Dragon Warrior Monsters

"The best game for Gameboy? Possibly!"

Well, it may borrow heavily from Pokemon, but boy does it improve on it! There are a total of 215 monsters in this game, hundreds of items, and a sweet breeding feature!

Graphics: 9/10

The overhead view look is much better than in Pokemon, and is very colorful as well! The battles aren't as pretty as the ones in Pokemon Yellow, but it does have color at least!

Sound: 10/10

The music is great! Most of the time you won't hear very memorable music on the Gameboy because of the primitive speaker, but a lot of the music on Dragon Warrior Monsters is almost unforgettable! The music for battles is intense and well suited, and the music while exploring is mysterious and a little spooky. There are also a few tunes in this game that you'll remember from the earlier games! Remember the intro theme from the NES DW games, the errie DW1 tune when you went outdoors, the DW1 level up jingle, and the jingle when you won on the slots in DW4? It's all here!

Gameplay: 10/10

This game is so addictive that it should be a game that all Gameboy owners have! In this game, you must go through warp gates in the castle that take you to outdoor areas with wild monsters. However, hardly any of them are opened up for you when you begin the game. You must fight in tournaments, and once you've beaten a tournament class, new gates begin to open up for you. Each gate has a boss at the end, many of which can join your team (and become a very helpful ally!) Also, there are many warp gates hiding within the town, which you must unlock by interacting with the folk and helping them out. Also as I mentioned before, you can breed your monsters together. If you have 2 monsters, one male one female, and both are over level 10, they can mate and have an egg. The 2 monsters will disappear after they've mated, but they will still be recorded as your friends. The possibilities on mating are endless, for all of the monsters of all the different types can breed together! The story does get iffy, and probably could've had more added onto it, but overall it's an awesome game!

The challenge isn't as high as Pokemon, because the monsters are much easier to find, and there isn't 2 different versions, but the game is very long and has a few tricky parts.

The replay is very high, higher than Pokemon even!

Overall: 10/10

Way to go Enix!

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 07/05/00, Updated 07/05/00