This is a pretty solid monster collecting RPG overall but man oh man did Square-Enix do an incredible job at surgically removing all of the charm present in the original Game Boy game in order to make it more like DQM: Joker, wi-fi battle metagame and all.
My best example is the library. In the original, you walk into a building and check each bookshelf for little Pokedex entries of each monster. Each page has the monster's sprite, some breeding information, and one sentence of flavor text. The flavor text is small, but it's stuff like "The reflection of the mirror can trap souls in the underworld" and it was junk food for little kid me's imagination. In this game, you walk up to the library once, the librarian says "oh I gave you a portable library that you can access in your menu" and, when you check the library app on the bottom of your touch screen, each monster's entry is all statistics and data, clinically vomited out to you in lists, with every piece of text devoted to the battle mechanic instead of something silly like "world-building". You don't even get the monster's 3D model! It makes each monster feel less alive than they did in the 8-bit game, and it's all to support that lovely multiplayer battle system that the game occasionally elbows me and tells me about.
And honestly, the whole game is like this. Since the remake takes place in big, sprawling super empty 3D spaces that take longer to walk through than the sprite-based rooms in the GB title, they made damn sure that you could teleport to important landmarks at any time from the touch screen so you didn't have to worry about walking anywhere anymore. This speeds up the gameplay, sure, but then The Great Tree ceases to be a location and becomes more of a series of Important Rooms that you can blip in and out of. No no, mustn't waste the player's time trying to make this place feel like a livable area, better make sure they can build up their wi-fi team asap.
I do think there's a fun little game here, but this is less "remake" and more "sequel to the Joker games, now wearing the skin of an older game" and there was truly nothing more depressing than playing that first hour of gameplay and just saying to myself "oh no no no what did they do" in a way I've never felt for other, more contested remakes like Ratchet and Clank 2016 or Let's Go Pikachu.
It's efficient, but the efficiency came at the cost of its soul. And honestly? Playing this is just making me want to play the original Dragon Warrior Monsters again.
Quick side-note: I have zero complaints about the actual text translation for this game, you guys are awesome.
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QUICK EDIT NOW THAT I'VE BEATEN THE GAME
It's like this in the original, but since the final boss of this game takes place during a tournament, that means it's 100% luck-based and you WILL watch your monsters make stupid decisions with their little walnut-sized brains. My Jamirus is a real brain-genius and cast Kaswooshle on a monster that absorbs wind damage.
My best example is the library. In the original, you walk into a building and check each bookshelf for little Pokedex entries of each monster. Each page has the monster's sprite, some breeding information, and one sentence of flavor text. The flavor text is small, but it's stuff like "The reflection of the mirror can trap souls in the underworld" and it was junk food for little kid me's imagination. In this game, you walk up to the library once, the librarian says "oh I gave you a portable library that you can access in your menu" and, when you check the library app on the bottom of your touch screen, each monster's entry is all statistics and data, clinically vomited out to you in lists, with every piece of text devoted to the battle mechanic instead of something silly like "world-building". You don't even get the monster's 3D model! It makes each monster feel less alive than they did in the 8-bit game, and it's all to support that lovely multiplayer battle system that the game occasionally elbows me and tells me about.
And honestly, the whole game is like this. Since the remake takes place in big, sprawling super empty 3D spaces that take longer to walk through than the sprite-based rooms in the GB title, they made damn sure that you could teleport to important landmarks at any time from the touch screen so you didn't have to worry about walking anywhere anymore. This speeds up the gameplay, sure, but then The Great Tree ceases to be a location and becomes more of a series of Important Rooms that you can blip in and out of. No no, mustn't waste the player's time trying to make this place feel like a livable area, better make sure they can build up their wi-fi team asap.
I do think there's a fun little game here, but this is less "remake" and more "sequel to the Joker games, now wearing the skin of an older game" and there was truly nothing more depressing than playing that first hour of gameplay and just saying to myself "oh no no no what did they do" in a way I've never felt for other, more contested remakes like Ratchet and Clank 2016 or Let's Go Pikachu.
It's efficient, but the efficiency came at the cost of its soul. And honestly? Playing this is just making me want to play the original Dragon Warrior Monsters again.
Quick side-note: I have zero complaints about the actual text translation for this game, you guys are awesome.
---------
QUICK EDIT NOW THAT I'VE BEATEN THE GAME
It's like this in the original, but since the final boss of this game takes place during a tournament, that means it's 100% luck-based and you WILL watch your monsters make stupid decisions with their little walnut-sized brains. My Jamirus is a real brain-genius and cast Kaswooshle on a monster that absorbs wind damage.