It has felt like a never ending journey, but it's finally over, so here I am to talk about this game. Honestly I have to say that Dragon Quest Monsters is very good considering the console and the era it belongs to, although nowadays it can certainly result in a rather heavy and tedious experience, mostly because it's a game designed for a handheld console, with all that implies.

I have to say that this is not my first time playing it, since when I was a kid this was practically my first Dragon Quest game (at that time I didn't know it), although I didn't finish it because I didn't know English and that stopped me at some point. Be that as it may, it's been about 10-15 years or so since my first contact with this game, and now that I'm a huge Dragon Quest fan I wanted to revisit this strange game from my childhood and give it a conclusion once and for all.

Dragon Quest Monsters is set in the world of DQVI, taking place in Terry and Milly's childhood. In this game we control Terry, however, similar to what happens in Pokémon, we are not the ones fighting in the battles, but our team of monsters. The battles are quite similar to the turn-based battles of the main games, only instead of being us who choose all the actions we want in the battles, our monsters are the ones who control themselves and their actions are determined by their intelligence and personality, although we can always command them to follow certain actions so that they learn to act in a certain way. Of the behaviors to choose from there are only three, and a last one that allows us to select the commands manually (an option that will not always be available), so most of the time they will be automatic battles, which gives the feeling that, in effect, it is not us who are fighting, but our monsters. However, on the one hand that aspect can also make the game boring at times.

There isn't really a story in this game, but basically, Terry gets stranded in a dimension where some kingdoms hold monster tournaments to see which kingdom is the best of them all, and Terry's mission is to participate and win that tournament in order to return home.

Unlike the main series, in this game there is no large map to go through or dungeons as such, instead, everything takes place in the same kingdom, and the equivalent to the dungeons are the traveler's portals, portals that transport us to unknown lands where we will explore a series of small random maps, in which after going through the established amount, we will reach the boss room. Many times the boss will be a battle that references a moment from one of the main Dragon Quest games, like the green dragon from DQ1, or Orochi from DQ3, which was a pretty cool detail really, although if you haven't played the first 6 Dragon Quests, you'll miss those references. Anyway, I like that the boss battles are not easy, and will require us to have a decent team of monsters, this also applying in the arena ranked battles, that the more we advance in rank in these, we will unlock more portals to go through with a new variety of monsters in them.

Depending on which portal we are in, we will find different types of monsters, whom we can recruit by offering them meat. Normally the monsters that we have never had will join our group easily without the need to give them much meat, the bad thing about the game in my opinion, is that to catch monsters that we have already had we will have to offer them meat several times or many times only offering them the best meat (which is obtained very late in the game), I understand that this was a design decision made to not break the progression of the game, but I would have liked something simpler. Another thing that can be negative about the game is the fact that the portals can become very repetitive or monotonous as they are randomized, especially in the later portals, where the amount of maps to go through is quite high. Although something that makes it more bearable is that it is entertaining to explore, because we can always find some objects or NPCs with which we can fight, some as a reward make us advance to the last map of the portal, others will give us objects, others increase the statistics of our monsters permanently, among others, it is worth fighting with them, at first they may be superior to you in power, but an incentive to fight with them is that we can "steal" their monsters, which can always come in handy.

The most interesting thing about Dragon Quest Monsters is the breeding of monsters, basically that is the core of the game and what will keep us hooked to it. Through breeding we will be able to fuse monsters to obtain new monsters that will inherit attributes and abilities from their parents. This is how you get strong monsters, because thanks to this system we can combine for example a monster with magical attacks and one that could never learn them, but is strong in physical attacks, the resulting egg of these two monsters could be a monster quite strong in both magic and physical attacks, a very useful combination. It's great to see how our monsters are getting stronger and learning skills (up to 8), because this system allows a lot of freedom to customize our party. There are a lot of combinations that we can get by breeding, as the variety of monsters is very large, ranging from those that appeared from Dragon Quest I to VI, although there are also a lot of new monsters for this game, especially the Slimes, which have some very crazy combinations.

Perhaps my only and biggest complaint about this title, is that it focuses so much on its gameplay and cycle of collecting and raising monsters, that it left out the story and exploration of a map with fixed and established villages and dungeons, as the whole game takes place in the same realm, and most of the game will be spent in the portals. But well, I guess such complaints stem from the fact that this is a Spin-Off and not a main series game, so it shouldn't necessarily focus on having the same thing as a main Dragon Quest game. There are also certain restrictions on what you can do or certain extra steps to simple things that are there to avoid cheating I guess or make things harder for you, but not that it bothered me, so I won't go into too much detail either as they are very trivial things.

Extra interesting details is that despite being a Game Boy Color game, this game is compatible with the original Game Boy and the SNES Super Game Boy. This is a nice touch, as the borders on the SGB look nice. It's also quite nice that the sprites of the monsters look good despite the low resolution of the GB/GBC. And as for the melodies we get to hear in the game, I really like the theme that plays while we are in the portals, it's quite melancholic and conveys loneliness, despite the sounds that a GB produces are very limited.

Conclusion
In its time this game surpassed Pokemon by far, because not being over simplified we have more options, possibilities and depth that, to my taste, makes it a better game. Although maybe this game was not very attractive for most people because even though it is still simple, it is a little more difficult, and unlike Pokémon, it doesn't have the same collecting factor or the beautiful designs and monsters to get attached to for the rest of your life (I personally prefer the monster designs of DQ).

It was very gratifying to finally finish this strange game from my childhood, but quite familiar now that I'm a Dragon Quest fan. I'm certainly looking forward to seeing how this sub-series evolves from here. It won't be for everyone, but it was certainly a very interesting proposition that I'm glad to have rediscovered.