What if Pokemon was actually a great game?
Really cool and fun monster breeding mechanics that allow any monster to have basically any build you desire. Has a lot of really fun and cool ideas, although kinda drags near the end with it's procedural dungeon system, which while is very unique for the GBC, doesn't really have much to offer after a while. Definitely want to try a lot more of these though, game was very fun.
I actually bought this game like a year and a half ago during my last super obsession with GameBoy stuff, but tried it only a little and bounced off of it pretty quick. Well this time, I ended up returning to it during this most recent obsession with Dragon Quest games I hadn’t gotten to yet, and after finishing DQ8 and having fun with its monster arena system, I decided to finally take another crack at this one. I played through this game’s sequel when I was much younger, in fact (probably late high school or early university), but couldn’t quite beat that one (and it’s soon on the hit list as well XD). I was determined not to let this one beat me again, and this time I was able to see it through to the end~. It took me a bit over 40 hours to beat the Japanese version of the game on real hardware (a real cart played mostly via my GameCube’s GB Player and my GBA SP).
The story for DQM is a pretty simple one. Terry, the very same from Dragon Quest VI but as a child, is playing with his older sister one night, when she suddenly tells him they need to go to bed quick, or monsters will come and take them away! Terry pretends to go to bed, and gets back out only to run into a montser, Warubo, coming out of his dresser and stealing his sister away! Stricken with panic, Terry is then met by another, nicer monster named Watabo, who is the good-version counterpart to the earlier sister stealer. He takes Terry through the dresser drawer to the kingdom of Taiju, located in a giant tree. The king is a bit of a goofball, and he has no idea where Terry’s sister is, but he can still help, well, sorta. The night of shooting stars is coming up soon, and whoever wins the monster arena tournament at that festival will be granted any wish they desire! Terry could wish for his sister to be saved, and so he sets out on a mission to compile the best and strongest monster team he can to win that tournament!
It’s a pretty simple story, as far as plot goes, but that’s not too unusual for Dragon Quest of the time (the time in particular here being 1998). What’s also normal for DQ of that era is a bunch of silly, colorful characters with funny dialogue, and it’s something this game has in spades. The story and world aren’t too deep, sure, but I think they succeed well at making an entertaining and engaging world to partake in the mechanics of the game.
Coming out over two years after the original Pokemon games, this is without question a Pokemon competitor, first and foremost, but it’s also one of the more ambitious ones I’ve seen of the handful I’ve run into on the GameBoy. The main gameplay loop consists of going through procedurally generated portal dungeons to find monsters, and then using the monsters you have in your party to go through successive ranks of the arena until you’re good enough to beat that final rank of the arena for the story. While you can directly order around monsters in dungeons, in arena matches, they’ll only act by general behavioral patterns (like “go all out!” or “focus on defense/ healing”, that sort of thing), so having a team that can handle both is paramount to a game-winning monster team (my personal team at the end was a Servant, DracoLord1, and an Akubar). The portal dungeons usually have bosses at the end you’ll need to fight to complete them, and you can even often recruit these powerful foes as party members themselves! Recruiting monsters just involves beating them, and if a hidden dice roll goes well enough, they’ll join you. But thankfully you can increase those odds by giving them better quality meat treats in battle, at least.
However, even the most powerful wild monster is still gonna be pretty pathetic. Not unlike how SMT handles this monster-catching rpg genre, where real power lies is in pairing your monsters off to make stronger offspring. But while SMT has demon fusion, DQM has monster breeding. But unlike something like Pokemon (which didn’t actually have a breeding mechanic yet in 1998), you don’t keep the parents. You’re just stuck with the baby, so it’s a lot more like SMT demon fusion. What is a lot less like SMT demon fusion, however, is that while SMT demons don’t level and are simply as powerful at “birth” as they’ll ever be, DQM monsters do level up. In fact, not only do monsters get stronger as they level and need to be at least level 10 to breed at all, but a child monster actually inherits the strength of its parent monsters. This isn’t like how Pokemon would eventually do it, where Pokemon have inherent stats upon birth that will be passed down genetically no matter what. DQM monsters will get better stat growths if their parents were stronger when they were born (i.e. a monster with level 10 parents will be far weaker than a monster whose parents were both level 20).
This is also combined with that monsters don’t simply give random offspring. The monsters you’re breeding, and even the order you give them to the monster breeder, have pre-set algorithms for what offspring they’ll give you. While later generation monsters will generally be much more powerful no matter what they are, different monsters have different stat growth biases, so there are plenty of monsters who are simply better and stronger and you’re gonna want those if you wanna win. Additionally, offspring can also learn their parents’ spells as well, but only if their parents already know those spells in the first place, so that’s one more incentive to just grind grind grind those levels up before you breed more monsters. Using a wiki to make the most optimal path to whatever big smashy powerful monster you want is very highly recommended unless you want to spend forever just grinding blindly only to end up with crappy monsters.
This is honestly my biggest complained with DQM as a game. Compared to something like SMT or Pokemon’s far more straightforward monster raising systems, DQM’s systems are incredibly arcane and difficult to parse. Especially for a younger kid, the very nature of needing to breed monsters to get stronger ones is so alien from something like Pokemon that I could never recommend DQM over Pokemon to them. Like 95% of DQM is just grinding, and it’s a gameplay loop that incentives assuming grinding is necessary over progress. DQM ain’t an easy game, and those arena tiers (not to mention the two or three mandatory portal dungeons) are no slouch, and you’re gonna need some real ass-beating monsters to beat them. I found myself falling into loops of just endlessly grinding up monsters to breed for more monsters to breed for more monsters, since why not just get better monsters now rather than throw myself at the arena and waste my time with that? The game even has a baffling mechanic where, if you’ve ever had a monster before (through either befriending it or breeding it), recruiting it again is 10s of times more difficult, and you’re going to need to expend some very valuable monster-befriending meat items to recruit a second of something to have an easier time breeding a strong family tree. I assume this is to encourage you to breed monster’s with your friends’ copies of the game, but all it amounted to for friendless me was an even further pressure to use the wiki to grind and breed my monsters in the most efficient way possible.
