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Replay – Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker

Replay – Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker

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I’ve a lot of love for the Dragon Quest series. I’ve played many of the mainline games well as several of the side games/spinoffs. One of which being today’s topic of discussion. Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker was released for the DS in 2008 (2006 in Japan and 2007 in North America).The game is based around a tournament wherein scouts gather, train and battle monsters to show who is the best of the best.

Dragon Quest Monsters Joker cover

The combat is turn based, with teams of up to three versus three, though you can also have a substitute team of three monsters too. You can swap monsters with individually or as a whole team when out of battle in singleplayer.

Ranks and Monsters

The monsters are mostly familiar from other games in the series  with a few new to the game itself (mostly with bosses). They rank in rarity and potential from lowest to highest as F-E-D-C-B-A-S-X. My favourite monster to use was a rank A, Tortured Soul, a boss from Dragon Quest 8. Mr Soul… that was one of the suggested names and I always named them that, at one point I had a team of three of them. With different focuses of course, my main man having high damage single target spells, one with group attacks and a high defense, and one as a healer. I got quite the reaction using that team against a friend who just knew that a Tortured Soul was my damage dealer but they didn’t know which one…

Synthesis

And that leads me to one of the interesting features of the game, well two actually. We’ll start with how you attain most of your higher tier monsters. Though you will be scouting many monsters in anticipation, most of these will be consumed to create different monsters through synthesis, combining two monsters into a potentially new one. You might go two Fs to an E, two Es to a D and so on. The S and X monsters contained very complex requirements, probably why I stuck with my A-teams. Of course, there was one S-rank that could be easily found….

Skillsets

Through synthesis you can choose up to three skill sets for the new monster to attain or inherit. This being why you could get three of the same monster with completely different spells and abilities. Of course monsters’ stats progress differently, they’re better with magic so  they were more effective with spells. I could’ve gotten those spells for a Golem or say, a Demon-at-Arms, but they were more martial classes, higher attack, lower wisdom. The option was always there though. And the skill sets were not just in regards to usable abilities, there were also skillsets for stats, such one that raised attack and health, or wisdom and mana. Of course, some monsters had traits specific to them, a demon-at-arms could attack twice in a turn, and a King Bubble Slime had a chance to inflict poison when attacked.

Style and Music

It used 3D models, in a style similar to the more recent Pokemon games. And combat is initiated by walking into (or being walked into by) wild roaming monsters, excluding monsters and arena battles of course. It also featured some of the great music that you can expect from any Dragon Quest game. It doesn’t use the same theme as the main games but it’s own is still good. I probably had the sound on for that more than any other non-Dragon Quest game. The trainer center theme was especially jaunty, but hey, which songs aren’t?

If you are interested in the series, I’d recommend giving it a shot if you can. Especially if you like games about monster collection, this one has a huge amount of customisation that I’ve not seen paralleled in any games that come to mind. I suppose there is the sequel but that hardly counts.

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