Dragon Warrior Monsters

"Great game..."

Hmm... really a great game. If you were in a store and you walked by and picked it up, you might think it's just another Pokemon clone. Well, it's not. The two games are totally different. More on this in the story section.

Story
7/10
Story here is the worst part of the game in my opinion, but it's still better than most. It starts off that you and your sister are in your home, and you have insomnia tonight. So, you get up and go the living room, where there is a dresser. As you enter the room, one of the doors opens by itself. A strange... thing... named Warabou comes and kidnaps your sister, hops in the dresser droor (which happens to be a gateway to a different world). Then, seconds later, another thing named Watabou comes and takes you through the dresser. Well that's enough for now, don't want to give away the whole plot. There are a few plot twists for what little story there is, but the story that IS present is quite good in my opinion.

Graphics
8/10
Graphics here are a gem. The monster design doesn't make you want to laugh out loud like Pokemon. The monsters don't look ''cute'' like some of the Pokemon monsters. These monsters look evil. The look impressive, like they could be ruthless killing machines. War robots, 8 legged lions, huge falcons with razor talons, centaurs with wicked battle axes, possessed suits of armor with various weapons, zombies, demons, etc. And it all has good color, unlike Pokemon red and blue where everything is red or blue, or some of the other games with dull graphics, black and white graphics, etc. The graphics are clear and colorful, and easy on the eyes.

Sound
8/10
Ahh... remember Dragon Warrior 1-4? Well these tunes will make you remember. A sense of nostalgia resides in theses songs, many of which origninate from various Dragon Warrors before. I always turn up the volume a little when I play this game, I love the music. The sound effects are well cooridanted and go well with the course of events; fire spells sound like fire while explosions don't sound like water. Everything here is good, and doesn't make you scratch your head in belwilderment as you cast Explodet (an explosion spell) and end up having it sound like a drip drop or something. Very good.

Gameplay
11/10
I cannot give the Gameplay enough praise. This is what really stands out, and here's why:
1. Almost everything in this game is customizable, from monsters to moves to breeding to fighting to everything.
2. It has a good, user-friendly control.
3. You don't have to clutter and bumble around with a bunch of bewildering menus.
First, let's start out with breeding. Each monster has a gender, and if you catch a female and a male and raise them to level 10, you can breed them. And not just a male and female of the same type. Oh no. Each of the 215 different monsters can be bred with each other, ensuring you'll have a great time figuring out what to breed with what. If you breed bird with bird, you get a bird that is the same type as the pedigree. If you breed a bird with a material, you get MistyWing, unless that is the material is CoilBird, in which case you get MadCondor. If you breed any dragon with any dragon, you get the dragon of the pedigree. Unless you breed a dragon with BattleRex, in which case you get a GreatDrak. You never know what you'll get, which is half the fun. All of the strongest monsters are tough to get, while some are easy and you have to start out somewhere... Also, breeding increases the starting stats of your monsters. So if you catch a level 1 CactiBall in the wild, it may have stats around 10. If you breed for it, it will have stats around 15-300, depending on the parents.
Next is the battle. The battle menus are coordinated well, and don't really confuse that much. For those who feel unsure about what to do, select ''charge''. If you don't know what heal spell to use, select ''cautios''. If you know exactly what you want to do, select ''manual'' to get complete control over your monster, unless they are too wild. The point is, the fights are great, turn based fights that are usually fair and fun, and the game doesn't rely on mindless leveling up to go fight a boss or something.

Challenge: depends.
Depending on what and who and when you breed, you may blow through fights with ease or struggle with poor skills and stats. Finding out what monsters are strong and what monsters are not is half the fun!

Replay
10/10
This game will be played again and again, because the quest to learn about new monsters and breeding combos that you have passed up. You will find yourself playing it almost endlessly... go experience it for yourself!

Overall
9/10
Buy, don't rent. If you rent, you'll never experience how much this game has to offer. This is not a beat-in-a-week game, more like a beat-in-three-months or more game. If you see this game, I urge you to get it.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 09/22/02, Updated 09/22/02