This game is very slow, you wouldn’t notice it at first and probably thought it’s just a normal DQ game, until you have to grind a bunch of levels. If I play this on a real hardware, I will drop it on the 3rd chapter. Thankfully this game is relatively short compared to other DQ games. I haven’t played the other DQM game though.
This being a Dragon Quest Monster game means that you will be collecting monster… their heart at least. That heart can then be fused with your current monsters and create new monster, increasing their rank and lowering their level back to 1, that’s the worst part of this game. Also you won’t know what skill your new monster will have, so it’s a gamble if you get a monster with good skill or not.
You also can’t do rapid ranking up by fusing a bunch of time because you can only fuse monster that’s more than level 10. Even then, you might be making a wrong decision because not all skills are learned at level 10, some of the useful ones are available at 20 or 30. And once you get the useful skill, you have to fuse the monster to get a better rank, and… it’s level 1 again. Back to grinding.
Another mechanic that differs from normal DQ is that your party member is made of wagons, each wagon has a guardian monster and 1-4 caravan members. In battle you can only control your guardian monster, your caravan members will use their respective skills. Caravan members can be recruited by talking to various people throughout your journey, sadly, there's a maximum amount of members you can have, so you can't get all members all at once.
Another thing is the ration system, if you walk on a place with random encounters, your ration will decrease. You can buy rations in your camp or town. At first this is annoying because you really have to plan your pathing and refilling rations can be expensive in the early game. But after chapter 3, I barely notice that it exists, so long as you keep refilling whenever you're back to your camp or town, because the game gives you a lot of money later on.
The story is meh… you're traveling to find 4 orbs, and once gathered, the orb can grant you any wish. And the wish is to cure one of your caravan member's father. That's it. It also has a predictable twist by the end.
There's a second quest kind of thing, after you get the first credit, you can load back your save file and there will be a new story. Your objective is now to collect colored orbs, but now the whole world is open to you. The new story progression (if you can even call it a story) is very repetitive and it made me hate this game more, honestly you don't lose anything if you stop playing at the first credit.
Overall, the game is just okay, but some of the mechanics are just hindering my fun, and the story doesn't help at all. Also the post game story and mechanic is just bad.
This being a Dragon Quest Monster game means that you will be collecting monster… their heart at least. That heart can then be fused with your current monsters and create new monster, increasing their rank and lowering their level back to 1, that’s the worst part of this game. Also you won’t know what skill your new monster will have, so it’s a gamble if you get a monster with good skill or not.
You also can’t do rapid ranking up by fusing a bunch of time because you can only fuse monster that’s more than level 10. Even then, you might be making a wrong decision because not all skills are learned at level 10, some of the useful ones are available at 20 or 30. And once you get the useful skill, you have to fuse the monster to get a better rank, and… it’s level 1 again. Back to grinding.
Another mechanic that differs from normal DQ is that your party member is made of wagons, each wagon has a guardian monster and 1-4 caravan members. In battle you can only control your guardian monster, your caravan members will use their respective skills. Caravan members can be recruited by talking to various people throughout your journey, sadly, there's a maximum amount of members you can have, so you can't get all members all at once.
Another thing is the ration system, if you walk on a place with random encounters, your ration will decrease. You can buy rations in your camp or town. At first this is annoying because you really have to plan your pathing and refilling rations can be expensive in the early game. But after chapter 3, I barely notice that it exists, so long as you keep refilling whenever you're back to your camp or town, because the game gives you a lot of money later on.
The story is meh… you're traveling to find 4 orbs, and once gathered, the orb can grant you any wish. And the wish is to cure one of your caravan member's father. That's it. It also has a predictable twist by the end.
There's a second quest kind of thing, after you get the first credit, you can load back your save file and there will be a new story. Your objective is now to collect colored orbs, but now the whole world is open to you. The new story progression (if you can even call it a story) is very repetitive and it made me hate this game more, honestly you don't lose anything if you stop playing at the first credit.
Overall, the game is just okay, but some of the mechanics are just hindering my fun, and the story doesn't help at all. Also the post game story and mechanic is just bad.