definitely seems more aimed at fans of dq4 than people who have liked the previous monsters entries. the plot is threadbare and half-delivered under the assumption that you're already familiar with dq4's plot, and the general progression of the game (as well as (jarringly) all the models, most of the textures, and apparently the renderer) is inherited wholesale from dqmj3 - it's the same enter area -> go to village -> beat up a guy formula. besides staying at 4 slots after jokers 3 bumped us up, monsters' resistances and traits as well as skill trees themselves have been largely homogenized, and we've changed from specific monster sizes to all monsters having a size stat that determines whether they take up 1 or 2 slots (which does mean no more max-slot monsters, yes). and we've lost the rainbow fondude already, and growths are lower so you have to grind seeds to hit stat caps, and there's egg rng, and other changes i mentioned mean that status spamming is strong in pvp (boring), and all the extra budget has gone to voice acting and none to visually differentiating this from the ds titles... while i really love the basic formula behind the dqm games, of them this has been the hardest for me to get through even including the game boy color titles and it's definitely less competitively interesting than any of the joker titles. i'm a bit disappointed