That lack of a world to explore and get engrossed in, and the combination of both monsters to get attached to like Pokemon (or family trees, in this case) who are yet also very disposable like in SMT makes DQM a very odd beast of a game. It feels like it was made for older folks, teenagers and people in their 20’s and 30’s, who were big DQ fans and big Pokemon fans. There is fun to be had here, sure, but I’d be hard pressed to say it’s better executed or polished than what guys like the Pokemon Company or Atlus had been doing for years, and a lot of the biggest issues seem to be self-selected problems in the very conceit of the gameplay loop. I think, at the very least, Dragon Quest Monsters does a really good job of making a monster-raising rpg out of the existing mechanics in Dragon Quest, however I do not really mean that as a compliment so much as I mean it as a description of fact.
The presentation is quite nice, though a bit underwhelming for what is technically a GameBoy Color game. The graphics are pretty, and the visual effects on the attacks in particular look quite nice, but you’d be forgiven for mistaking it as just a quite nice looking GB game rather than a GBC game. Though, in the game’s defense, it’s a VERY early GBC game. It’s such an early game, in fact, that while it’s a black cartridge (indicating it works on both GBCs and normal GBs) in English, it’s a grey cartridge here in Japan! It’s a GBC game that actually predates the release of the GBC itself, so it’s hard to be too harsh on it. They do a really good job of using the 4 colors available per sprite on the GBC to make some really nice looking monsters, and the monsters are very recognizable from their console DQ origins, and there are a LOT of them, at over 200, and they even have overworld walking sprites as well for when they’re following you in your party! The music is also quite nice, GameBoy-ifying familiar DQ tracks in a very pleasant way.
Verdict: Hesitantly Recommended. While I would hesitate to call DQM a bad game, I think it is a game that really commits to a pretty flawed formula. While being a flawed RPG on the GameBoy is something that basically every RPG on the platform can be described by, I think in DQM’s case, the sheer strength of its competitors and just how much of the gameplay loop is grinding is going to justifiably turn away a lot of people from trying it out. If you’re a big DQ fan and you enjoy monster-raising and you don’t mind grinding, there’s a good amount of fun to be had here. But if you’re just a more general monster-raising rpg fan, especially if you’re not someone who can put up with grinding easily, I’d say this is a game to stay away from, or at the very least approach with great caution.
The story for DQM is a pretty simple one. Terry, the very same from Dragon Quest VI but as a child, is playing with his older sister one night, when she suddenly tells him they need to go to bed quick, or monsters will come and take them away! Terry pretends to go to bed, and gets back out only to run into a montser, Warubo, coming out of his dresser and stealing his sister away! Stricken with panic, Terry is then met by another, nicer monster named Watabo, who is the good-version counterpart to the earlier sister stealer. He takes Terry through the dresser drawer to the kingdom of Taiju, located in a giant tree. The king is a bit of a goofball, and he has no idea where Terry’s sister is, but he can still help, well, sorta. The night of shooting stars is coming up soon, and whoever wins the monster arena tournament at that festival will be granted any wish they desire! Terry could wish for his sister to be saved, and so he sets out on a mission to compile the best and strongest monster team he can to win that tournament!
It’s a pretty simple story, as far as plot goes, but that’s not too unusual for Dragon Quest of the time (the time in particular here being 1998). What’s also normal for DQ of that era is a bunch of silly, colorful characters with funny dialogue, and it’s something this game has in spades. The story and world aren’t too deep, sure, but I think they succeed well at making an entertaining and engaging world to partake in the mechanics of the game.
Coming out over two years after the original Pokemon games, this is without question a Pokemon competitor, first and foremost, but it’s also one of the more ambitious ones I’ve seen of the handful I’ve run into on the GameBoy. The main gameplay loop consists of going through procedurally generated portal dungeons to find monsters, and then using the monsters you have in your party to go through successive ranks of the arena until you’re good enough to beat that final rank of the arena for the story. While you can directly order around monsters in dungeons, in arena matches, they’ll only act by general behavioral patterns (like “go all out!” or “focus on defense/ healing”, that sort of thing), so having a team that can handle both is paramount to a game-winning monster team (my personal team at the end was a Servant, DracoLord1, and an Akubar). The portal dungeons usually have bosses at the end you’ll need to fight to complete them, and you can even often recruit these powerful foes as party members themselves! Recruiting monsters just involves beating them, and if a hidden dice roll goes well enough, they’ll join you. But thankfully you can increase those odds by giving them better quality meat treats in battle, at least.
However, even the most powerful wild monster is still gonna be pretty pathetic. Not unlike how SMT handles this monster-catching rpg genre, where real power lies is in pairing your monsters off to make stronger offspring. But while SMT has demon fusion, DQM has monster breeding. But unlike something like Pokemon (which didn’t actually have a breeding mechanic yet in 1998), you don’t keep the parents. You’re just stuck with the baby, so it’s a lot more like SMT demon fusion. What is a lot less like SMT demon fusion, however, is that while SMT demons don’t level and are simply as powerful at “birth” as they’ll ever be, DQM monsters do level up. In fact, not only do monsters get stronger as they level and need to be at least level 10 to breed at all, but a child monster actually inherits the strength of its parent monsters. This isn’t like how Pokemon would eventually do it, where Pokemon have inherent stats upon birth that will be passed down genetically no matter what. DQM monsters will get better stat growths if their parents were stronger when they were born (i.e. a monster with level 10 parents will be far weaker than a monster whose parents were both level 20).
This is also combined with that monsters don’t simply give random offspring. The monsters you’re breeding, and even the order you give them to the monster breeder, have pre-set algorithms for what offspring they’ll give you. While later generation monsters will generally be much more powerful no matter what they are, different monsters have different stat growth biases, so there are plenty of monsters who are simply better and stronger and you’re gonna want those if you wanna win. Additionally, offspring can also learn their parents’ spells as well, but only if their parents already know those spells in the first place, so that’s one more incentive to just grind grind grind those levels up before you breed more monsters. Using a wiki to make the most optimal path to whatever big smashy powerful monster you want is very highly recommended unless you want to spend forever just grinding blindly only to end up with crappy monsters.
