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Not a Pokemon Wanna-be

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 24 / 25
Date: November 08, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Dragon Quest Monsters initially began as Enix's answer to Pokemon. However, since it's beginnings on the Gameboy, it has grown into so much more than just a Pokemon clone. Dragon Quest Monsters Joker has its own spin on the "gotta catch'em all" philosophy. First of all, rather than using "pokeballs", you must impress Monsters using your Scout abilities to get them to join you. The higher rank the monster is, the more powerful your team must be to impress it. Second, your team consists of 3 primary monsters and 3 backup monsters. During battle, you are allowed to have out 3 monsters, but you cannot switch to your backups during battle, making for some difficult fights. Monsters level up in the style of Dragon Quest 8, where you gain skill points in addition to stat boosts that you can allocate as you see fit to the monster's skills. Monsters can use spells and abilities just like in the regular Dragon Quest games. Third, rather than breeding monsters, monsters are synthesized to create new breeds of monsters.

The main difference between this game and the regular Dragon Quest series is that rather than have random monster encounters, you can actually see the monsters on the field. This is great because you don't have to go through the guesswork of having to encounter the monster you want as you do in Pokemon. You can just walk around until you see it, then run up to it! Personally I like being able to see the monsters before I fight them so I don't have to waste time looking for certain ones. Also, the monsters respawn at a fairly rapid rate, so you don't have to worry about running out of monsters to fight when leveling up. An interesting part of this is that as you explore, you may notice certain strange objects in the area. These are actually indicators of rare monsters that may show up in that area. For instance on an early level, you walk by a campfire and some giant stones that look like dumb-bells. If you come back, you might encounter a Gigantes in that area!

As if that were not enough, Dragon Quest Monsters Joker also has an online battle portion where you pit your team against other teams on a regional, national or global scale to find out who's the best. Unlike other games where your only reward is bragging rights, this game has in game rankings and you earn items and monsters for each victory!

Dragon Quest Monsters offers solid gameplay on par with the main Dragon Quest series. With over 200 monsters to choose from, excellent online play and a great storyline, this is one game that is not to be missed!

Maybe someday they'll get it just right

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 7 / 12
Date: December 10, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Having spent many, many hours playing the earlier Game Boy versions--Dragon Warrior Monsters 1 and 2, I would like to compare the newest version to those games.

Upside--

Much better graphics than the earlier games.

More of a feeling of an RPG--tough bosses, especially the final boss, and more RPG-like dungeons.

Simplified, quicker, and less frustrating scouting and breeding system. (I do, however, detect the influence of Puritan Parent Feedback in the fact that breeding is now called "synthesizing.")

Downside:

Less of an incentive to go on after the closing credits than in DWM1 and DWM2.

DWM1 had a better dungeon structure system. There were many, many floors, and the types of floors were randomly generated. Even though the routine enemies eventually became easy to defeat, there were challenging, unpredictable masters and arenas that could be encountered at any point. However, there was one FATAL flaw for those trying to collect all the monsters in the game: two of the dungeons, both of which contained monsters unattainable elsewhere, could be accessed only by winning 5 consecutive rock-paper-scissors games each from three different masters. Think about that. That's an average of 3 x (3 x 3 x 3 x 3 x 3) games, or 729. And even worse, unless you got lucky, you had to endure having the instructions of the game read to you each and every one of those 729 times. Were any playtesters involved in the game's development?

DWM2 also had an interesting feature--in the aftergame, one could acquire magic keys that opened up new worlds, each of which contained several dungeons to explore. The dungeons themselves were less interestingly laid out than in DWM1, but did provide plenty of monsters on the player's current level, and the suspense of not knowing whether there would be another magic key at the end.

So if DQM2 comes out, it would be nice to see the current graphics and boss system expanded in the regular game (possibly with 9 large dungeons, as in Zelda), and with an aftergame that uses the dungeon generation system of DQM1, possibly with the the magic keys from DQM2.

DQ A Quest in Review

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 5 / 7
Date: November 08, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Along the years, many games have tried to mimic the simple game play of the Pokemon series. While Most downright sucked DQM has always stood strong against the juggernaut. As you start the game you find out you need to battle in a tournament & are given a choice of 3 monsters to carry out tasks on islands while getting a crew of stronger monsters to join you. This is as close to Pokemon as it gets folks. You start breeding/synthesizing monsters, because unlike the giant these monsters do not evolve. The game graphically is one of the best on the DS, Only second to Dementium: The Ward. The problem here is sound quality... It kinda sucks. The sound effects are kinda blah and the music is catchy but a tad generic.

