Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince Reviews

Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince is a middling entry into a once legendary spin-off series. For every element or system the game nails, there's a confusing design decision that holds them back. While The Dark Prince is far from terrible, it doesn't reach the heights of recent entries into this storied franchise.

Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince offers a monster collector's dream with over 500 unique creatures to capture, train, and fuse in a world brimming with seasonal surprises. This charming adventure welcomes both Dragon Quest veterans and newcomers.

The Dragon Quest Monsters series makes a great return on Nintendo Switch, but in regards to its story it does very little to properly honor the legacy of the game it takes inspiration from.

Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince provides a solid JRPG monster battling experience, but lacks solid support characters, narrative punch, and engaging endgame content to keep you coming back.

Dragon Quest possesses so much history that any new game carries a degree of raised expectation. Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince delivers many of the conventions I’ve come to expect from the series: the vibrant opening song, the charismatic Slime, and the emotional storytelling I already associate with the franchise. But this game goes beyond those well-treaded territories, offering an intelligent and elegant yet simple approach to combat and dungeon design that makes it a solid spin-off experience.

In a lot of ways for someone like me, Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince is weirdly validating for a video game product you purchase. This series has been living in relative obscurity for decades, either going unlocalized entirely or simply being seen as a niche within a niche destined for handheld gamers looking for more Pokemon. But there’s so much meat, life, and ambition in this one. It’s a console game, it’s got a story it wants to tell, it has ideas beyond “catch slimes, win tournaments”. I hope this is the direction Dragon Quest Monsters keep moving in. It’s no Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth, but what is?

The Dragon Quest series never quite reached the heights of popularity that its Square Enix brethren, Final Fantasy, enjoyed outside of Japan. The same can be said about its spinoff series, Dragon Quest Monsters, which many players consider a competitor to the dominant Pokémon franchise. In fact, the last Dragon Quest Monsters game, 2016’s Joker 3 for the 3DS, never even left Japan. It’s a niche within a niche.

The soundtrack is largely comprised of familiar Dragon Quest music. I don’t mind, as the series’ soundtrack is iconic and I could (and often do) listen to it for hours on end. The same goes for the sound effects, which remain delightfully dated but as iconic as ever. In regards to the visual style, Akira Toriyama’s style will never get old for me, so The Dark Prince is another winner. The graphics could be a bit more detailed, but I rarely expect that from games on the Nintendo Switch, at this rate.

Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince displays and waves the banner of its pedigree proudly. It offers the same wonderful tone and gameplay of Dragon Quest with some nice twists. The game also gives fans of Dragon Quest IV especially some lovely fanservice that ties in properly to the melancholic, yet hopeful, story. The loop of finding new monsters, training them, and synthesizing them is very addicting and streamlined. Making new teams and refining your strategy over time is super engaging...

It’s been 25 years since the first title in the Dragon Quest Monsters series hit the shelves. Taking the core gameplay of Dragon Quest and mixing it up with a monster-collecting twist, at least one of these titles has made its home on every generation of a Nintendo handheld console since the original Game Boy. Naturally, comparisons with other creature collectors such as Pokémon and the more recent Yokai Watch series can be made, but Dragon Quest Monsters has always felt more like part of ...

Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince brings the franchise to the Switch in one of its most ambitious and addictive releases to date.

While held back by significant performance issues, The Dark Prince excels as a monster tamer.

Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince isn't reinventing the wheel or changing the way we should view the monster-catching genre, but it is a huge amount of fun, and offers a lot of playtime for those who want to spend their time just seeing what kinds of weird and wonderful creatures they can end up playing with. The systems are clear and easy to grasp, the voice acting is great, the music is incredible, and it's just a very fun game.

Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince forgoes complexity in favor of creating an accessible and enjoyable gaming experience. The basic story and one dimensional NPCs could be a turn off for those looking for a story-rich RPG, as those seeking a grand story with a complex battle system won't find them here. Capturing and synthesizing new monsters, however, is a simple pleasure that can easily generate dozens of hours worth of enjoyment from this title. Fans of Dragon Quest IV will likely be sold on seeing an origin story for Psaro and revisiting the world of Dragon Quest IV from an alternative perspective. As a fan of Dragon Quest it was easy to overlook the shortcomings and just enjoy monster wrangling, but those less invested in Dragon Quest may be less forgiving with the basic plot and simple gameplay.

Monsters can be fought in the wild, but there are also battle contests - one in the human world at the Endor Colosseum and the other at the Maulosseum in Nadiria, the world of monsters. These unlock periodically throughout the story and often must be completed to move the narrative forward, with each rank becoming more challenging. While these fights are a way to break up the story, they sometimes feel unnecessary. Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince could've cut its colosseums completely, and the story and exploration would've still worked great. Of course, then it probably wouldn't have felt like a DQ Monsters game - but if this were simply running around in the wild as Psaro with a band of monsters, I would've still been sold.