This is honestly my biggest complained with DQM as a game. Compared to something like SMT or Pokemon’s far more straightforward monster raising systems, DQM’s systems are incredibly arcane and difficult to parse. Especially for a younger kid, the very nature of needing to breed monsters to get stronger ones is so alien from something like Pokemon that I could never recommend DQM over Pokemon to them. Like 95% of DQM is just grinding, and it’s a gameplay loop that incentives assuming grinding is necessary over progress. DQM ain’t an easy game, and those arena tiers (not to mention the two or three mandatory portal dungeons) are no slouch, and you’re gonna need some real ass-beating monsters to beat them. I found myself falling into loops of just endlessly grinding up monsters to breed for more monsters to breed for more monsters, since why not just get better monsters now rather than throw myself at the arena and waste my time with that? The game even has a baffling mechanic where, if you’ve ever had a monster before (through either befriending it or breeding it), recruiting it again is 10s of times more difficult, and you’re going to need to expend some very valuable monster-befriending meat items to recruit a second of something to have an easier time breeding a strong family tree. I assume this is to encourage you to breed monster’s with your friends’ copies of the game, but all it amounted to for friendless me was an even further pressure to use the wiki to grind and breed my monsters in the most efficient way possible.
That lack of a world to explore and get engrossed in, and the combination of both monsters to get attached to like Pokemon (or family trees, in this case) who are yet also very disposable like in SMT makes DQM a very odd beast of a game. It feels like it was made for older folks, teenagers and people in their 20’s and 30’s, who were big DQ fans and big Pokemon fans. There is fun to be had here, sure, but I’d be hard pressed to say it’s better executed or polished than what guys like the Pokemon Company or Atlus had been doing for years, and a lot of the biggest issues seem to be self-selected problems in the very conceit of the gameplay loop. I think, at the very least, Dragon Quest Monsters does a really good job of making a monster-raising rpg out of the existing mechanics in Dragon Quest, however I do not really mean that as a compliment so much as I mean it as a description of fact.
The presentation is quite nice, though a bit underwhelming for what is technically a GameBoy Color game. The graphics are pretty, and the visual effects on the attacks in particular look quite nice, but you’d be forgiven for mistaking it as just a quite nice looking GB game rather than a GBC game. Though, in the game’s defense, it’s a VERY early GBC game. It’s such an early game, in fact, that while it’s a black cartridge (indicating it works on both GBCs and normal GBs) in English, it’s a grey cartridge here in Japan! It’s a GBC game that actually predates the release of the GBC itself, so it’s hard to be too harsh on it. They do a really good job of using the 4 colors available per sprite on the GBC to make some really nice looking monsters, and the monsters are very recognizable from their console DQ origins, and there are a LOT of them, at over 200, and they even have overworld walking sprites as well for when they’re following you in your party! The music is also quite nice, GameBoy-ifying familiar DQ tracks in a very pleasant way.
Verdict: Hesitantly Recommended. While I would hesitate to call DQM a bad game, I think it is a game that really commits to a pretty flawed formula. While being a flawed RPG on the GameBoy is something that basically every RPG on the platform can be described by, I think in DQM’s case, the sheer strength of its competitors and just how much of the gameplay loop is grinding is going to justifiably turn away a lot of people from trying it out. If you’re a big DQ fan and you enjoy monster-raising and you don’t mind grinding, there’s a good amount of fun to be had here. But if you’re just a more general monster-raising rpg fan, especially if you’re not someone who can put up with grinding easily, I’d say this is a game to stay away from, or at the very least approach with great caution.
Got my username from this game and I wouldn't have cared about Slib the Slime if Toriyama's design wasn't just so god damn perfect for a mascot. Rest in Power.
This game was worth every single hour I put into it while getting lost. I finally beat it and then another part started. That really overwhelmed me as a child but it was super cool that I wasn't done yet.
peak with the delocalization patch
A difficult game to rate having played and enjoyed the sequel first. While the interfacing and quality of life is worse (slower movement, obtrusive fusion menus, etc.),the structure of the mystery dungeon style progression to tourney is not necessarily inferior to the more standard adventuring in 2.
It's a great spinoff that delivers the nonlinear progression I know the series for, albeit clunkier and less rewarding than its eventual successors.
I do give this game credit however for starring an existing character in the Dragon Quest series, an element I am happy will be returning in the latest installment.
It's a great spinoff that delivers the nonlinear progression I know the series for, albeit clunkier and less rewarding than its eventual successors.
I do give this game credit however for starring an existing character in the Dragon Quest series, an element I am happy will be returning in the latest installment.
This is a comfort game for me. I love the monster designs of the Dragon Warrior world. And getting them, raising them and breeding them to make more powerful ones is like Pokémon, but with monsters you care about (shout out to my boy Treecko though).
Procedurally generated dungeons filled with all sorts of weirdness.
You know what? Now I want to try and make a stupidly powerful
Sabrecat. It’s been a while since I’ve played.
Let’s go!
Procedurally generated dungeons filled with all sorts of weirdness.
You know what? Now I want to try and make a stupidly powerful
Sabrecat. It’s been a while since I’ve played.
Let’s go!
My save file got fried...
I usually switch in between playing Game Boy games on my Game Boy Advance and my GB Operator, since my GBA isn't backlit, I like to play on PC. Though, sometimes, I found, playing the same cart on different hardware can make the GB Operator a little finicky. Almost lost a Pokémon save file, too, but the Operator hadn't overwritten the cart before I took it out to test if it was really wiped. So, I think I might just take a break from this, even though I was really picking up steam and played a clean two hours just today. I was really, really enjoying this game so much, and wanted to talk about it as a way to mourn.
I played a lot of Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker on the Nintendo DS. Though, eventually, I got bored of the story and just bred slimes together to get new ones (I love Dragon Quest slimes). When I started this game, I did plan to spend a decent amount of time getting the coolest fucking slime I could get my grubby hands on, I also did want to actually spend some time and really finish one of these games.
Dragon Warrior Monsters had been on my wishlist for a bit, especially after getting back into this series a lot earlier this year. I finally got my hands on a cheapish (sub $20 before shipping) copy from a Virginia state Goodwill's eBay account. When I started it up, I didn't really know what I was getting into, having completely forgotten the premise to 'DQM: Joker', I just got into it. This game is quirky, but, it's maybe one of the most succinct and well-fleshed-out creature collectors you could get pre-GBA.
