Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker

"Fantastic game, but like most, not without it's flaws"

Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker is the latest monster battler RPG from Square Enix, a series based in the Dragon Quest universe similar to Pokemon just with some added depth. Veteran's of the great DQ spin-off series will feel right at home with many of the features in this game, however a lot has been changed to bring it into the next generation. Some changes are good, others are not so good but there are not very many big flaws, most of them are pretty minor.

The game is cell shaded, running on the same engine as Dragon Quest 8 for the PS2 and the upcoming Dragon Quest 9 which is also coming to the DS next year. Like the older DQ/W games, previous installments of Dragon Warrior Monsters were 2D using the top down view, however Square Enix has gone and totally revamped the game to use 3D character models and nice vibrant colour use with Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker. Unlike Pokemon, SE has decided to bring gamers a new experience to the monster collecting genre by making it 3D, plus more realistic attacks and various other features that make these games more unique.

One of the biggest differences between Pokemon and DQM is the breeding or synthesis system which allows players to combine monsters of level 10 or higher together to form new ones. As you progress, stronger monsters can be captured using the new scouting method, which is a little more accurate for predicting obtaining a monster but at the same time can be very tricky to capture some of the stronger or rarer monsters in the game. In previous DWM games, you had to use meat to make monsters happy, now you must impress them with your scouting abilities and your success is dependent on your monsters being strong enough, as their attacks guage how much the percentage of capture goes up by. You may find with Metal monsters, Gold Golem's and the like that catching them is almost impossible, and it is the truth because their defence points are rediculously high compared to other monsters. As you progress, monsters will get stronger as you breed them and they will learn new skills, plus their base stats will be much higher. However certain monsters require a lot of time and effort to obtain, especially the Lord monsters or the top tier monsters of each different attribute.

The combat has been improved upon to give you more of an opportunity to plan your attacks accordingly, and as to whether you want to manually heal your monsters or let them cast magic to do it. However the controls when you are in the environment are less then spectacular, since you are forced to use the inaccurate D-pad. Touch screen features are pretty useless as well, you can only navigate your menu on the lower screen and that is all it is used for. Square Enix needs to make new music for their games though, like every other Dragon Quest game, Joker uses pretty much the same repetitive songs through the whole game.

You can get loads of gameplay time out of Joker though, both online and offline. Expect if you want every monster collected that you will be spending about 200+ hours on it, however the main story should take on average about 20 hours depending on the player.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 11/13/07

Game Release: Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker (US, 11/06/07)