Oh childhood nostalgia how I love thee.

As I get older and reflect on some of the amazing games I've played, very few stand out to me like Super Mario RPG. Self admittedly, I'm not the biggest Nintendo fan, especially now a days, as I prefer a focus on story, and narrative over gameplay and "fun" which Nintendo seems to excel at. However, this game longs from my childhood as one of my favorites, and something that (along with FF7) introduced me to JRPG's probably one of my favorite genres of games.

Re-visiting this now, while it doesn't hold up quite as well as I remember, it's still easily one of my favorite Nintendo games ever, and a true triumph for Square, especially for the time period.

The combat is nearly unmatched, and it's insane that more JRPG's don't use the timing mechanic (shout out to Sea of Stars for lovingly ripping it off and putting their own spin on it).

The story here is easily the best story in a Mario game, and it actually does perhaps the unthinkable, give a personality to Mario. All of the companions here are fantastic, and it's a true love letter to Mario, even today.

Now I do have some issues with this remake. I think overall I do prefer the original graphical style. While this is no doubt gorgeous (and pops on the OLED) there's just something so wonderful about the OG style I can't help but adore even more. Also the music, while again I like it, and it's great, I think I prefer the OG (thankfully that's easy to toggle on).

Overall though, I still really like this game quite a bit, even if it might not be one of my favorites of all time anymore, this is certainly a trip wroth taking once again, and a must play for anyone who has never experienced it.

About a month ago, I challenged myself to give an approximate ranking of my fifteen favorite video games. By the end of this personal challenge, one third of the titles were those of the mainline Dragon Quest series- and I felt remorse for the ones I left off of the list. If it was not alluded to enough, Dragon Quest is my favorite video game franchise of all time, and as much as I love Final Fantasy and Castlevania- it really isn’t a close contest. Despite my immense infatuation with this franchise, the Monsters subseries is one that I have remarkably little experience with comparably. I have played through Terry’s Wonderland 3D, but no GBC original, DQM2, Caravan Heart, or Joker trilogy quite yet. However, Dragon Quest tickles my brain unlike anything else- so when this title was announced a few months back I was immediately sold.

In the time since its announcement, I have not had the best streak of luck with my personal life, and I have been immensely sick, tired, and in need of an escape. This game also released right at the end of my quarter in college, and between that and my love of the series I used it as an excuse to unwind with a title for a bit, and because of such I have thoroughly sank my teeth into this title. I may lack context of the series as a whole, and certainly lacking enough to tell the nuances and innovations apart from something that has been potentially introduced in the unplayed titles, but I do consider myself an expert on this specific title and have a lot to say about it. If you are a Dragon Quest, monster collector, PS2 or 3DS era JRPG, or cozy game fan- I say just take the plunge on the demo and I am sure you will enjoy it, but if you want to hear the reasoning behind those specific reasons keep reading. Regardless of such, immediately note that I loved this game.

Let me open with an anecdote here. Because of the previously mentioned run-in with illness, one of the effects of such as being a legal inability to drive since I have been on a handful of medications that could very easily make me behind a wheel a danger to myself and/or others. Not good, obviously, so to pick up my pre-order I drove down with my dad. That night as he was going to bed, and as I was playing my game, he stopped by and asked how it was. I simply retorted with “preying on my addictive tendencies”. That sentiment reigned itself truer and truer the longer I played. That sentiment proved itself true by the end as I reached my 100% completed monster compendium. This game is not just fun, it is ridiculously so.

There is a borderline dangerous gameplay loop to be experienced here, one that pushes the limits and expectations of Dragon Quest’s deliciously satisfying party composition, turn based combat mechanics, and attentive exploration in new and inventive ways. While it does not have a cohesive and seamless open overworld found in the mainline titles, every inch of the provided world has some micro-decision to make that can be as simple as checking around a corner for an item, to ones that greatly impact how you experience the game as a whole. The usual trappings of mini-medal hunting and metal slime grinding are here in their fullest and Dragon Quest-iest, but it is accompanied with two monster arenas that give entirely new challenges to encounter, a monster synthesis system that blends the best of Dragon Quest 3, 8, and Shin Megami Tensei’s impressive party growth options, and a simple but effective story that had its hooks in me from beginning to end.