I mean, let's not pull punches, this is Enix's answer to Pokémon's insane success, and they answered well. Enix was probably a better-funded game studio than Game Freak, even with the latter heading into its mega hit's sequels, and also probably a better experienced studio, as well. The result is a Game Boy Color launch title that absolutely blows even Pokémon Gold and Silver Versions out of the water.
Before 'Pokemon GSC' could even hit shelves, Dragon Warrior Monsters had released in Japan with a mechanic that is the reason I think this beats 'GSC' anyday: link cable breeding. The breeding mechanic in this game cannot be overpraised; it is well explained and is core to crafting a strong team of elite monsters. You breed monsters and they basically take on one parent's monster "pedigree," and then inherits both parents spell and ability trees. The result is you getting new monsters you can't find in the wild through breeding, with a toolkit that you can craft by breeding monsters with a good pool of spells. The game even keeps track of a monster's parents and their masters, so if you breed through multiplayer, you'll have a record of which friend you got your monster's mom or dad from!
This level of experimentation and mystery when it comes to monster breeding is just something that isn't even found in modern Pokémon games. When you breed Pokémon, you know exactly what you're getting and exactly what moves it will learn (even if you're aiming for an egg move). They never even made it so you might get either the mother species OR the father species. Breeding in Pokémon is basically just there for shiny hunting, these days, because there's not really any incentive to breed Pokémon during a playthrough! They even stopped making baby evolutions, and made existing baby evos available in the wild to even more invalidate this mechanic's existence within that franchise.
The satisfaction of breeding a Healslime with a weird flower bird that I'd never seen in a Dragon Quest game beforehand and getting a Wing Slime as a baby that had a buttload of support and healing spells that it could learn and also was a cute and cool ass slime species that I'd not seen before beats anything I could get from discovering new species of Pokémon.
It's a real shame this series got kind of kneecapped in the west by releasing a month and a half after Pokémon Gold and Silver Versions over here, but, gosh darn it, does it just make me so excited for the multiplayer potential of a new installment in this series getting released outside Japan for the first time in, like, ten years.
Wini the Wing Slime... I will come back for you... I will come back to this game and reclaim my save.
I usually switch in between playing Game Boy games on my Game Boy Advance and my GB Operator, since my GBA isn't backlit, I like to play on PC. Though, sometimes, I found, playing the same cart on different hardware can make the GB Operator a little finicky. Almost lost a Pokémon save file, too, but the Operator hadn't overwritten the cart before I took it out to test if it was really wiped. So, I think I might just take a break from this, even though I was really picking up steam and played a clean two hours just today. I was really, really enjoying this game so much, and wanted to talk about it as a way to mourn.
I played a lot of Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker on the Nintendo DS. Though, eventually, I got bored of the story and just bred slimes together to get new ones (I love Dragon Quest slimes). When I started this game, I did plan to spend a decent amount of time getting the coolest fucking slime I could get my grubby hands on, I also did want to actually spend some time and really finish one of these games.
Dragon Warrior Monsters had been on my wishlist for a bit, especially after getting back into this series a lot earlier this year. I finally got my hands on a cheapish (sub $20 before shipping) copy from a Virginia state Goodwill's eBay account. When I started it up, I didn't really know what I was getting into, having completely forgotten the premise to 'DQM: Joker', I just got into it. This game is quirky, but, it's maybe one of the most succinct and well-fleshed-out creature collectors you could get pre-GBA.
I mean, let's not pull punches, this is Enix's answer to Pokémon's insane success, and they answered well. Enix was probably a better-funded game studio than Game Freak, even with the latter heading into its mega hit's sequels, and also probably a better experienced studio, as well. The result is a Game Boy Color launch title that absolutely blows even Pokémon Gold and Silver Versions out of the water.
Before 'Pokemon GSC' could even hit shelves, Dragon Warrior Monsters had released in Japan with a mechanic that is the reason I think this beats 'GSC' anyday: link cable breeding. The breeding mechanic in this game cannot be overpraised; it is well explained and is core to crafting a strong team of elite monsters. You breed monsters and they basically take on one parent's monster "pedigree," and then inherits both parents spell and ability trees. The result is you getting new monsters you can't find in the wild through breeding, with a toolkit that you can craft by breeding monsters with a good pool of spells. The game even keeps track of a monster's parents and their masters, so if you breed through multiplayer, you'll have a record of which friend you got your monster's mom or dad from!
This level of experimentation and mystery when it comes to monster breeding is just something that isn't even found in modern Pokémon games. When you breed Pokémon, you know exactly what you're getting and exactly what moves it will learn (even if you're aiming for an egg move). They never even made it so you might get either the mother species OR the father species. Breeding in Pokémon is basically just there for shiny hunting, these days, because there's not really any incentive to breed Pokémon during a playthrough! They even stopped making baby evolutions, and made existing baby evos available in the wild to even more invalidate this mechanic's existence within that franchise.
The satisfaction of breeding a Healslime with a weird flower bird that I'd never seen in a Dragon Quest game beforehand and getting a Wing Slime as a baby that had a buttload of support and healing spells that it could learn and also was a cute and cool ass slime species that I'd not seen before beats anything I could get from discovering new species of Pokémon.
It's a real shame this series got kind of kneecapped in the west by releasing a month and a half after Pokémon Gold and Silver Versions over here, but, gosh darn it, does it just make me so excited for the multiplayer potential of a new installment in this series getting released outside Japan for the first time in, like, ten years.
Wini the Wing Slime... I will come back for you... I will come back to this game and reclaim my save.
Monster taming has ways been a cool concept in video games and I honestly like when they're chill adventures instead of hard trials. Megami Tensei was the first series to have monsters taming, but it wasn't designed for mainstream fun. Dragon Quest 5 is the first vet popular game to have monster taming, and I think the vibe is much better, but I still didn't think the genre reached the potential it had yet. With the launch of Pokémon Red and Blue, the genre reached what I find to be ideal.
This game released within 3 days of Pokémon Yellow so I find it fair to compare the games. Let's start with what Pokémon did better.
