This was my first Dragon Quest Monsters game, and my like 4th dragon quest game in general. As a whole the game is fine, as least to me but I'll go into detail later on about my gripes. For the positives: The voice acting was very well done and I love that Dragon Quest's voice acting just HAS to be british. Dragon quest music is always good (if a bit repetitive) and the environments were varied despite each area having multiple levels you'll be going through as you progress. Giving the player access to Zoom pretty much near the onset of the game was also a VERY good decision. The dungeons in the later few levels I thought were not very good as then consisted of a lot of running back and forth through it to get done correctly. I will always love Akira Toriyama's designs, its why I even played the series to begin with. Yes I grew up with Dragon Ball, so the artstyle is comforting to me. I'm gonna buy that upcoming Sandland game for this reason alone. Syncing is also very in depth, to the point where I think its a boon and detriment, more detail on the later later, but you can easily make monsters into your perfect or near perfect specimen if you put in the effort.
People have compared it to pokemon but I think its much much closer to at least smt nocture (only real smt I've played to compare) or Digimon Cyber Sleuth. The main loop of the game is going around the maps as you make your way towards the dungeon to fight the boss, getting monsters to join due to "show of force" based on your party stats, monster types and enemy status, fusion monsters together to get completely different things along with inheritable skills and abilities. If you put in the work, your stuff is strong. One of my monsters was taking 1 damage from the final boss for instance. Other than fighting with monsters you capture, there isn't much other comparisons to pokemon. Actually thats not true, the game runs about as well as Scarlet on a good day. Its not as glitchy though so it has that going for it.
Speaking of performance, its the main reason for the score. It gave me eye strain and then a headache that continued into the following day. This not occur when playing it in the inferior handheld mode of the switch so I unfortunately had to break my "Switch doesn't leave the dock" stance and settle for playing it that way. The game itself just felt very tedious half the time. Like it felt way worse than what I remember from Cyber Sleuth when it came to upgrading monsters. It might have just been because I was trying to get high level monsters too early but even later in the game I just felt like the entire synthesis system was more arduous than it needed to be unless you buy that mole hole dlc (which my impatient ass did, I apologize). Not like you can ignore it either because in true Dragon Quest fashion, it had that spike which lead to my only game over. It was a cheap shot, dumb back to back boss stuff that I beat on the second try so the cheap shot was the only reason I lost. ITS NOT A COPE! I could typically beat all normal encounters in a turn so I never felt outclassed but I couldn't be bothered to make more than one monster above A rank (the third highest) just because of how tiresome I found it all even with the mole hole cuz its has its own issues outside of it being a dlc. When I played there was basically no information on the game in general so I had to scour forums like it was the mid 2000's again for synth trees which rarely ever yielded fruit. Shoutouts to metalkid for their great site that had lots of information which I learned existed pretty much at the end of my playthrough.
As for the story, its not much but it was rather engaging. Not that I expect a grandiose plot from a dragon quest game but it might also have to do with me not having played or knowing anything about 4. The game loves to throw choices at you and aside from the one the decides your starter, every choice the game gives shouldn't even have options. It should have just played the scene out without the unnecessary input. At one point I initially made the right choice at one point but since they aren't choices at all so I had to go thorough the rigamarole of the "incorrect choice" and then go and DO THE CHOICE I INITIALLY PICKED. I assume that was something related to DQ4 given its outcome but as I said above I haven't played that one.
If you are someone who lives for the grind or like monster catching/collecting games then by all means pick this game up as my gripes most likely do not concern you, but do be warned of its performance if you are someone who cares about that. Nintendo's next console can't come soon enough.
People have compared it to pokemon but I think its much much closer to at least smt nocture (only real smt I've played to compare) or Digimon Cyber Sleuth. The main loop of the game is going around the maps as you make your way towards the dungeon to fight the boss, getting monsters to join due to "show of force" based on your party stats, monster types and enemy status, fusion monsters together to get completely different things along with inheritable skills and abilities. If you put in the work, your stuff is strong. One of my monsters was taking 1 damage from the final boss for instance. Other than fighting with monsters you capture, there isn't much other comparisons to pokemon. Actually thats not true, the game runs about as well as Scarlet on a good day. Its not as glitchy though so it has that going for it.
Speaking of performance, its the main reason for the score. It gave me eye strain and then a headache that continued into the following day. This not occur when playing it in the inferior handheld mode of the switch so I unfortunately had to break my "Switch doesn't leave the dock" stance and settle for playing it that way. The game itself just felt very tedious half the time. Like it felt way worse than what I remember from Cyber Sleuth when it came to upgrading monsters. It might have just been because I was trying to get high level monsters too early but even later in the game I just felt like the entire synthesis system was more arduous than it needed to be unless you buy that mole hole dlc (which my impatient ass did, I apologize). Not like you can ignore it either because in true Dragon Quest fashion, it had that spike which lead to my only game over. It was a cheap shot, dumb back to back boss stuff that I beat on the second try so the cheap shot was the only reason I lost. ITS NOT A COPE! I could typically beat all normal encounters in a turn so I never felt outclassed but I couldn't be bothered to make more than one monster above A rank (the third highest) just because of how tiresome I found it all even with the mole hole cuz its has its own issues outside of it being a dlc. When I played there was basically no information on the game in general so I had to scour forums like it was the mid 2000's again for synth trees which rarely ever yielded fruit. Shoutouts to metalkid for their great site that had lots of information which I learned existed pretty much at the end of my playthrough.
As for the story, its not much but it was rather engaging. Not that I expect a grandiose plot from a dragon quest game but it might also have to do with me not having played or knowing anything about 4. The game loves to throw choices at you and aside from the one the decides your starter, every choice the game gives shouldn't even have options. It should have just played the scene out without the unnecessary input. At one point I initially made the right choice at one point but since they aren't choices at all so I had to go thorough the rigamarole of the "incorrect choice" and then go and DO THE CHOICE I INITIALLY PICKED. I assume that was something related to DQ4 given its outcome but as I said above I haven't played that one.
If you are someone who lives for the grind or like monster catching/collecting games then by all means pick this game up as my gripes most likely do not concern you, but do be warned of its performance if you are someone who cares about that. Nintendo's next console can't come soon enough.