wobblegong

Thinkin' about animals....

  • 🐟/🐠/they/them

deviantArt: jWobblegong

*tiny furry cheeps*


Picked up Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince because I played the shit out of the Gameboy one an epoch ago and I can't say it's nostalgia exactly but I figured I would more or less know how to play it and I was distantly curious what the "Dark Prince" angle is.

My most concise summary is that it is hilariously faithful to the ancient Gameboy games, and it's very playable, and at no point am I going to call it "good" because this is making me yearn for Pokemon-tier storytelling. Combat's fine, the world exploration is strangely pleasant, and you can find so many freaks to splice into more fucked up and/or powerful freaks. At least 5% of their names are puns.


Also they explain the "Dark Prince" angle in the opening cutscenes so: protag-chan's absent father is the ruler of all monsters, ie he is somewhat literally a prince. Truth in advertising at least?

General Cheeping

  • This is a children's game. I don't say that to absolve it, I say that because it's true and you need to orient your expectations right now.
    • TRIVIA! If you didn't know the Dragon Quest visual aesthetic was done by the same dude who did Dragonball Z, I am telling you now so you'll go "wow that is the most Goku-lookin' motherfucker I've seen in a minute" when the humanoid NPCs start appearing.
  • I have met worse games because at least when NPCs stop talking I get to do moderately fun stuff.
  • That said my pal dropped in at one point and the sheer confusion in their voice when they interrupted to ask "Did that flying alien Furby just call you babe?" was as exquisite as it was earned.
    • I've been introduced to book publishers from New York so I was just rolling with it but yeah the flying alien Furby's characterization is major "book publisher from New York" vibes. She's voiced btw.
  • Speaking of, you will NOT guess what a given NPC's voice acting direction is before they start talking. I'm more than 0% wondering if the director went out of their way to give every single VA a different, unrelated directive as an elaborate prank.
  • Also the protag is silent in all cutscenes AND/BUT has little voiced blurbs for interface & combat stuff. So silent mouth-flapping, leaving it to the talking NPCs to imply what was said with their replies alongside being tortured by the same 1-2 voice lines every time I recruit a new monster, etc.
  • If I'm making this sound like it's a little bit of a disaster you are beginning to understand.
  • But I looked up the answers for the quiz that assigns you a starter and secured the monster I liked best so we're in business baby!

Playing Da Game Babey

  • The world exploration is pretty normal monster-RPG stuff at this point: run around a 3D environment looking for treasure chests & dodging/plowing into overworld monsters to start encounters. These zones are not enormous, I'd say they're a pretty comfortable size; on top of that fast-travel warp spots are plentiful and available at all times for free.
  • The slightly interesting remix on that is that zones cycle between the four seasons really fast, think 15-30 min per season (this is time-blind ballparking) and besides changing the aesthetics/monster availability the seasons also tweak the maps themselves just a bit. Stuff like climbable vines on the walls to reach more nooks and shelves, but only during summer, meanwhile in winter the river freezes over so you can cross it on foot. Not gonna call it revolutionary or world-shaking but it does work in just a little more variety! Also gets used for puzzles/replayability.
  • Combat is... it's fucking Dragon Quest Monsters, ok?? Very typical turn-based combat where your squad of up to four pals takes on whatever you tripped over. They are trying out one new thing with monster SIZES, as in, a Large monster takes up two slots compared to a normal one and is supposed to be stronger to be worth it. Otherwise it's the same shit that was on the Gameboy forever and a milennia ago.
    • Ok fine if you've never met Dragon Quest Monsters before: the two main power progressions are splicing/taming progressively stronger monsters through the game but there's also some fucked (positive) inheritance stuff involved in splicing so you can eventually build a godzilla that is not just a godzilla (species which is already OP) but also has a billion skill points and 80 godkiller spells because skill point budgets are for plebes who don't splice. This aspect of the game is kind of annoying to properly minmax to its full limit but luckily this is a children's game so if you just keep smushing dudes together you can eventually beat JRPG God to death with a cockatrice.
  • I grudgingly concede there is one shining high point to this game: they have automatic-sorta monster AI where you can loosely try to teach/direct your team how to deal with fights... and then let them just handle it while you take your hands off the controls... and the monster AI is actually quite competent. You CAN teach/direct your healing monster to use its damn heals, and it will and also still take the initiative to beat the opponent with a leek if everyone's at full HP and doesn't need healing. Monsters will try to pull out AOE spells in AOE situations but maybe prioritize single-target when there's only one target to hit. And so on. Like yeah ok if you micro every monster every turn it's PROBABLY slightly better, but this is possibly the only RPG I've ever dealt with where loosely reminding my troops what to do and then letting them get to work ACTUALLY WORKS.
  • This is important because the major progression challenges/progress-gating battles specifically prohibit you from micromanaging your turns. You HAVE to rely on your little dudes knowing their ass from a Fireball spell.
  • But again: they made it actually work. somehow??? So.

Aesthetics & The Opposite Of Aesthetics

  • IMPORTANT HONORABLE MENTION FOR THIS SWITCH PORT: when you first open the game it asks you which button on your controller is the Yea button and which is the Nay button. The year is 2024 and the major consoles still can't agree on whether bottom or right button is Yes, but at least the game will just ask me which scheme to use!!!

  • Nostalgia check: I wouldn't call this very nostalgic for me because my memories are not just old but also very bound up in GBA aesthetic, which this obviously is not. But ever so often I do a double-take when something I didn't even consciously remember anymore clicks into place.

  • (My friend who also has the game & played the old ones has been complaining that they re-localized the monster names and I've just been amused by that. I mean yeah they did but the overall aesthetic/stupidity of the names feels unchanged to me.)

  • That said I wish they hadn't kept the screen zig-zag on teleports. I mean yes they pulled that directly from the old game(s), but that shit at 60FPS modern graphics makes me dizzy or maybe motion sick. It worked on the GBA because I could see the corners of every individual pixel, ok?

  • Oh also I had forgotten how many "gross" monsters were in the games (they're not BAD-bad I'm just a weenie on this front). I have experienced a tremendous sense of "I really ought to have remembered that and I have nobody to blame but myself" upon first encountering the cartoon undead. Despite the atrociousness of the plot/cutscenes this is the one thing inducing any amount of regret in me. But I'm a champion of mentally unfocusing my eyes when bad things are on screen so I'm soldiering on because I know there's cool birds and dragons later and I want them. Yucky cartoon zombie is merely the price I must pay.

Conclusion

Given the price tag (~$40 USD) I'm not going to recommend this game to anyone who didn't already have reasons to be interested. BUT I am also going to do my best to beat it, and I anticipate enjoying myself in the process. I have played worse drivel that didn't even bother to bribe me with Fright Bulb or Sham Hatwitch.


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in reply to @wobblegong's post:

This is an incredible review, as I took live in Dragon Warrior Monsters Nostalgia (I played it on GBC) and I remembered the auto-combat working even then! God, what a wonderful game. I still remember the personality test at the beginning and solemnly trying to put in the truest answers possible. Thank you for the write up!