fantastical world. On top of that, this was to be a retelling of an older title story, mainly Dragon Quest 4's story but told through the lens of one of the villains, Psaro.

What we get instead is what amounts to a fetch quest in segmented areas that don't add any nuance to the original plot. Psaro and his team just tend to change their minds about things on a whim, and very little is dedicated to certain plot points or character moments. It truly feels like going from one plot beat to the next.

It was extremely disappointing that the story was as bad as it was because otherwise, this game does play quite well. Which makes it even more unfortunate that this game has almost no post-game content to offer. There is 1 new area to explore and a couple of super bosses to face, but that amounted to ~3 hours more of gameplay. Dragon Quest is known for its sprawling post-game, so to barely have any is extremely shocking.

I can recommend this game to people who like the Monster Taming genre. By all accounts, it is better than most of the Switch Pokemon games in many ways. However, as its own game and by the standards of games within this series, it should be so much more. If it goes on sale, definitely check it out at least, but don't expect Dragon Quest 11.

A 5-star game trapped inside of a 2-star game. The actual monster battling, leveling, and synthesizing are phenomenal and offer a lot of depth for dedicated players, but just about every other aspect of the game falls apart in real time, which ultimately diminishes the strengths of the game's core mechanics.

The graphics, while being wildly mediocre at best, are forgivable since everyone knows DQ games are made on a budget of exactly $2.67, are also combined with horrible framerate drops and general choppiness that is impossible to ignore.

The lack of any real world building, side quests, and general overlapping objectives leaves players with a bland narrative that is not presented well or even coherently at all. That being said, if Monster battlers are your thing, you'll enjoy it since the game delivers in that regard, but stay away otherwise.

Minus half a star for the choppy framerate and Gamecube graphics. That aside, this is fantastic. This is about as deep as monster collectors get but it still seems pretty newbie friendly: the number of permutations between monsters (who all have multiple innate passives) and the fact you can graft any 3 skill paths onto anyone is insane but you can't really screw up too bad: rescouting becomes super easy as you progress and you have 1000 monster slots to work with, so getting the right skills on the right monster isn't too tough. Monsterpedia is excellent: if you're worried you need a synthesis guide they really give you a lot of recommended combos, you can check family trees in case you've forgotten past synthesis, etc. Really user-friendly without being handholdy. As long as people play ladder (and it's never been easier to make great, unique monsters), it'll never get stale.

This is a BIG game too: my memory may be foggy but I feel like the campaign is about twice as long as past entries. The story strikes a nice balance between telling a solid isolated narrative and being a geeky fanservice what-if prequel for the Zenithian trilogy freaks (Why is Toilen Trubble a main character here? I dunno man but he's a piece of shit and I'm happy he's here to rob everyone in the name of science).

Localization slaps. Took a screenshot every time they announced a new arena fighter, dialogue is insanely dumb in the best way. Anyways eat your damn heart out, Pokemon.

There is a good monster collecting game in here somewhere, but its mired by the games excessive faults.

This game just feels cheap, of course its a spinoff series, of which the spinoff series was always originally on handhelds so of course it would not stand toe to toe with the mainline Dragon Quest games. However the transition to the Switch was faulty at best, and a complete floundering at worst. The Switch is a weak console, and this game was not prepared for it, with frequent crashes that interrupted gametime (Only saved slightly due to the frequent auto-saving), environments on some later worlds being very drab, and endlessly reused music from other Dragon Quest games instead of relying on new tracks. This game feels like a disappointment.

The story is a semi-retelling of DQIV through the perspective of Psaro, a fan favorite villain of the series and the central villain of DQIV. Though, the telling of the story leaves a lot to be desired. Psaro only having a voice when capturing monsters and not having a voice in the story strips the player of being able to get into his mind since he can't speak, and the game tries to present multiple points where you choose what Psaro says, but every choice is an illusion since Psaro is a pre-established character and you cannot alter his story by doing things he wouldn't do. This can be confusing at many points as you have to get into a silent protagonist's head to figure out what the game wants you to do, but he never tells you and so you will say yes to a dialogue option, only to have characters berate you because Psaro actually meant the other option. This impacts the whole story as they then need to have an abundance of flashbacks that do nothing for the player but stand in for Psaro's background, because he can't just talk about it since he's silent. Most of the worlds have alright little self contained stories, but each world is disconnected and you only get the pay off way later in the game, as a result, you do 6 introductions, 6 midway points, and then 6 separate conclusions to each world. Culminating in finally the ending of the main story that is admittedly not bad with some homages to the DQIV party. But the rest of the game can just feel like a checklist of things to do.

