advertisement

Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker Final Hands-On

By Kevin VanOrd, GameSpotPosted Oct 15, 2007 5:54 pm PT

We prepare a fiendish army in our final look at the newest game in the revered role-playing series.

If you're someone who's just "gotta catch 'em all," then Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker will be right up your alley. Though you shouldn't dismiss it as a Pokémon knockoff: This Nintendo DS turn-based role-paying game has a personality all its own. We had a chance to sit down with it this week and are pleased to see how well it's shaping up.

As the game begins, you are sitting in a decrepit dungeon cell when a hooded, German-accented jailer comes for you with news: The warden wants to see you. As it turns out, he wants to recruit you into a group known as CELL as a cadet. He gives you a ring that allows you to befriend monsters and schedules you to fight in the Monster Scout Challenge. After this brief introduction, you take control over your character, moving around using the D pad. The top screen depicts your exploration, while the bottom screen features a minimap, your quest objective, and detailed character info.

As it turns out, your prison is on a six-island archipelago jam-packed with monsters, and for some reason, CELL needs recruits to capture them for some type of research. After speaking with various characters (one of whom announces that the warden is your father!), we got to pick a starting monster and head to the Challenge arena on Domus Isle. The choices included a long-tailed, bat-winged creature called a dracky and a mischievous mole armed with a spear. For sheer absurdity, however, we chose a platypunk, which looks like what you would get if a platypus and a domestic cat mated then gave their offspring a Mohawk. Once we arrived at Domus Isle, though, we found the main square closed, and a demure young lady gave us instructions to go to Infant Isle to take the scout's pledge. We headed out on a speeder, and once there, checked out a shop. Here, we could heal up for free, buy items, buy equipment for our monsters (we're not sure how the platypunk wields a sword, but we equipped it anyway), and chat with roaming non-player characters.

It didn't take us long to meet our first wild monster: the prototypical blue slime. After all, it wouldn't be a Dragon Quest game without a slime as your first enemy. Going into battle, we were faced with several options: fight, give orders, tactics, scout, and flee (we had no items yet, so that option was grayed out). We decided to scout because the point wasn't to defeat the gloopy glob--it was to recruit it. The slime, impressed with our team's talent, joined the party. Once you recruit a monster, you can do several things: Add it to your active team, replace another monster with it, send it to storage for later use, or release it back into the wild. We added the slime to our team and continued our quest.

Now that we had several monsters on our team, we tried a real battle. When you get close enough to a roaming baddy, you enter a fairly standard turn-based encounter. The action plays out on the top screen, while you give orders and command on the touch screen using the stylus. Monster commands are given in the "give orders" menu, where you choose the monster you want to attack with and then the enemy you want it to attack. Conversely, you can use the tactics menu, choose options like "show no mercy," "focus on healing," or "don't use magic," and let them do battle according to those generic artificial intelligence behaviors.

Eventually, we leveled our slime up enough to allocate its earned skill points. We had five skill points in all to spend, so we allocated two of them to "slimer," which opened up a new spell to out slime: a flame attack called frizz. We spent two on attack boost, leaving one skill point unused, in the hope that it would be useful the next time we leveled up. A few moments later, we got to see frizz in action. The platypunk (the only other enemy we had yet to see apart from the slimes) we fought had no chance, exploding in a ball of fire. Finally, we made it to the top of the hill, where we entered a cave and encountered two new enemies: a dracky and a winged spirit called a shadow. It didn't take long for us to add the dracky to our party--and just in time. Another dracky and a lizard with a distinct resemblance to Mick Jagger called Lips jumped out from nowhere. Lips wasn't terribly impressed with our recruitment attempt though, so we destroyed it.

We then had more skill points to spend, which we used this time for our platypunk. We spent points in the naturalist category and in defense boost, learning a stun attack called heart breaker in the process. At last, we made it to the end of our journey, where a fair blue-haired maiden named Solitaire was doing battle. She was annoyed that we distracted her enemy and walked off in a huff. But it was all good: The pledge stone was in front of us, and we took the oath in question, just in time to find out we needed to head back to Domus Isle.

If you are a fan of Dragon Quest VIII's cel-shaded style, you will enjoy Joker's colorful look. The game is quite lovely, with detailed, vibrant character designs and some other impressive touches. For example, even at the summit of the mountain, we could look down to the beach and see the blue slimes bouncing around beneath. We also love the quirky soundtrack, particularly the battle music, which is a pleasantly peculiar tune indeed.

If you're into RPGs, particularly the Pokémon-brand ones, you'll want to keep an eye on Square Enix's newest Dragon Quest game. Fortunately, the wait shouldn't be too excruciating: Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker is due to be released on November 6.

30 Comments

  • Megaman_ex

    Posted Nov 14, 2007 10:25 am PT

    like the dragon quest series
    i am going to buy this game

  • kingdomhhearts3

    Posted Nov 12, 2007 7:12 pm PT

    i want this game

  • Sniper-Gamer

    Posted Oct 26, 2007 4:50 am PT

    No mateer what any of u guys say, i treat DQM and Pokemon in the same light. But i will get this game someway or another (money issues)...

  • HyPmAtYzEdMiNdS

    Posted Oct 21, 2007 5:23 pm PT

    Dragon Quest III was my all time favorite game that i've ever played my whole life which was in my opinion one of the best RPGs to exist. sh##T as far as i'm concerned it's on its own level period. it took me like 146:32
    just 2 100% beat that game and now another one. (you won't see me outside for month or two! )

  • Happygamer2005

    Posted Oct 20, 2007 5:48 pm PT

    Should actually be awesome. I tried playing the Japenese version, even that put Pokemon DIamond/Pearl to shame.

