Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince (2023)

i just finished dqm:tdp and it was.. fine. it literally took me years because i would play some then stop for a while. but, like toilen says: "i guess a monster wrangler's journey never truly ends."

current temperature: cooling off
cool moment: auto-battling is like monster rancher sort of
cool sounds/songs: slime stack bouncing around
snack: spicy konjac jelly snack
🟢🔴🔵

I'm guessing that I'm about a third into the game just based on places you unlock to explore, and I feel I gotta put some of my thoughts down:

-I thought the number of recolors in DQM Joker 3 was bad, but this is getting ridiculous. Nevermind mind bragging about having 500+ monsters if nearly every monster has 1 or 2 color swaps that is counted as a separate monster which makes it more like a couple hundred unique monsters. It kinda kills the excitement of creating new monsters when more and more of the options are just recolors of the previous monsters. I'm otherwise happy with the monster models and variations, even if way monster size fluctuates in this game kinda ruins the sense of scales and proportions you'd expect for some species when compared to others.

-The story beats were promising at first but there's definitely some very awkwardly scripted moments that could have been handled a lot better.

-So far it kind of seems like monster size and traits were more varied and impactful in the Joker series. But it could pick up later on.

I'm only 6 hours in, but this may actually end up in contention for my personal game of the year. The graphics and optimization aren't great, and the story is standard silly JRPG stuff, but man does the game make me happy. I love the goofy monsters and puns. The monster fusion and talent systems are a lot of fun and hit a good mix of allowing for optimization and not feeling bad to fly by the seat of your pants. While the graphics aren't impressive, I really like the area designs. Every zone changes between the 4 seasons, changing not only the visuals, but what monsters are available and what objects are interactable, which I find leads to some enjoyable exploration.

DQM has always been a grindy series, so they leaned into it this time by giving you a highly customizable auto-battle allowing you to set general behaviors (Go All Out, Focus on Healing, etc.) but also encourage, discourage, or even disable the use of particular moves. Additionally, a 2x speed up is available at the click of a shoulder button. This makes the battles you fight while searching for monsters or just getting a new monster up to speed easy to breeze through, but you still need to try on the harder battles (well, unless you overgrind). On top of that, you get excellent fast travel within the first hour of the game. The quality of life is just excellent here.

Anyway, I'll see how well it holds up as I get further in, but right now, I can't wait to get home from work and be able to play more.

As one of my most anticipated games of 2023, I'm having some mixed feelings about the demo. The demo appears to be the type that just lets you play the beginning of the game up till a certain point, but the messaging around what transfers over to the full game sort of implies that you aren't just continuing where you left off in the demo, so we'll see how much things are different in the full game.

+The compelling gameplay loop of recruiting, battling, and fusing monsters seems to be just as good as ever

+The monster variety seen in the demo areas is quite high

+The story premise, despite some awkwardness still feels interesting and has potential

-The story pacing, perhaps reduced for the demo, is really awkward and comes off as rushed? I normally like quick paced story segments that don't drag, but here I felt like I was missing a lot of details that would have helped me get into things

-The framerate drops and the ways some areas seem barren make the game feel cheap at times, and lacking in the content and details that you expect with a full priced title

-The rotating seasons mechanic seems really interesting but the way it is demonstrating in the demo doesn't really add much, and would be a poor trade off from riding monsters if that feature doesn't return