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Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker Review
Written by Chris Goldberg on Thursday, November 15, 2007
Deep breeding system, challenging bosses
Repetitive skill-less grind battles
Few titles have as much clout in Japan as Dragon Quest does. It doesn't really matter what genre you slap the franchise name on, you can be guaranteed that you're going to sell at least a couple hundred thousand in every case. And the same applies for Pokemon as a legion of fans line the streets whenever a game in this series comes out. Dragon Quest Monsters is what happens when a smart company decides to smash these two successful formulas up, and let the chips fall where they may. And of course, when the Gameboy version launched it did pretty damn well. Years later, Nintendo once again has its dominate handheld tearing up the charts and once again Enix is smart enough to continue the DQM series on it with the latest installment, Joker.
The reason for this history lesson is basically that it sums up the inspiration for the two spectrums of Dragon Quest Monsters - Joker gameplay exactly. On the one hand, this is no doubt a Dragon Quest game: alongside charming creatures, traditional turn-based battles are rampant and so is the typical grinding for stats. And on the other hand, this is very much like a Pokemon game: your goal is to catch beasts and try to create the best team of monsters you possibly can. If there's anything obvious to say, it's that if you're a big fan of both these types of games then you'll find a lot to love here. You've probably already learned to look past the flaws, or maybe you don't even consider them negatives. So you basically don't need this review to know that this game will be a good purchase for you. For everyone else, a bit more motivation may be required.
The big problem with Joker is revealed pretty early on by its autofight command, which will become the option of choice as you try to level up decent monster teams in a reasonable time frame. Now, you can easily control the fighting options individually if you like... but since all regular fights in the game require no strategy whatsoever, it's just a big waste of time to bother hand picking what your team will do. What Pokemon understands is that if you want to give the gamer a reason to build a wide range of viable monsters, you need to insert this element of strategy to give each creature a distinct purpose. Every random battle you'll encounter in that game has its class type and its weaknesses, and every trainer will have their preference in skills to give them. This allows the proper level of variety, while still not being a completely skill-free affair.
In Dragon Quest Monsters for all the regular enemies it almost never matters what your monster is proficient in, or what spells he can cast. The only thing that really matters is what level you are at. In other words, grinding decides the outcome of all regular battles. But to grind through these monsters means you'll have to keep experiencing the games biggest shortfall, and as that makes up the vast majority of your time in the game it can be a bit hard to swallow. But there is a reason to keep a good solid team, and that is to overcome the bosses the game throws at you. In this you get a sense of the game coming to life and finding its reason for being, as you will need a team of dedicated monsters with a wide range of skills and strengths to overcome each one. Not only that, but they're genuinely challenging affairs that will have you quickly coming to terms with DQMJ's systems in order to be victorious.
Besides scouting (Dragon Quest Monsters - Joker's method of catching beasts), the first thing you'll learn on your road to success (probably by the second major boss) is that breeding is essential to winning these boss fights. Nevermind that the breeding doesn't make much sense biologically (how exactly DOES a Slime make it with a Jailcat?), the point is this is where the game is deepest. Only through breeding will you gain the best monsters in the game, and the most finely honed beasts to tackle foes. When you breed two beasts, they'll form a new monsters which can inherent different skills from its parents. It requires a lot of trial-and-error to get the best combinations, but if you stick to it eventually you gather together a strong crew for boss fights.
The second thing you'll learn is you'll need a good support group of monsters. You can have three primary monsters, and three support monsters, and if you don't keep that team on its toes as well you might just find you're still losing these boss fights despite having decent levels or a good primary set of monsters. Unfortunately, keeping both support and primary in top condition takes a lot of glazed eyes, as you'll be grinding for what seems like an endless amount of time to make it to the end.
It should be said that if you're the type of person who is a completionist, you may not be as annoyed with the regular enemy battles as you'll probably want to catch each and every one just to say you have them. In that regard, battles aren't just about leveling they're about catching... and focusing on that aspect may be the key to keeping the game somewhat fun, instead of a boring, repetitive grind fest. For me, however, the regular enemy fights were not something I found enjoyable the majority of the time. I desire a game that keeps me on my toes and asks for skill; your requirements will vary.
SquareEnix did its hardest to push the Nintendo DS on a technical level, and this crude approximation of Level 5's graphical work with Dragon Quest VIII can at least be admired on that level. The pixelation and low geometry 3D world is hard to swallow for me, but there is a pretty impressive draw distance for a DS title and the cel-shading does at least retain the classical charm of the DQ characters and creatures. Less could be said for their effort to keep you involved with the story of DQMJ, as it's a pretty thin something or other about tournaments and island scouting and a legendary monster. If you need story to go with your monster catching, this is probably not the best option.
Dragon Quest Monsters - Joker is the type of game where journalistic game criticism doesn't do much of any good. The people out there really interested in it pretty much know what to expect and don't need me or anyone else to tell them whether they'll enjoy it because it's a pretty standard formula. But for everyone else who might have perked an ear up at the idea of this game in passing, some consideration may be needed to see if the faults I listed are big issues for you personally. Because while it's very imperfect, it certainly has some big redeeming qualities that may be exactly what you're looking for.
posted December 1, 2007