Taking us into the gameplay, where it feels like the monster collecting section of the game is off. While the start of the game functions fine, leveling your monsters, fusing them to get higher power talents and getting more talent points from fusing, and then using your new powerful higher ranked monsters to tear up the competition, the end game ends up being miserable despite this. This is due to the fact that every time you fuse your monsters, they are reset to level 1, which would work well, but they all gain experience at roughly the same rate, with small adjustment changes like you'd see from Pokemon. This proves to be a problem, since later on, it feels very tiresome to fuse your A rank, S rank, and X rank monsters for what amounts to very little actual power difference compared to your B rank monsters, especially when you have to re-level them all the way up after fusing, when leveling at that point will take a lot of grinding to get back up to the levels required of you by that stage of the game since ranks don't impact their experience gain. The main concession then is metal slime hunting, which is based on luck, or using a guide to hunt them down which is using outside information to limit your grind. Similarly, some of the fusions requirements for A rank, S rank and X rank are very obtuse and lead to frustration in even getting some of your A rank, S rank and X rank monsters, requiring a lot of fusing and grinding for the hopes of getting some monsters that barely out-perform B rank monsters, and will be weaker at level 40 than your level 70 B rank monsters at that point. The game is then more enjoyable with using the fan created guides and I'd recommend that, but it seems the game would rather you do something else... Giving into paying for the DLC that helps your grind. It feels like the game is trying to push you toward it, beause unlike SMT you cannot resummon previously created monsters, BUT you can buy the DLC that lets you refight monsters you already have in your compendium to recruit. How kind to put this behind a paywall along with the gold and EXP farming zones. Not predatory at all.

All of these combined factors soured this game on me a lot. While the core monster raising, the strategy that comes from late game fights, and the idea behind the characters(Even if not executed well) kept me playing to the end, the game has too many flaws to rate it higher. 2.5/5.

The monster synthesis gameplay loop is incredibly satisfying and provides a great amount of freedom when it comes to composing a party unique to each player. All of the Dragon Quest Monsters™ are as charming as they have ever been and there are plenty of fun new additions to the cast, so it's always a delight to stumble upon a new one.

The game does have some obvious issues; primarily being the inconsistent framerate and the mostly barren, albeit colorful and varied, environments. The framerate I can forgive but the empty landscapes really detracted from my ability to feel immersed in the world. The story also isn't much to write home about but it is fun to have your expectations subverted every time Psaro commits to being a villain in situations where you would expect most protagonists to do the opposite.

Hoping this does well enough that we can get a higher budget entry in the series on better hardware one day.

The game is kind of ugly, performs bad, and crashed a half dozen times for me. A REAL monster collecting RPG would be twice as bad on all counts like Pokémon Scarlet/Violet! Kidding about that of course, but really this game also has those kinds of issues even if not as bad. It'd be a lie to say those issues don't also bring this game down. That said, really fun game though with more then enough monsters to collect to satisfy me and the synthesis mechanics make team building quite addicting.

The game has all the charm one should expect from a dragon quest game. There's also more to love here if you're a fan of IV specifically as seen by the main character being the main villain of that game. Even if you never played a Monsters game, if you like the main series at all this is worth checking out.

Making stronger monsters through synthesis is fun since you can make some stupidly strong ones once you understand it. However I do have to knock it a little for some of its mechanics being unclear like, what exactly does the sparkle you sometimes get mean, how would one ever figure out shit that require 2 monsters fusing that are fused from two very specific monsters, etc. Some great quality of life things however do deserve praise, such as the ability to reverse search as well as narrow down the monsters to ones you've never gotten before or ones you can't synthesize at the moment so you can see things you need to make them.

Did I unnecessarily grind to get broken monsters making the game trivial until the post game fights? Yes. Was this super satisfying so I don't care about it being easy as a result? Very much so. If that sounds appealing I'd suggest giving this a try.

Main Story: April 22nd.
100%: April 30th (176 hour play time).

This is one of my absolute favorite games of all time and that's mainly due to the fact that DQ4 is in my top 5 games and I'm a huge monster tamer fan. Getting a combination of both with my favorite mainline character Psaro as the protagonist is just the perfect game to market towards me. I enjoy every moment of 100%ing this game over a nearly half a year period. I truly took my time with this game like none other.

