Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince Review

Set in the world of the fourth mainline entry of the RPG series, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Dragon Quest Mo♑nsters: The Dark Prince has you taking on the mantle of Psaro, a central vil꧋lain from the original classic. Here, we see his rise to power personally - his burgeoning relationship with Rose, his slip into outright villainy🌌, and more details about his family life. Of course, since this is a Monsters game, he’s also given a magical leash that forbids him to do harm to monsters, forcing him to become a monster wrangler instead. Have you gotten sick of reading the word monster? I hope not.

Monsters’ premise is an interesting one. Psaro is a popular character in the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Dragon Quest fandom and was even promoted to a playable, redeemable character in the most recent port of Dragon Quest 4: Chapters of the Chosen. It’s a shame that it never treats him wel꧑l. This is my second biggest criticism of this game - instead of making Psaro a fleshed-out character who gets to interact naturally with the world around him, he’s reduced to Yet Another Silent Dragon Quest Protagonist. This is an issue for several reasons. For one, everyone else has a voice. This means you’re forced to watch cutscenes where Psaro responds silently, his lips moving as if speaking, but we’re left to imagine the words coming out of his mouth.

Looking at some monsters in Hotcake Heap in Dragon Quest Monsters The Dark Prince

A particularly memorable cutscene has Psaro witness the death of someone close to him. He falls to his knees, anguish on his face, and screams at the sky. The scream is entirely silent. What should be an essential moment in 😼this character’s development arc is rendered flaccid by thi𒁃s baffling design choice. The Dark Prince provides an interesting and diverting retelling of a classic DQ story, but the main character is the weakest link in the chain - and that’s a chain that includes Rose, who might be the single most ineffectual heroine in the history of video games.

My defi🦂ning problem is performance. The Dark Prince is plagued by slowdown, pop-in, and lengthy loading screens. It’s pretty, with lush environments and Toriyama’s outstanding character and monster designs, but it runs like a mole through molasses. Seeing a Flutter Slime in the distance flapping its wings at about three frames per second is intensely disconcerting, knocking you right out of any immersive experience you could hope to have. With all that said, I can’t be convinced that The Dark Prince isn’t enjoyable - the overworld isn’t where the magic happens.

A flying rat with large ears called Ratatattack using the the buff spell Acceratle on its allies in Endor Colosseum in Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince

Combat is a turn-based affair, as it always has been in the good Dragon Quest games. Instead of battling with a team of heroes, though, you fight with eponymous monsters that you, as a monster wrangler, have scouted and synthesised. Most of the time, you’ll let them do their own thing, with the monsters adhering to loose tactics🐈 set for them, such as Show Your Force and Focus On Healing, which are exactly what they sound like. The decision-making intelligence here is skilled at making☂ the most of your monsters’ abilities, and I rarely felt the need to give individual orders to my team. This is a godsend for a game that spans over 50 hours and involves a significant amount of grinding.

While combat is easy once you have some mid-tier skills and a semi-decent grasp of team building know-how, boss fights arꦚe another story. Dragon Quest is known for having rough bosses, and this is no exception - at the midpoint, they stop holding back. Here, I found myself micromanaging my monsters’ actions, swapping my party around mid-battle, and using more items in battle. The result is a satisfying experience and triumphant victories.

A Wingslime being synthesised with a Putrewolf in Dragon Quest Monsters The Dark Prince

Dragon Quest Monsters games are all about monster fusion. This is🦩 a core component of the series that provides the foundations for everything else to work. Like any other monster tamer, you’re off collecting monsters from every corner of the world, but here, they don’t end up rotting in a PC box or mill about on a ranch, doomed to live out their days in low-tier obscurity. Instead, they become synthesis fodder. Fusion, breeding, whatever you want to call it - you’re smushing two monsters together to get a new, better one.

This mechanic has a lot in common with Shin Megami Tensei, which it has taken some notes from. Unlike previous games, you now get a preview of the monster a pairing will create, giving you far better tools to create a monster to fit your party. Combining this with powerful tools that let you search for and filter potential synthesis results down to only those you’re looking for (such as monsters of a certain rank or monsters you’ve never had yet if you’re filling out the Monsterpedia) makes for a user-friendly experience where it could have been very tedious and complex. Short of giving you a Book of Shadows-type monster shop, this is the platonic ideal for a monster 🍨tamer with fusion mechanics.

The Dark Prince has nailed the gameplay loop. The world of Nadiria is broken up into 🐻stages themed with standard video game tropes. You have the barren land of undeath, a fiery volcano land, and even a land of candy and chocolate replete with sugary beasts. Each new land you venture to ups the diffi🐬culty and provides you with a host of new monsters to recruit and a boss to beat. Rinse and repeat.

On its own, it might get stale, but combining this progression loop with the satisfying synthesis system is a chef’s kiss-level innovation. Heading back to your base to see what new powerful monsters you can cook up is eternally rewarding - as a longtime fan of the series, heading𒅌 to the possible fusion screen and seeing some of my favourites like Hacksaurus and Gem Slime is an exciting time.

The sheer variety of monsters on offer is impressive. Whi✅le a significant portion of the game’s 500-strong roster are recoloured palette swaps, there’s plenty here to keep you interested. Rebuilding your team after a synthesis sesh can have your team looking entirely different within minutes, and that’s a huge boon for the game. It encourages experimenting to find new monsters who might fit your playstyle, it stops things feeling monotonous, and it makes filling out the Monsterpedia a rewarding task.

Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince is a miꦦxed bag. On the one hand, it has the best mechanics and combat the Dragon Quest series has ever seen, with the monster-focused gameplay loop providing endle🉐ss fun. On the other hand, overcommitment to the silent protagonist trope and shocking performance issues drag the experience down significantly. Although held back by dated hardware and dated design choices, The Dark Prince is one worth courting.

As of ဣthis review, I have 42 hours of playtime and 59.4 percent of the Monsterpedia filled out. Other helpful stats that the game presents me with are 732 battles won, 249 successful shows of force (read: scouting) and 215 syntheses performed.