I have really fond memories of playing the original Dragon Warrior Monsters game on Gameboy. I was always a Pokemon kid, but for some reason I had The Dragon Warrior game too and liked it almost as much. The game was a little less kid-friendly, but the monster designs were cool and the battling was fun.I never played any of the future Monsters games on DS, but I did really, really like DQ 11 on PS4. Dragon Quest is a series I want to spend a lot more time with, and since I'm always on the lookout for monster-catching games, I decided to give this new one a try.

Mechanically, it's pretty great. There are tons of monsters, and each have unique skills they acquire through leveling up. Battles are snappy and don't have a ton of nonsense. Enemy designs are fun and the names are clever. Many monster catching games fall into a trap where the monsters just feel like knockoff Pokemon, but Dragon Quest manages to totally avoid that and is entirely its own thing.

Unfortunately, performance-wise this game is a mess. Graphically it looks worse than the Switch Pokemon games, which is really saying something, and the framerate dips often. We're really seeing the limits of the Switch these days and it's honestly a shame because this game looks like it'd fit in on the PS3. It's not bad enough to stop me playing, but it's rough coming from PS5 games to something like this.

Verdict: Keep Playing (casually)

Part of the Game Library Project