As long and illustrious as Dragon Quest is, this three-decade-old series has never shied away from breaking traditional RPG methods to create a new game, as you can see with the likes of the Builders game and now a new entry within their Monsters games, a sort of mix between two different games wrapped into the nice bow that the DQ series has mastered, one that makes them the household name that they are.
So how does The Dark Prince differ from its peers, and is it a solid game from the likes of its mainline sister series? The answers shall be sought soon enough.
Presentation
The story beat of this Dragon Quest is much like a spin-off from their publisher’s other series about taking a classic character from a previous game and then letting them get the spotlight for once. In this case, our main protagonist is Psaro, a major villain character for the series and a regular within the Monster series, only this time becoming a younger man bent on revenge against his father.
The graphics are very much what you would expect from a Dragon Quest romp, with the characters looking silly at the start and heading grotesque toward the end after you start fusing your sillybillies into more powerful monsters.
The character design of Psaro, his gang consisting of Rose and Toilen, and the rest of the NPCs you’ll meet does have some similarity to the latest incarnation of the series (that being DQ11).
The performance is alright for an exclusive on the Nintendo Switch, with a solid 30fps during traversal and combats out in the wild or even during its coliseum-like battles with the NPCs. Though there are some slow-downs during season transitions (like it’s summer during one time and then it switches to autumn the next), but it can do fast-forwarding battles without a hitch so it’s a pretty good compromise.
Voice acting is pretty decent for this series, with our main boy being the voiceless protagonist as per the course. However, I would love to hear what his reason for thinking is or at least give us his thoughts on the dialogue box, as that’s sometimes up to our interpretation too. But at least the whimsical DQ fanfare theme is there to compliment you in victory or even in defeat, which sounds in tune with the action.
Gameplay
From the get-go, the game is a monster catcher game where you’ll roam the outskirts of town in search of a roaming beast that you can recruit via the “Scouting” menu where the percentage of success hinges on both RNG and how power your current party is, where failure might make your current battle harder or even have a party wipe too so you’ll have to be more tactical in battles.
But its more interesting mechanic is Synthesis, where players will get the ability to combine two high-level monsters and create a stronger offspring to continue on their journey, think of it as the Persona fusion mechanics, only you need your choice of monsters has maxed out its levels before grabbing it’s buffs on their physical or defensive skills.
But to get there, like any contemporary RPGs or even their mainline series, you might need some grinding to get towards max levels for your monster party and that might feel like a slog for the more casual players because the grind before opening the world area after getting your 2nd companion can defeat you in one go if you’re not careful.
Content
Although you would think a spin-off would not have the length of its mainstay title, then you are mistaken because Dragon Quest Monsters could go upwards of 30 hours. And while there are some who complain about it being too straightforward of a game, it’s still quite a bit of content for a game that’s about ranching monsters and fighting them in an Arena in order to gain enough reputation to take on your evil father.
Personal Enjoyment
Dragon Quest Monster is an interesting sort of game for the untrained casual fan such as myself, I think of it highly as a Pokemon rival that has pretty challenging battles when compared to them (not mentioning Arceus because that’s something different) and I kinda both like it and hate it.
I liked it because the difficulty made it more rewarding at the end after a grueling battle but also hated it because the added grind took more hours than I felt it needed to. And it’s a balance thing which I also dislike from DQ11 rearing its head once again but it could probably be my preference of having a more smooth grinding experience than this.
All in all, it’s an interesting romp if you feel like branching out to something else after finishing Pokemon.
Verdict
Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince is another pretty good example of a branching-out spin-off from Square Enix. Its gameplay might feel a tad grindy, but if you can breach that and enter the synthesis zone, then you might enjoy this interesting take on this Monster battler/ caretaker genre.
Played on Nintendo Switch, Review copy provided by the Publisher.
Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince
Another pretty good example of a branching-out spin-off from Square Enix. Its gameplay might feel a tad grindy though.
- Presentation 8.6
- Gameplay 8
- Content 8
- Personal Enjoyment 8