Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince is another excellent entry in the monster-collecting Dragon Quest side series. There are some needless performance issues, but the game itself is complex and hard to put down the entire way through.
Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince
Developer: Square Enix
Price: $60
Platform: Nintendo Switch
MonsterVine was supplied with a Switch code for review.
I have a weakness for monster-catching. There’s just something so satisfying about obtaining hundreds of unique monsters and making your own powerful teams with them. As a huge Dragon Quest fan (who actually first got into the series through the Monsters series on the Game Boy), I was so excited for Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince – and for good reason.
Those familiar with Dragon Quest will be accustomed to the gameplay. It’s completely turn-based – an ever-increasing rarity – though you can easily have your monsters fight for themselves. You battle in tournaments against opposing monster tamers and against wild monsters, who can be recruited to your team. Crafting a good team with creatures that can fill each role is a pleasant challenge that never stops feeling rewarding.
The difficulty balance in The Dark Prince is just right, as it’s not immensely challenging but requires you to make smart choices and keep your team fresh. It’s somewhere between Pokémon’s breezy walk in the park and Shin Megami Tensei’s tight and tough difficulty, making for a solid transitional game for those looking to expand their monster RPG horizons.
The real exciting meat of the game comes from synthesizing monsters. Essentially, you take a couple of monsters, synthesize them together, and get a whole new monster out of it. Doing this gives you a monster with greater potential and potentially better moves and states as it grows, all in addition to almost certainly sporting a charming design. Over and over I’d synthesize my party, allowing me to experience using more diverse monsters than in any other monster-collecting game.
The story is intriguing as it focuses on the antagonist of Dragon Quest IV, Psaro the Manslayer. As a more complicated and morally gray protagonist, Psaro’s story is quite different from most Dragon Quest narratives. Midway through, your allies question your morality and you’re even condemned by the godly Zenith Dragon of Zenithia. It’s a fun twist that makes for a story that keeps you entertained and further informs the plot of Dragon Quest IV.
The one baffling issue with Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince comes in its performance. For some inexplicable reason, the framerate can be wildly inconsistent with major drops. The visuals are certainly not very demanding, so I’m at a loss as to why it runs so poorly at times. It’s not enough to ruin the game, but it seems like an issue that shouldn’t be happening given the game and the hardware.
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.
The Final Word
Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince is a stellar RPG that anyone who enjoys monster-catching games has got to play. The technical issues can be frustrating and surprising, but they don’t impede the game enough to be a serious hindrance. The depth of the synthesis system and the intriguing story make The Dark Prince easily stand as one of the best RPGs of the year.
MonsterVine Rating: 4.5 out of 5 – Great