• The gyms and trying to become the strongest in the world is a more clear goal. The map makes things more obvious where to go.
• Player Pokémon are on the battlefield, making battles look more interesting. DQM only shows enemy monsters.
• Pokémon have access to more attacks than DQM monsters have. Each one has more quality put into them individually.
• Real player trading and battles. I never actually did either with super old Pokémon games but having those features is really cool.
Now let's go over why I think DQM is better:
• Every single monster follows you on the map instead of just one. Actually three follow you at a time.
• All monsters have an actual personality that effects dialogue instead of just being a bland slight stat modifier. It adds so much more charm.
• The fights are 3v3. This makes it slightly more complex but it's still basic enough that anyone can enjoy.
• Better pixel art, use of colors, animations, etc.
• You don't need to buy multiple other versions of the game to get every monster. Even though Yellow is the "definitive edition" of the original Pokémon generation, you'd till need BOTH Red AND Blue to get every Pokémon. That's dumb.
• This has monster breeding and it's actually very beneficial. Like more beneficial than it is in any Pokémom game.
Considering Pokémon Yellow and Crystal were my favorite GB games before I played this ... this is now my favorite GB game.
This game released within 3 days of Pokémon Yellow so I find it fair to compare the games. Let's start with what Pokémon did better.
• The gyms and trying to become the strongest in the world is a more clear goal. The map makes things more obvious where to go.
• Player Pokémon are on the battlefield, making battles look more interesting. DQM only shows enemy monsters.
• Pokémon have access to more attacks than DQM monsters have. Each one has more quality put into them individually.
• Real player trading and battles. I never actually did either with super old Pokémon games but having those features is really cool.
Now let's go over why I think DQM is better:
• Every single monster follows you on the map instead of just one. Actually three follow you at a time.
• All monsters have an actual personality that effects dialogue instead of just being a bland slight stat modifier. It adds so much more charm.
• The fights are 3v3. This makes it slightly more complex but it's still basic enough that anyone can enjoy.
• Better pixel art, use of colors, animations, etc.
• You don't need to buy multiple other versions of the game to get every monster. Even though Yellow is the "definitive edition" of the original Pokémon generation, you'd till need BOTH Red AND Blue to get every Pokémon. That's dumb.
• This has monster breeding and it's actually very beneficial. Like more beneficial than it is in any Pokémom game.
Considering Pokémon Yellow and Crystal were my favorite GB games before I played this ... this is now my favorite GB game.
Three guesses as to where I got my user name from
Cool monster catching game.
Everything about this game is amazing. Talk about an excellent answer to the Pokemon franchise. For its time, they nailed it. This game had everything.
A really interesting little RPG that's blend of Pokemon and Dragon Quest.
Dragon Warrior Monsters offers a surprisingly deep and captivating monster-collecting experience on the Game Boy Color. Its fusion system, where you can breed monsters to create unique and powerful combinations, adds incredible strategic depth. You'll easily lose yourself in the charming adventure, exploring dungeons and battling your way to monster-taming glory. Despite the occasional frustrations from its random nature, Dragon Warrior Monsters is still a gem for fans of the genre.
Pretty cool and simple RPG.
Really like how much personality everything gives off.
Really like how much personality everything gives off.
The real Pokémon Mystery Dungeon.
Should have taken off more than Pokémon. The breeding system is so fucking addictive to try and perfect.
this is probably one of the greatest GB games of all time. so addicting, so in depth, with amazing music and visuals! got a little burnt out by the end but i love this game to bits.
As far as I'm concerned, DWM is the best monster trainer game of its era. It's also probably the only title in the entire Game Boy library that I would spend time playing.
pokemon for men who aren't afraid of wiki pages
I love DQM, it’s so much fun breeding for a perfect team of monsters. I think this is the best game on the system. Always going for the gold slime ;)
It has felt like a never ending journey, but it's finally over, so here I am to talk about this game. Honestly I have to say that Dragon Quest Monsters is very good considering the console and the era it belongs to, although nowadays it can certainly result in a rather heavy and tedious experience, mostly because it's a game designed for a handheld console, with all that implies.
I have to say that this is not my first time playing it, since when I was a kid this was practically my first Dragon Quest game (at that time I didn't know it), although I didn't finish it because I didn't know English and that stopped me at some point. Be that as it may, it's been about 10-15 years or so since my first contact with this game, and now that I'm a huge Dragon Quest fan I wanted to revisit this strange game from my childhood and give it a conclusion once and for all.
Dragon Quest Monsters is set in the world of DQVI, taking place in Terry and Milly's childhood. In this game we control Terry, however, similar to what happens in Pokémon, we are not the ones fighting in the battles, but our team of monsters. The battles are quite similar to the turn-based battles of the main games, only instead of being us who choose all the actions we want in the battles, our monsters are the ones who control themselves and their actions are determined by their intelligence and personality, although we can always command them to follow certain actions so that they learn to act in a certain way. Of the behaviors to choose from there are only three, and a last one that allows us to select the commands manually (an option that will not always be available), so most of the time they will be automatic battles, which gives the feeling that, in effect, it is not us who are fighting, but our monsters. However, on the one hand that aspect can also make the game boring at times.
There isn't really a story in this game, but basically, Terry gets stranded in a dimension where some kingdoms hold monster tournaments to see which kingdom is the best of them all, and Terry's mission is to participate and win that tournament in order to return home.
Unlike the main series, in this game there is no large map to go through or dungeons as such, instead, everything takes place in the same kingdom, and the equivalent to the dungeons are the traveler's portals, portals that transport us to unknown lands where we will explore a series of small random maps, in which after going through the established amount, we will reach the boss room. Many times the boss will be a battle that references a moment from one of the main Dragon Quest games, like the green dragon from DQ1, or Orochi from DQ3, which was a pretty cool detail really, although if you haven't played the first 6 Dragon Quests, you'll miss those references. Anyway, I like that the boss battles are not easy, and will require us to have a decent team of monsters, this also applying in the arena ranked battles, that the more we advance in rank in these, we will unlock more portals to go through with a new variety of monsters in them.
