DRAGON QUEST MONSTERS: The Dark Prince Reviews

Beats whatever crap pkmn company puts out

FOR THE GLORY OF THE KIM FAMILY YOU COLLECT MONSTERS TO STRUGGLE AGAINST WESTERN IMPERIALISM (AND THAT STUPID CYCLOPS THATS IN EVERY ONE OF THESE). JUCHE IS THE WAY.

The game looks and feels like a shoddy switch port. Controls are odd, and the menus are clunky. Performance is strangely poor for how simple and generally unimpressive the visuals are. From what little time I've spent with it, the combat is incredibly basic and shallow, the maps are linear and uninteresting, and the story is about as basic and tropey as it gets. If you want a good monster collecting RPG with fusion, I'd definitely recommend just playing SMT or a Digimon game or something like that.

If you like pokemon you will love it, its like a more mature, smart and funny pokemon. The story is a bit childish still, but still better than pokemon as well.

Great game if you enjoy Dragon Quest music, art style, and presentation. It ticks all the boxes if you have nostalgia for this series of games.

Another fantastic JRPG in the Dragon Quest world. I simply can't get enough of the style and designs of the monsters that are just so toony and colorful.

Nostalgia galore! Don't mind the story, it's rather shallow and your (simple yes/no) dialogue choices don't matter. Rather, synthesize monsters over and over and catch 'em all! (For real: If you're a fan of the DQM series, you know what it's about and you'll probably enjoy it. Otherwise, it's just a weird monster catcher/breeder.)

Great game to keep you busy for the next main Dragon Quest game. Story is a bit meh, but the monster collecting and fusing is fun. Give it a try.

You better REALLY love grinding. Because there isn't much else. The "exploration" is just wander around, look for a monster you don't have, nab it, look for an egg, nab it, look for crummy little items randomly scattered around the world you don't really need, and nab them too. Theres less exploring here than in a Dragon Quest game and those don't have much exploring either. Mostly you just need to grind. Grind for XP to level up your monsters so you can make better monsters so you can get the abilities/powers you need to beat a particular boss, move on to the next zone, and repeat the whole process. After you leave the first zone it all becomes horribly tedious and repetitive. There is a story, but its boring to the point I kept forgetting what had happened and what I needed to do next. Was even less inspired than DQ 11 and did not inspire me at all. And I got fed up with the grinding too. For some reason when I was much younger I had more patience for grinding. Played Dragon Warrior Monsters on the Gameboy Color when it was new. Also lots of grinding in the same small zones for hours at a time just to find and breed the right monsters, but it was pleasant back then. 25 years later I need more from my games. The Dark Prince is nice to look at but not much fun to play. I got fed up and quit after a couple months of mind-numbing exploration and leveling. I can't even bring myself to use cheats or trainers and just grind thru the story, thats how tired I am. If you love to grind for XP and gold, this is for you. If you need some sort of experience, look elsewhere. I will say I appreciated the challenge dungeon and the hole where you can find previously caught monsters. Those were both very nice additions. They don't make up for everything else.