The idea of an RPG collectathon is pretty neat and I liked how you used your monsters to traverse the world, but the game just falls flat in so many places. Combat is dull since most of the damage is done by AI controlled monsters, there are only like 15 different varieties of monster to recruit in a game about exploring with a custom party of monsters (there are like 70 total monsters but most of them are just recolors), and some of the super important legendary story treasures you need to beat the game are just laying around in the overworld with no plot attached to them. It kind of feels like the game was rushed out to meet some kind of deadline, which is really weird since Square Enix released a bunch of other low-budget JRPGs (Valkyrie Elysium, Star Ocean 6, Harvestella, DioField Chronicle, etc) within a few months of this game. It hurts to rate a DQ game this low since it still oozes charm and I enjoyed playing it, but it's by far the weakest DQ game I've played, spin-off or otherwise. It's not a bad game and I'd still say it's worth checking out if you like the idea of it, but don't go in expecting too much.