Depending on which portal we are in, we will find different types of monsters, whom we can recruit by offering them meat. Normally the monsters that we have never had will join our group easily without the need to give them much meat, the bad thing about the game in my opinion, is that to catch monsters that we have already had we will have to offer them meat several times or many times only offering them the best meat (which is obtained very late in the game), I understand that this was a design decision made to not break the progression of the game, but I would have liked something simpler. Another thing that can be negative about the game is the fact that the portals can become very repetitive or monotonous as they are randomized, especially in the later portals, where the amount of maps to go through is quite high. Although something that makes it more bearable is that it is entertaining to explore, because we can always find some objects or NPCs with which we can fight, some as a reward make us advance to the last map of the portal, others will give us objects, others increase the statistics of our monsters permanently, among others, it is worth fighting with them, at first they may be superior to you in power, but an incentive to fight with them is that we can "steal" their monsters, which can always come in handy.
The most interesting thing about Dragon Quest Monsters is the breeding of monsters, basically that is the core of the game and what will keep us hooked to it. Through breeding we will be able to fuse monsters to obtain new monsters that will inherit attributes and abilities from their parents. This is how you get strong monsters, because thanks to this system we can combine for example a monster with magical attacks and one that could never learn them, but is strong in physical attacks, the resulting egg of these two monsters could be a monster quite strong in both magic and physical attacks, a very useful combination. It's great to see how our monsters are getting stronger and learning skills (up to 8), because this system allows a lot of freedom to customize our party. There are a lot of combinations that we can get by breeding, as the variety of monsters is very large, ranging from those that appeared from Dragon Quest I to VI, although there are also a lot of new monsters for this game, especially the Slimes, which have some very crazy combinations.
Perhaps my only and biggest complaint about this title, is that it focuses so much on its gameplay and cycle of collecting and raising monsters, that it left out the story and exploration of a map with fixed and established villages and dungeons, as the whole game takes place in the same realm, and most of the game will be spent in the portals. But well, I guess such complaints stem from the fact that this is a Spin-Off and not a main series game, so it shouldn't necessarily focus on having the same thing as a main Dragon Quest game. There are also certain restrictions on what you can do or certain extra steps to simple things that are there to avoid cheating I guess or make things harder for you, but not that it bothered me, so I won't go into too much detail either as they are very trivial things.
Extra interesting details is that despite being a Game Boy Color game, this game is compatible with the original Game Boy and the SNES Super Game Boy. This is a nice touch, as the borders on the SGB look nice. It's also quite nice that the sprites of the monsters look good despite the low resolution of the GB/GBC. And as for the melodies we get to hear in the game, I really like the theme that plays while we are in the portals, it's quite melancholic and conveys loneliness, despite the sounds that a GB produces are very limited.
Conclusion
In its time this game surpassed Pokemon by far, because not being over simplified we have more options, possibilities and depth that, to my taste, makes it a better game. Although maybe this game was not very attractive for most people because even though it is still simple, it is a little more difficult, and unlike Pokémon, it doesn't have the same collecting factor or the beautiful designs and monsters to get attached to for the rest of your life (I personally prefer the monster designs of DQ).
It was very gratifying to finally finish this strange game from my childhood, but quite familiar now that I'm a Dragon Quest fan. I'm certainly looking forward to seeing how this sub-series evolves from here. It won't be for everyone, but it was certainly a very interesting proposition that I'm glad to have rediscovered.
I have to say that this is not my first time playing it, since when I was a kid this was practically my first Dragon Quest game (at that time I didn't know it), although I didn't finish it because I didn't know English and that stopped me at some point. Be that as it may, it's been about 10-15 years or so since my first contact with this game, and now that I'm a huge Dragon Quest fan I wanted to revisit this strange game from my childhood and give it a conclusion once and for all.
Dragon Quest Monsters is set in the world of DQVI, taking place in Terry and Milly's childhood. In this game we control Terry, however, similar to what happens in Pokémon, we are not the ones fighting in the battles, but our team of monsters. The battles are quite similar to the turn-based battles of the main games, only instead of being us who choose all the actions we want in the battles, our monsters are the ones who control themselves and their actions are determined by their intelligence and personality, although we can always command them to follow certain actions so that they learn to act in a certain way. Of the behaviors to choose from there are only three, and a last one that allows us to select the commands manually (an option that will not always be available), so most of the time they will be automatic battles, which gives the feeling that, in effect, it is not us who are fighting, but our monsters. However, on the one hand that aspect can also make the game boring at times.
There isn't really a story in this game, but basically, Terry gets stranded in a dimension where some kingdoms hold monster tournaments to see which kingdom is the best of them all, and Terry's mission is to participate and win that tournament in order to return home.
Unlike the main series, in this game there is no large map to go through or dungeons as such, instead, everything takes place in the same kingdom, and the equivalent to the dungeons are the traveler's portals, portals that transport us to unknown lands where we will explore a series of small random maps, in which after going through the established amount, we will reach the boss room. Many times the boss will be a battle that references a moment from one of the main Dragon Quest games, like the green dragon from DQ1, or Orochi from DQ3, which was a pretty cool detail really, although if you haven't played the first 6 Dragon Quests, you'll miss those references. Anyway, I like that the boss battles are not easy, and will require us to have a decent team of monsters, this also applying in the arena ranked battles, that the more we advance in rank in these, we will unlock more portals to go through with a new variety of monsters in them.
Depending on which portal we are in, we will find different types of monsters, whom we can recruit by offering them meat. Normally the monsters that we have never had will join our group easily without the need to give them much meat, the bad thing about the game in my opinion, is that to catch monsters that we have already had we will have to offer them meat several times or many times only offering them the best meat (which is obtained very late in the game), I understand that this was a design decision made to not break the progression of the game, but I would have liked something simpler. Another thing that can be negative about the game is the fact that the portals can become very repetitive or monotonous as they are randomized, especially in the later portals, where the amount of maps to go through is quite high. Although something that makes it more bearable is that it is entertaining to explore, because we can always find some objects or NPCs with which we can fight, some as a reward make us advance to the last map of the portal, others will give us objects, others increase the statistics of our monsters permanently, among others, it is worth fighting with them, at first they may be superior to you in power, but an incentive to fight with them is that we can "steal" their monsters, which can always come in handy.