If you are anything like me, you will be absolutely enamored and addicted to adding every monster into your lineup, partially due to the thrill of discovery- and partially due to the slew of options each monster adds to your potential. There is some unprecedented amount of strategy you can pour into this game if you so desire, optimizing each monster to be freakishly strong compared to their standard counterparts. It is never necessary, but it is a testament to how wonderfully this game is open to your input. I played this game in a room with two Slimes, a King Slime, and Platypunk plushes in my peripheral vision- and putting them into virtual tournaments and watching them obliterate the opponents was always satisfying. Outside of the battling, there is still a huge quantity of areas and story dungeons that provide new puzzles, potential party members, and big-hitter bosses to fight. The structure of the game is fairly linear and repetitive, but in a way that is not inherently in a negative context and still provides plenty of choice and approach. In my own time, I brute forced through harder areas and arena battles earlier than intended due to my party optimization allowing me- and it was great!

While the hours I spent between story beats simply walking, scouting, and leveling around the seasonally-changing worlds in a way that didn’t serve pacing particularly well, I still really enjoyed the story. Terry’s Wonderland had a really solid story hook, but until the end was almost exclusively gameplay driven with only flavor-text and occasional character interactions. This game, conversely, has full cutscenes, unique stories for each area, and side characters to explore alongside you. If you have played Dragon Quest IV- a favorite game of all time contender of mine- you will be fairly familiar with many of the events that take place, but seeing them recontextualized in this pseudo-prequel is a ton of fun. This is definitely an alternate take on the characters, but I prefer that for how it allows for new and creative explorations of it all. The added flavor of playing as a villainous character in a Dragon Quest game in general is a lot of fun, too.

Something that I did not expect but felt right at home with was how this game felt. Many games of many eras feel different to play for various reasons- and modern JRPGs have a unique feel to them just as ones from past generations have. It’s difficult to describe without just feeling it yourself, but something about this game feels like it is a lost JRPG from a distant era- and I fell in love with that as a JRPG enthusiast. If not already for the dungeon design and monster synthesis, the rotating of the camera with the shoulder buttons, way you move, openness in choice, and environment design heavily reminded me of my time with games like Shin Megami Tensei III and IV, along with Dragon Quest VIII and other PS2 or 3DS JRPGs. It is incredibly refreshing that something new like this could be so evocative of that era, and I would love to see more new JRPGs that retain that feel when games like Final Fantasy XVI and Shin Megami Tensei V, for example, certainly did not.

The other aspect that remained from the PS2 era unfortunately is the presentation, because this game is definitely not a Triple-A title to say the least. The art direction is stellar, and all the monsters and characters have great designs, models, and animations- but goodness the environments are rough. While Dragon Quest XI S is ironically the stellar example of Nintendo Switch optimization, this game looks like it would’ve been right at home next to something like a resolution-boosted DQVIII via emulator. Again, I quite enjoyed that and found it refreshing, and even then there are aspects of it I found impressive like the seamless season switching, but for every impressive part of the presentation there is a lineup of framerate dips and loading screens that take the attention. The worst of it, unfortunately is the horrendous amount of times the game flat-out crashed. I am thankful for the generous autosaving, but a patch needs to come out that lets other players avoid the dozens of crashes that plagued this game for myself.

My other major gripe with this title is the RNG you have to deal with if you decide to be a completionist. I saw that you could unlock final bosses of previous DQ titles and that hook made me enamored to the point I couldn’t resist completion. It was satisfying to synthesize the big baddies- but the hours of walking around and grinding were not the most fun part of this experience. The very worst of it shows itself through the egg hunting- good god the egg hunting. There are probably 15 or so monsters that can only be found in eggs, which require a quantity of fights to respawn, and then are randomly peppered around the map for you to find and hope you get what you want. Some of these exclusive monsters took hours to find, and it doesn’t matter where you stand theologically you will be praying to the RNgods by the time you reach the compendium completion process. You’ll even need duplicates of some of the egg exclusives for full completion. Good luck!

Despite that, however, the game is still so much fun it hardly dented my enjoyment. This game is so entertaining, addictive, and endearing that I could easily have sunk in plenty more hours if there was more content to be squeezed out. This game doesn’t quite hit the highs of the incredibly dense and thoughtful DQ Builders 2 or Rocket Slime, but in terms of this specific gameplay loop (technical issues aside) I couldn’t really have asked for more. I loved Terry’s Wonderland, but this is the title that has truly cemented me in and made me excited for the next entry and to catch up on my Monsters backlog. This game was worth every penny, but when tech patches come out to fix the issues, any ports to more powerful platforms, or even a “professional” version akin to the Joker titles to add even more to this title it is absolutely worth the time and money investment. It has been confirmed that there are more DQ Monsters games coming in the future, so I don’t need to beg for sequel sales as I have with some other titles- but until then I will be clearing my backlog and preparing for the next time I get to scout slimes until sunset once more. I loved this game, and I hope anyone who plays it does too.