  • speedracer216

    Posted Oct 20, 2007 5:44 am PT

    huzzah! been waiting for this one a long time.
    i liked the GB ones and i'm a mild pokemon fan too (just played Red)
    ,,, but from everything i've read and seen i think this game might be the best monster-hunting game yet... let's hope i'm right.

  • Vegetaxxssj4

    Posted Oct 18, 2007 3:10 pm PT

    Awesome awesome awesome!

  • Tycerion

    Posted Oct 18, 2007 11:23 am PT

    I'll have to keep an eye out if I end up with some extra money this coming month.

  • elbert_b_23

    Posted Oct 18, 2007 9:01 am PT

    I love the old dragon warrior games and the monster games more then pokemon , i have been waiting for this one so long, remember telling everyone on other sites that the game would come to the us with just time.

  • DSgamer64

    Posted Oct 17, 2007 5:25 pm PT

    "Wasn't there a Dragon Quest game just like this on the Game Boy?"

    Yes, Dragon Quest Monsters was originally released on September 25th, 1998, 5 days before the original Pokemon was released in North America. Back in the earlier days of the Dragon Quest series, it was entitled Dragon Warrior for the North American releases, DQ 8 for the PS2 was the first exception though and now all games are called Dragon Quest.

    I find the only thing Pokemon and DQM have in common is monster catching, and there are still big differences there as well. Originally you had to obtain monsters in the wild by using meat items, which was hard because you needed expensive meats to capture some bosses and you only had 1 shot to do it, otherwise you had to reset and go fight the boss again. Of course, if you knew how, getting some of the boss monsters in the games could be done with breeding. I hated it when certain boss monsters you could get were basically useless because you could not breed with them to get a powerful monster.

    I played a bit of the Japanese version my friend has, so note to start people, capture a bunch of basic slime, cause once you can breed, you can get a King Slime fairly early on in the game if you can get each slime you capture to level 10.

  • DSgamer64

    Posted Oct 17, 2007 5:18 pm PT

    GS is wrong, Pokemon is a Dragon Quest Monsters knock off, Square Enix released the original 5 days prior to Pokemon

    The Dragon Quest Monsters series is better in general, the breeding plus now online battling gives it far more depth then just catching Pokemon, 90% of which get ignored eventually anyway. The thing about DQM is that it is in it's own league. While DQM Joker has less monsters then previous installments or Pokemon Pearl/Diamond, at least it is in full 3D. Of course I wish there were more monsters but the various types of monsters is really cool and there is no weakness system. Plus stat growth is so diverse between each and every monster, skills get passed on when you breed monsters and only certain skills can be obtained when a monster has specific stats, this is true with the MegaMagic spell which is only learned by a few monsters, the basic Slime can learn it but you need to breed them to get a +5 Slime in order for it to actually learn the spell, at which point having a King Slime which is more powerful stat wise is just easier to do.

  • Shadow_Fire41

    Posted Oct 17, 2007 5:06 pm PT

    hehe Michael Jagger

  • DrummerDude1010

    Posted Oct 17, 2007 3:13 pm PT

    This game looks good. I plan on getting it.

  • Assassin149

    Posted Oct 17, 2007 1:42 pm PT

    I've been waiting for this game for a while...im so glad its coming out so soon! Loved the orignals for sure.

  • lew_0911

    Posted Oct 17, 2007 10:49 am PT

    I have high hopes for this one. Go for it, Square Enix!

  • greater_bird

    Posted Oct 16, 2007 9:31 pm PT

    Sounds really fun.

    The preview probably compares it to Pokemon rather than DQM 1&2 because Pokemon is known by pretty much everyone, and the definitive game in "monster collection RPGs".

    After all, Final Fantasy wasn't the first FF-like RPG either, but it's constantly mentioned in RPG reviews because it's a comparison people can relate to...

  • ninjavelmor

    Posted Oct 16, 2007 2:18 pm PT

    can't wait for this one, it looks so good on the DS, and i love the fact that the victory music is the same music from DQVIII

  • the_wet_mop

    Posted Oct 16, 2007 10:34 am PT

    i find it odd that they compare it to pokemon so much with out mentioning DWM 1&2, which is what its really modeled after.

  • Allicrombie Site moderator

    Posted Oct 16, 2007 8:44 am PT

    I cant wait to play this. I loved the original DQM and DQM2

  • R3V0LUT10N

    Posted Oct 16, 2007 7:22 am PT

    The original Dragon warrior Monsters was one of the firs games I ever played so this is a definate buy for me. just hope not too many people are put off this due to the simularities to pokemon, since these are really great games

Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker Quick Links

Summary | Reviews | News | Previews & Features | Images | Videos | Answers | Hints & Cheats | Forum | Check Prices

Check Prices: $8.5 – 49.76

Amazon.com $22.96 SHOP ›
Glyde $8.5 SHOP ›
GameQuest $29.99 SHOP ›
advertisement
advertisement
Click Here

Related Unions

Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker Boxshot Enlarge the boxshot
Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker

Game Stats

Full Game Details »Close

Games you may like…

Users who looked at content for this game also looked at these games.

See More Similar Games
advertisement