The most interesting thing about Dragon Quest Monsters is the breeding of monsters, basically that is the core of the game and what will keep us hooked to it. Through breeding we will be able to fuse monsters to obtain new monsters that will inherit attributes and abilities from their parents. This is how you get strong monsters, because thanks to this system we can combine for example a monster with magical attacks and one that could never learn them, but is strong in physical attacks, the resulting egg of these two monsters could be a monster quite strong in both magic and physical attacks, a very useful combination. It's great to see how our monsters are getting stronger and learning skills (up to 8), because this system allows a lot of freedom to customize our party. There are a lot of combinations that we can get by breeding, as the variety of monsters is very large, ranging from those that appeared from Dragon Quest I to VI, although there are also a lot of new monsters for this game, especially the Slimes, which have some very crazy combinations.
Perhaps my only and biggest complaint about this title, is that it focuses so much on its gameplay and cycle of collecting and raising monsters, that it left out the story and exploration of a map with fixed and established villages and dungeons, as the whole game takes place in the same realm, and most of the game will be spent in the portals. But well, I guess such complaints stem from the fact that this is a Spin-Off and not a main series game, so it shouldn't necessarily focus on having the same thing as a main Dragon Quest game. There are also certain restrictions on what you can do or certain extra steps to simple things that are there to avoid cheating I guess or make things harder for you, but not that it bothered me, so I won't go into too much detail either as they are very trivial things.
Extra interesting details is that despite being a Game Boy Color game, this game is compatible with the original Game Boy and the SNES Super Game Boy. This is a nice touch, as the borders on the SGB look nice. It's also quite nice that the sprites of the monsters look good despite the low resolution of the GB/GBC. And as for the melodies we get to hear in the game, I really like the theme that plays while we are in the portals, it's quite melancholic and conveys loneliness, despite the sounds that a GB produces are very limited.
Conclusion
In its time this game surpassed Pokemon by far, because not being over simplified we have more options, possibilities and depth that, to my taste, makes it a better game. Although maybe this game was not very attractive for most people because even though it is still simple, it is a little more difficult, and unlike Pokémon, it doesn't have the same collecting factor or the beautiful designs and monsters to get attached to for the rest of your life (I personally prefer the monster designs of DQ).
It was very gratifying to finally finish this strange game from my childhood, but quite familiar now that I'm a Dragon Quest fan. I'm certainly looking forward to seeing how this sub-series evolves from here. It won't be for everyone, but it was certainly a very interesting proposition that I'm glad to have rediscovered.
Intensely addictive monster breeding game. In comparison to games like Pokemon, you generally don't tend to directly control your monsters, although there is an option to do so. But Monster personality is pretty important in this one, and there's quite a lot of nuance to breeding decent monsters with inheritable skills, monster personality depending on tendencies, secret breeding combinations, etc. Whenever I boot this up I feel like I could go on playing it for hours, used to play it in transit sometimes. Highly recommended.
Als Kind auf der Suche nach neuen Game Boy Spielen, stach mir dieses schwarze Cardridge ins Auge. Allein deswegen musste ich es vermutlich schon haben, doch auch die Bilder auf der Verpackung haben mich an eines meiner eigenen geliebten Spiele erinnert: Pokémon.
Ich hatte sehr viel Spaß mit Dragon Quest Monsters, wie es hierzulande hieß und in dem Alter war es auch sehr herausfordernd für mich. Der Anblick einer düsteren Kreatur, versteckt in einem Totenschädel hat mich so beeinflusst, dass ich mein Internet-Synonym danach benannt habe.
Ich liebe dieses Spiel und bin auf ewig damit verbunden.
Ich hatte sehr viel Spaß mit Dragon Quest Monsters, wie es hierzulande hieß und in dem Alter war es auch sehr herausfordernd für mich. Der Anblick einer düsteren Kreatur, versteckt in einem Totenschädel hat mich so beeinflusst, dass ich mein Internet-Synonym danach benannt habe.
Ich liebe dieses Spiel und bin auf ewig damit verbunden.
This game has such a special place in my heart. Sweet, simple, monster collecting fun.
What an extremely chill little game. It's not interesting enough for me to make time for a full playthrough of it now as an adult with 800 other games to play, but as a kid looking for a simple little comforting game to grind away at on car trips and the like, I would have loved this.
Back when Pokemon was a big fad, I was on the hunt for any 'mons games out there to hold me over in between playing Pokemon and because I genuinely loved how different series put their own spin on the monster training formula. So, because of that, Dragon Warrior Monsters' charming monster designs attracted me and wound up being my first exposure to the Dragon Quest franchise as a whole, before I wound up getting into the rest of the series... uh... several decades later.
It's not that Dragon Warrior Monsters left a bad impression, mind, it was more that if the party were human I didn't care that much, and by the time I grew out of that Dragon Quest had ended up a little more obscure in the circles I ran in. I had a great time with this game and its sequel, though I never actually finished the main storyline until now.
Part of that is that this game is a lot more challenging than Pokemon in ways I think are both good and bad. Dragon Warrior Monsters requires a lot of AI management, which makes it great to play while doing something else but is a bit overwhelming for a kid. This brings in a bit of an interesting strategic element, because under ideal circumstances it introduces the decision of whether to issue specific commands to your monsters or to set up an AI routine that will let you use items at your leisure.
Unfortunately, those circumstances are not always ideal, especially if you want to shuffle around the monsters you're training instead of sticking to a main team of three for the vast majority of the game. Putting your critters in reserve for any length of time causes them to become disloyal to you, which means that your attempts to command them will occasionally just waste their turn. You can manage this by bringing them on dungeon dives and feeding them meat, but it's still kind of frustrating if you want to mess around with different team combinations without resorting to breeding. You can also manage this by putting them in stasis, but then they won't passively gain EXP while you're not using them. Generally, if you stop using a monster, it feels more worthwhile to just kinda leave them there until you breed something.
Speaking of breeding, that's more or less the cornerstone of how you actually get monsters and one of the big draws of the game. Wild-caught monsters have worse stats and less skills than monsters you've bred, because monsters you've bred inherit the skills their parents have learned and have higher level caps based on their parents. Breeding works less like the Pokemon version and more like fusion systems in Shin Megami Tensei games, as the in-game explanation for what happens is that monsters you breed leave on an eternal honeymoon once they've gotten married and they leave you an egg. Something something deadbeat joke something something child support.
