I respect this game for knowing when to end on a proper final boss after the collection of all the dragon balls it outlines at the start, but the core concept of collecting treasures is simply not rewarding enough to keep you engaged.

To it's credit, it's called Dragon Quest Treasures not Monsters, so the lackluster enemy and by extension tamable monster variety can't be too responsible for its average quality. There are plenty of treasures to collect, beyond statues of series protagonists & weapons, there are gags that hardcore fans will chuckle at their inclusion. However reiterating my main point, you'll be watching the "digging up treasure animation" 200 times too many in a single playthrough, when what's inside the chest is just a numerical representation of your progress to the next story objective being easier to reach.

The story starts off charming enough, but in my opinion doesn't lean into its world and characters both original and returning to warrant any amount of emotional investment, if you're into that sort of thing. Maybe my sights are set a little too high for a series that spins the European Accent Roulette Wheel at every opportunity, but this game presented concepts that if properly explored, would've been welcomed to incite the player to keep progressing.

Combat once you understand it's shallow depth boils down to playing support for the toughest team of monsters you can muster, using your wellspring of wealth to purchase buffing bullets to assist your allies (see, I can write for these games). Then when the moment is right, burn special meter to bomb the entire arena, leaving you wondering exactly who thought the combat was a good idea.

This game is a fanservice title in everything but name and branding, but where the service lies is just not engaging enough even for hardcore fans to want to wade through to appreciate. I can't recommend this game to anyone but those inflicted with the most severely affected with Dragon Quest 11 brainrot. I enjoyed playing it, but was gradually worn down by the end that I was glad it was over.

My initial thoughts of this game were that if was poorly designed (graphically it is vastly worse than what 11 looks like) and had unfun combat. After getting past the tutorial I did actually start enjoying it a lot since finding thousands of small references to past games was fun, I was able to really start exploring, and I realized combat wasn't actually important outside of boss fights since most similar level enemies are easy to beat in a few seconds. Treasure hunting is the main attraction and it is fun when it comes to that but there were still flaws like needing to backtrack often. The repetitiveness and the way it was designed to be played just a little bit daily hold it back. It made it hard for me to actually want to reach the end. Overall it is a fairly nice spin off that is fun for a while but not something that can really hook most people.