Dragon Quest Monsters - Review

Review Breakdown
Battle System	3
Interaction	4
Originality	4
Story	1
Music & Sound	5
Visuals	4
Challenge	Moderate
Completion Time	Around 10-15 hours for straight completion
Overall
Battle Mode. Round-Based and pretty much like all others DQ Battle Systems.

Heyo and welcome to my first review here at RPGamer. Today I’ll cover Dragon Quest Monsters 1 for GBC, a cult title we all enjoy. Let’s get down to business, then.

We all know this battle system, don’t we? Ever since Dragon Quest 1, Enix (now Square-Enix?) uses the same battle system for every title that’s related to Dragon Quest (except Tornekos Adventures *choke*). And, hell we love it, don’t we? The only difference is that you can either control your monsters battle actions manually (with a chance of not attacking when giving wild monsters some orders) or let the monster act by themselves, in different sections, may it be a defensive, use-magic or go-all-out commando. As in the DQ Series, you can’t see your monsters in battle, but indeed you see pictures of your foes and some Stats of your monsters like in DQ. Want to see your monsters, actually? The menu shows you. You see your monster pictures, stats und can do things like pre-set commands (as described above), heal, and all the other things necessary.

One fine thing makes this game outstand the crowd of monster games. You can make the monsters mate each other – and produce new ones. This is absolutely fun, and with over 250 monsters a very good gameplay aspect. Besides making monsters, you can actually catch ‘em in battle mode! Give the enemies some food and maybe one (and only one) will go with you. But, for some player’s disappointment, you can’t catch every monster. Especially the later end bosses are uncatchable and can only be possessed by finding the right monster combination in mating. I know, Jade Cocoon, for example, is about monsters and mating and such, too. But, what other monster games don’t have that often: The monsters actually can talk. No, not this stupid pokemon language. Real Dialogue. In a special place inside the city you can talk to your monsters – and they speak in the matter of their mental state. Some examples are dizzy, aggressive and so on. The Dialogue in the game, at all,is very uncomplicated and you're always told where to go next. Some people, and even monsters, pull off some wicked jokes. This adds another bonus point. No stiff talk in this game, they even use some dirty words I don’t want to say right now.

The music is unforgettable, outstanding, and adds depth to the situation, may it be funny, dramatic or anything else. The sounds in battle mode aren’t that spectacular – but for an Gameboy game, its music and sound is one of the best to find and comparable in quality to Dragon Warrior 3. On to the visuals – comparable and maybe at the same level as DW3’s. The monster inside this game are well-known. We find the slime, DQ mascot, some other monsters, and yes, the big bad dudes as end bosses. I can’t tell anything about the translation quality – I don’t speak Japanese so well yet.

The story is one of the weaker points. Your sister is captured by an evil monster – and you go out to defeat monsters and find your sister by winning a special monster tournament. Quite simple, but who cares? The gameplay is why you should play this. And think about the replay value. RPGamer took out the replay value aspect – but I’ll cover it. The Replay value of this game is higher than any other RPG to find out there. As said, 250 monsters to find do their best to keep the replay value and the optional completion time very high. I said 10-15 hours of time, but that’s not all. Try to get every monster into your database without getting help and you have enough to do.

The monsters walk around with you! Nice, isn’t it?

This game is great for die-hard Dragon Quest-Fans and rpg-newbies alike. It’s not too difficult, the visuals and music are very good for a GB game. It contains lots of optional gaming time and a lot of monsters we already know. This game is so much fun. The story may be lacking, but the gameplay definitely makes it all up. Everybody who knows the DQ series should have played this, although some people say DQM2 should be even better, this title is Cult. Play it now!