Anyway, there's a really complicated system of how breeding determines what monster you get, with the end goal being the ability to breed the final bosses of the mainline Dragon Quest games from 1 to 6. The games offers some hints on how to get certain monsters through breeding, but the initial hints are vague and the translation isn't super great so you're better off consulting a guide than trying to use in-game hints.
One other issue with that is once you get a certain species of monster, it becomes unnecessarily tedious to get another member of that species. To use Pokemon as a comparison, it's kind of like how if you caught a Magikarp with a Pokeball and you wanted a second one, you'd have to throw like four Ultra Balls. And, meanwhile, you can't tell your monsters not to attack the Magkarp while you're throwing those Ultra Balls at it. Combine that with the fact that you don't exactly get the best grinding spots until the postgame and it can become kind of a slog as the game goes on and it gets more difficult, especially since you're going through procedurally generated dungeons instead of memorable setpieces.
It also doesn't really help that the story isn't that compelling if you aren't familiar with, well, Dragon Quest. I wasn't as a kid, so all the references just kind of mystified me, but now that I've been playing through and have a better idea of what's going on with the game and the little references to other games are extremely charming. I feel like I'd be able to appreciate it even more if I'd played through 4, 5, and especially 6 by the time I revisited it, but eh, I wanted to inject that nostalgia right into my veins. Granted, its other Mons Games compatriots weren't that compelling either, but I remember appreciating the second game's more defined story structure and level design more.
As far as the other game things go, the graphics are charming enough. I think the sprites are pretty nice for the good old Game Boy (With Color Functionality). I can't say too much about the music because while revisiting it I mostly played it on mute while watching let's plays and the like because that was more engaging than playing it on its own. What I did listen to was pretty nice, though I imagine that a lot of it is music I'll hear when I get further in my Dragon Quest series journey anyway.
So, overall, I think this game is definitely flawed, but I did enjoy it. Not enough to finish the whole postgame because a lot of the breeding setup I had on the table was kind of making me stare into the distance and want to do literally anything else, but it was a fun game to revisit and I'm glad I did so with more context. I'm definitely excited to get to the sequel and maybe the remake eventually someday.
It's not that Dragon Warrior Monsters left a bad impression, mind, it was more that if the party were human I didn't care that much, and by the time I grew out of that Dragon Quest had ended up a little more obscure in the circles I ran in. I had a great time with this game and its sequel, though I never actually finished the main storyline until now.
Part of that is that this game is a lot more challenging than Pokemon in ways I think are both good and bad. Dragon Warrior Monsters requires a lot of AI management, which makes it great to play while doing something else but is a bit overwhelming for a kid. This brings in a bit of an interesting strategic element, because under ideal circumstances it introduces the decision of whether to issue specific commands to your monsters or to set up an AI routine that will let you use items at your leisure.
Unfortunately, those circumstances are not always ideal, especially if you want to shuffle around the monsters you're training instead of sticking to a main team of three for the vast majority of the game. Putting your critters in reserve for any length of time causes them to become disloyal to you, which means that your attempts to command them will occasionally just waste their turn. You can manage this by bringing them on dungeon dives and feeding them meat, but it's still kind of frustrating if you want to mess around with different team combinations without resorting to breeding. You can also manage this by putting them in stasis, but then they won't passively gain EXP while you're not using them. Generally, if you stop using a monster, it feels more worthwhile to just kinda leave them there until you breed something.
Speaking of breeding, that's more or less the cornerstone of how you actually get monsters and one of the big draws of the game. Wild-caught monsters have worse stats and less skills than monsters you've bred, because monsters you've bred inherit the skills their parents have learned and have higher level caps based on their parents. Breeding works less like the Pokemon version and more like fusion systems in Shin Megami Tensei games, as the in-game explanation for what happens is that monsters you breed leave on an eternal honeymoon once they've gotten married and they leave you an egg. Something something deadbeat joke something something child support.
Anyway, there's a really complicated system of how breeding determines what monster you get, with the end goal being the ability to breed the final bosses of the mainline Dragon Quest games from 1 to 6. The games offers some hints on how to get certain monsters through breeding, but the initial hints are vague and the translation isn't super great so you're better off consulting a guide than trying to use in-game hints.
One other issue with that is once you get a certain species of monster, it becomes unnecessarily tedious to get another member of that species. To use Pokemon as a comparison, it's kind of like how if you caught a Magikarp with a Pokeball and you wanted a second one, you'd have to throw like four Ultra Balls. And, meanwhile, you can't tell your monsters not to attack the Magkarp while you're throwing those Ultra Balls at it. Combine that with the fact that you don't exactly get the best grinding spots until the postgame and it can become kind of a slog as the game goes on and it gets more difficult, especially since you're going through procedurally generated dungeons instead of memorable setpieces.
It also doesn't really help that the story isn't that compelling if you aren't familiar with, well, Dragon Quest. I wasn't as a kid, so all the references just kind of mystified me, but now that I've been playing through and have a better idea of what's going on with the game and the little references to other games are extremely charming. I feel like I'd be able to appreciate it even more if I'd played through 4, 5, and especially 6 by the time I revisited it, but eh, I wanted to inject that nostalgia right into my veins. Granted, its other Mons Games compatriots weren't that compelling either, but I remember appreciating the second game's more defined story structure and level design more.
As far as the other game things go, the graphics are charming enough. I think the sprites are pretty nice for the good old Game Boy (With Color Functionality). I can't say too much about the music because while revisiting it I mostly played it on mute while watching let's plays and the like because that was more engaging than playing it on its own. What I did listen to was pretty nice, though I imagine that a lot of it is music I'll hear when I get further in my Dragon Quest series journey anyway.
So, overall, I think this game is definitely flawed, but I did enjoy it. Not enough to finish the whole postgame because a lot of the breeding setup I had on the table was kind of making me stare into the distance and want to do literally anything else, but it was a fun game to revisit and I'm glad I did so with more context. I'm definitely excited to get to the sequel and maybe the remake eventually someday.