Story & Characters:
Let's start with the flaws. Despite having dark plotlines this game was noticably always in an uplifting mood. That's not necessarily bad, heck most of my favorite games are like that, but I do wish this game put greater emphasis on emotional value of characters. That's a quality that made me fall in love with DQ4. This game is a nice add on to DQ4's narrative though. It's wonderful to see events transpire from a different point of view, getting to explore Nadiria further, and the new lore fleshes out the world's backstory nicely. I do wish the Chosen showed up more potentially in boss battles against the player. Dragon Quest isn't used to anti heroes or antagonists in the protagonist role and it does kind of show. I definitely prefer Psaro and Rose in DQ4 than this game in all honesty but that's not to say I dislike them here. There's just something a little off about them to me compared to how I interpreted them in the original game. The new characters like Ludo, Dolph, Randolfo, and Azabel are all super cool and interesting though. Ludo is my favorite amongst them. The family dynamic between some of the cast was awkward in a good realistic way despite the fact they're a crazy demon lord family that mostly hate each other. It was also neat to see Toilen from DQ5 in this game but much younger and with an entirely unique design this time around. Healie also got a human form redesign and he's honestly cute. I actually wish he was a party member that accompanied Psaro more often because of how great his design is.

Exploration & Season Changing:
This game is split up into regions that you can fast travel between. Early game typically has smaller areas and you unlock larger areas as you progress. Every area has its own distinct climate and season cycle. The human world now known as Terrestria has a typical Earth season cycle but the Circles of Nadiria are all so unique and interesting. One moment you're in a green poison swamp with acid rain and the next thing you know the season changes with a blood moon overhead. New parts of the map open up in some seasons like being able to ride large flowers through the air in spring, climbing vines in summer, or walking across water/honey in winter. Honey? Well yes one of the underworlds is food themed which is honestly really cool. The Circle of Indulgance is probably my favorite setting in game because of all the tasty looking food everywhere. The Circle of Caprice is hard competition though because I love the waterfalls coming from magic in the sky and the constellations in the night sky with shooting stars. Some areas in the game simply look nothing short of beautiful but there are some kind of ugly areas too TBH. One such area is the Circle of Temper especially during winter. I don't know why but winger tends to be the ugliest season in terms of textures in game. Spring almost always look beautiful everywhere though thankfully. I don't really care about graphics that much and I do think the good areas outweigh the bad but still it is a flaw worth mentioning.

Monsters, Taming, Fusing, & DLC:
Having over 520 monsters to collect even with some being recolors is very impressive. The fusion system that is akin to Shin Megami Tensei is quite fun to mess around with but it can make obtaining every monster the game has to offer a big time sink. The Mole Hole DLC helps save hours for sure but unfortunately it is a paid DLC mode. I do think it could've been free in base game along with multiple day one DLC. Regardless, I do think I got my money's worth out of all three DLC packs. I also managed to get a hold of a code for the McChallenge event which was fun and got me some very rare monsters that not many players have. Those monsters are rather low ranked though so after I beat the main story I dropped them in favor of more powerful monsters. This game has most mainline final bosses and some side villains but it's definitely easy to tell they didn't go as crazy as the Joker games which were full of other spin-off representation and some unique monster ideas. I would've loved to use the Rocket Slime tanks, the Realm of the Mighty, Gomechan, and other crazy monsters those games had again. That is one way in which I think Joker 3 is better than The Dark Prince. Still, most mainline games including 11 now are represented well. Only DQ10 felt a little lacking in The Dark Prince to me since it only has 3 bosses that are all from Version 1 but I'm not that upset by it since I know not many western fans have actually played 10. The Dark Prince's roster size took me 175ish hours to get em all so there's definitely not a lack of content. It's honestly kind of crazy that DQM2 remake on 3DS has even more monsters (600).

Joker 3 VS The Dark Prince:
Joker 3 has so many crazy monsters, new variation concepts, let you actually ride all the monsters, had a much cooler setting, and more too. A part of me wants to say Joker 3 is objectively a better Dragon Quest Monsters game but something about The Dark Prince does make me like it more. Besides the fact it's connected to DQ4 with Psaro as the protag (absolutely massive pro), I think being able to play it on my TV instead of only on a handheld system is a huge plus. No other DQM has that advantage. Handheld gaming is fantastic, don't get me wrong, but sometimes I like to just lay on my bed with my TV nearby and chill that way. The seasons changing every few minutes to change what parts of the map you can explore and what monsters spawn is also a pretty big pro, especially when the changing is in real time and has a noticable impact on the map. At the end of the day exploring space with sci-fi elements and exploring the underworld with delicious treats are both fun. I love both games a lot, they're equally amongst my favorite monster tamers of all time, heck within my top 25 favorite games of all time too.