The story is great but short. most of your time will be spent gathering new monsters to destroy the competition and synthing new monsters to get the most out of your time.Another con is the game is on the expensive side. It should have only cost 30-35 dollars but SEI thought they could get 40 out of it which is I guess the norm for SE games. But when your game is short dont try to steal my money k SEI?

All & all it is a new Monsters game, and if you are reading this you most likely know what you are in for and will love it. Just dont go in to it expecting it to be as long as Pokemon & we'll be ok.

8/10

The 3rd U.S. entry in the Dragon Quest/Warrior Monsters Series

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: December 10, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker is the third entry in the Dragon Quest/Warrior Monsters (DQM) series in the U.S. The DQM series is based on the Dragon Quest/Warrior RPG series but focuses on collecting and training the series many monsters in a style similar to Pokemon. It should have appeal for both fans of Dragon Quest and those of monster collecting games.

Joker is one of the few fully 3D games for the Nintendo DS. The graphics style is taken from Dragon Quest VIII for the PS2 and most of the monsters should be familiar to fans of that game. The animations are fairly fluid and the monster designs colorful and detailed.

Players take control of a Monster Scout to form teams of three monsters. The game features over 200 monsters total broken into several families. Pairs of monsters can be synthesized to form new, stronger monsters whose level 1 states and skill levels are calculated from the parents' stats allowing stronger and stronger monsters to be made with each generation. Skill points are earned every few levels and can be applied to skills, allowing the player to customize the abilities and stat bonuses of each monster. Each monster can also equip a variety of weapons with various effects.

Joker does fall short on a few points. The game is on the short side and raising powerful monsters requires a fair amount of grinding. Some of the more powerful monsters must be synthesized from specific monsters and so the player will almost certainly have to consult a guide to figure out how to unlock some of the creatures. An online battling system is available, however trading can only be done locally. Travel between the games islands can also be frustrating since a roundabout path is sometimes the only way to get from one island to another, even later in the game. Fans of earlier DQM series should also note that the leap to 3D has mean not all monsters from the previous games make an appearance in this one.

All in all the game is a good one. Fans of Dragon Quest, Dragon Quest Monsters, or monster collecting games will certainly want to try this one out. Anyone looking for a light RPG or just a change of pace for the DS should also consider checking out this game.

Lots of Level Grinding

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 5 / 10
Date: November 21, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker
Because I'm a devout fan of Dragon Quest video games, I got Dragon Quest Monsters to add to my collection. Monster collecting games like Pokemon do not appeal to me, because they involve tons of level-grinding. This game is no different.

In the game, there are 7 different islands. Each island has different monsters, ranked according to their power from "F" being lowest to "A" or "S" being highest. Going from one island to the next involve a dramatic increase in the challenge in this game--hence, the need to level-grind to increase the levels of the monsters in my party.

Fusing monsters is a key element to this game. However, doing so is a bit tricky. Fused monsters start off with stats that are half those of their parents. So, it's best to level-up the monsters so that they won't be too weak when starting out.

Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker is the third entry in the Dragon Quest Monsters series to reach America. This game features many modifications. The player can now store up to 100 monsters in inventory from the beginning. The monsters no longer have the WLD feature that makes them unruly or run away. When monsters in inventory level-up, they gain skill points, which the player can allocate at leisure. The player assigns skill points to certain skill sets for their monsters to learn. Each monster can learn up to three skill sets when fusing them together. When both monsters know much of a skill set, but haven't mastered it, their child can learn a more powerful version of that skill set. Another major change to this game is that the player no longer uses meat treats to tame monsters. Instead, the player tames monsters by using a scout feature, in which monsters attempt to impress a new monster by displaying their attack power. It works fine at taming multiple weak monsters at the beginning, however, the more of a type of monster a player has, the harder it is to impress.

This game makes minimal use of the touch feature. Touching the bottom screen moves the map and makes selections in inventory. The top screen shows the action in the game. I, however, tend to play the game without touching the bottom screen at all. It's an optional feature that people can use, if they want to.

