"Fresh at first, Monsters gets old quick."

Let me be frank. Unless you enjoy grinding (defeating random monsters to gain experience to progress through the game), you will not enjoy this. Monsters is heavily laden with grinding the likes of which would satisfy the most obsessive gamer.

The game play of Monsters is reminiscent of pokemon, in that you capture, train, and battle monsters found throughout the game. In order to capture a monster, you must impress it by having your monsters 'scout' it, or display their strength. Your chance of capturing a wild critter goes up the stronger your monsters are. If you successfully 'scout' the monster, it will join you on the spot, where you will be able to name it, or let the computer name it. It should be noted, however, that the computer names are quite silly, usually the first half of the monster's type with an '-y' or '-er' tacked on the end.

Monsters must defeat other monsters in order to go up in level, and accordingly, strength. Unfortunately, you gain little experience from the wild beasties you can find roaming about, so this is quite a chore, and to be honest, sucks most of the fun out of the game, since you cannot often defeat a boss baddie and progress the 'story' (I use story lightly, and I'll explain why in a minute) without copious amounts of grinding.

The one thing that saved this game from being a complete waste of time was synthesis. Synthesis is taking two monsters above level 10 (a chore in itself getting them there) of opposite polarity (think gender, but with + and - replacing male and female) and combining them, most often to create a new, more powerful monster. It's quite fun to take your weakling bats and moles and create dragons and killer robots. Too bad it is, then, that you quickly run out of new options for synthesis. Another thing to factor is that to synthesize even the lowest of the high level monsters requires such specific breeding I see no way of stumbling across the right combination; mostly due to the fact that you must grind so long between breeding to enable synthesis.

Finally, the most important part of any RPG worth its salt, is the story. It was terribly milquetoast, to put it nicely. Standard 'mythical monster that I stumble across can save the world' drivel. Not to mention the awfully simplistic dialogue, which at times had me physically cringing in disgust. Oh, and there are, as far as I can tell, zero distractions from the main story aside from monster training.

Having not played older Dragon Quest or Dragon Quest Monsters games, I have no clue how it stacks up to games of old, but I am willing to bet that this one doesn't stand up particularly well.

So if you enjoy defeating nobody enemies to advance a thin storyline, this is the game for you. Everyone else: stay away.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 03/06/08

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