Conclusion:
The Dark Prince is a fantastic game that was well worth the decade long wait. It has flaws but so does every game really. In my eyes this game was a blast and a 10/10 experience which I don't say often. I would highly recommend it to fans of DQ4, monster tamers in general, and those simply looking for a calm turn based RPG that can help relieve stress. I love you DQM3 and I hope many more people try this game and enjoy it the way I have.

Just to get the stuff many others have said out of the way: Yes the graphics are dated. Yes the performance tanks from time to time (althouh I never experienced any crashes or major stuttering in my playthrough). Yes the story is basic. So why do I give it 4 stars? Simple: It's fun. Very fun.

The monsters' design is as good as ever, the designs of the different worlds is great, with some notable standouts (Hello Circle of Indulgence), and the raising of monsters is very addictive, with so many little things you can always work towards. If you like monster collecting games, this bad boy will suck you right in.

So funny enough I picked up this game because a Tik Tok creator that I follow said this would be a rare Switch game...yet every Gamestop I go into has a ton of copies smh. But regardless of that, I have become a recent Dragon Quest fan and wanted to give this game a shot. I mean, a monster collecting game where you play as the antagonist from DQ4?? Sign me up. But honestly the grind and the repetitiveness has gotten so significant for me that I just can't bring myself to play too much more, even if the core gameplay is pretty good.

The story and characters are interesting, especially because your character, Psaro, has such interesting motivations. Different story beats take a left turn due to your character's more evil nature, which makes things super interesting. The combat is also pretty fun, even if it can sometimes feel like you're on autopilot a lot of the time. Synthesizing and fusing monsters is also a lot of fun, though a bit confusing to get the hang of at times.

Its just...damn the grind. Everything about this game tests your patience. The performance is pretty poor, which is baffling as the game is just okay looking and there isn't a lot going on that would normally affect the performance, especially on Switch. The story is so repetitive and honestly uninteresting aside from the left turns it takes occasionally. Go to this circle of Nadiria, solve the problem, rise and repeat. Maybe throw in some colosseum battles here and there too. It just feels like a slog.

Getting good monsters is also a grind. Especially because there will be random difficulty spikes that come out of nowhere. The game does not like giving you good monsters by default, you HAVE to synthesize in order to stand a chance. But then the synthesized monster starts at level 1, which means more grinding is needed in order to get it up to snuff with where you're at in the game. It just frustrates me more than anything, especially these days where my time is more limited.

All-in-all, DQ Monsters The Dark Prince is a solid game at its core, and one that I legit have had fun with. I'm just at the point where the grind and repetitiveness has taken its toll and I need a break. I don't think the game is going to change much in terms of the core mechanics and issues I have with it, so I'm comfortable giving it a final score.

I've been waiting for a new Dragon Quest Monsters game to release over here for years now, and I wasn't disappointed with this one. It's a solid entry in the series and I had a lot of fun with it.

My only issues is the story features some odd choices in terms of it being a retelling/reimagining of IV, and I do wish it had as many monsters as some of the Japan-only 3DS entries, as a number of my favorite monsters didn't make the leap over. Overall, it's a really fun time though and I enjoyed the hell out of it.

if we're only talking about pure monster collecting gameplay this bad boy is almost perfect, but in general it's dragged down by the story where the highlights are basically whenever the DQ4 party appears, the presentation that is on the same level as pokémon sv, and the season based exploration that is cute at first but soon becomes pretty annoying when you're trying to scout a particular monster that you need to make a cool rank s main game villain monster. Still it's a pretty good game, wish they kept the monster riding from joker 3 though

This game really exceeded my expectations, yet it also fell behind in some areas. The gameplay loop of exploring the open areas and collecting iconic DQ monsters is the core of the experience. They also have dungeons in each area which are hit or miss. Some of them are really fun, while others can be a convoluted mess. Synthesizing towards stronger monsters becomes addicting, especially if you find one you really want. One aspect I'm conflicted about is the story. In some aspects it goes beyond the generic DQ story with you playing as the villain and seeing Psaro's descent into hating humanity. Yet the way the story is told can feel pretty bland and disconnected at times. The story is enough to get you through the experience and not much more. Get ready to hear the same couple of midi DQ tracks, since this game hardly has any original tracks to call it's own. The performance is iffy. In some portions it's fine, but when the weather changes or in certain spots it tends to dip a little bit. The graphics/art style I actually really like, some of the areas are really pretty and feature pretty seasonal changes. Overall, this game is something that really surprised me. I planned on skipping it entirely but since I've gotten my hands on it it's been hard to put it down. This game is honestly a great time, but with a little more effort it could have been so much more. Highly recommend for fans of monster catching, Dragon Quest, or someone looking for a simple JRPG.