The most appealing aspect of Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker is the graphics. The game is full 3-D, just like Dragon Quest VIII. Pokemanics craving monster collecting in 3-D can look here to get their desires met.

This game uses a wi-fi feature that ranks the player against other players according to performance. The wins prizes for connecting to the network each day. The player can also battle copies of another player's team, and can get a prize for winning, too. I have yet to try that, but I keep starting this game over from the beginning. The further I go into the game, the more level-grinding I have to do, and I *hate* level-grinding. However, folks that love level-grinding would probably enjoy Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker.

Not a pokemon in sight, but a monster battling game all the same

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: February 05, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I was a little worried when I first thought about getting this game; I knew it had the Dragon Quest name on it, so I thought it should be good. But, from game play descriptions (and my own imagination), I was a little worried I might be buying a slightly more "mature" pokemon game. Thankfully, I was wrong, and what I ended up with is one of the most-addictive, fun, and time consuming games that I've played for the DS. For those of you who've played Dragon Quest 8 for the Playstation 2, the game plays much like DQ8 does if you have a monster party fight for you. And of course there's scouting to allow you to get new monsters; you must impress the "wild" enemies by a show of force from your current monsters (basically a regular attack that does no damage). Other than that it's a fairly typical RPG, but instead of just leveling up your monsters, you can also combine ("synthesize") monsters to create new, more powerful ones. The story is a little weak, but the fantastic game play more than makes up for it. Plus you can battle over wi-fi against your friends' monster teams to see how you both stack up. Overall a very solid game; DQ fans should definitely pick it up, and so should most fans of RPGs.

This game will suck your life away.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 5
Date: November 15, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Wow. If you like the Dragon Quest series at all, or RPGs in general, and own a DS, you owe it to yourself to buy this game. I got it 5 days ago and have been relishing every second. One of the first epic RPGs available on the DS (the other being Final Fantasy III), this game does not disappoint. Fans of Pokemon, Final Fantasy, or Dragon Quest will be in heaven.

Dragon Quest 8's little brother...I love it.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: December 27, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I'll start by saying, I'm a huge fan of Dragon Warrior/Quest as a series, however I am not a fan of the Monsters series. Having partially played the previous installments with a steaming pile of dislike, I came into DQM Joker with low expectations only to be suprised at how great of a game this is.
I mean it, this game ranks among my favorite Dragon Quest/Warrior titles ever. DQM Joker is a perfect companion to Dragon Quest 8, and runs on a similar game engine to boot. Where the previous Monsters games felt more like Pokemon rip-offs, Joker distances itself almost completely. Aside from the fact that you're collecting monsters to battle, there is no Pokemon likeness in Joker at all. It truly feels like a Dragon Quest game of its own.
I recommend this title to anyone who enjoyed DQ8 but haven't experienced any other DQ/DW games, and I HIGHLY recommend this game to anyone who is a fan of the non-Monsters series of Dragon Quest.

Sucks Compared to DQM 1 and 2

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 3
Date: May 16, 2008
Author: Amazon User

The story is not that great; it's incredibly cliched.
The bad boy look of his doesn't match up to what you are doing, nor does his personality really shine throughout the game.
Incredible level-grinding, not taking into account breeding skills and levels to be ABLE to breed.

The upside to this is that it's 3-d and there are many new monsters. This game isn't as memorable as Dragon Warrior Monsters 1 or 2. They made this game too forced in terms of gameplay and level grinding; DWM 1 and 2 were much more accessible and player-friendly, plus it's gameplay was much longer than this game.

This is truly a disappointment to the older games, even with it's pro's.

Dragon Quest Monsters Joker

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 2
Date: December 09, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I'm a big fan of the dragon warrior monsters series. I loved both DWM 1&2. I bought Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker thinking this game would be like Dragon Warrior Monsters series. When i received my game, I right away opened the game and started playing it. It was fun for a few days. But after awhile experiencing it, the fun was fading away. Where is all the original monsters from Dragon Warrior Monsters 1&2? Why scouting? Why not taming monster with meat? Why are monsters soooooooo easy to make? They should have left the breeding the way it was like DWM 1&2. This game was overall fun and lasted me a few weeks but I decided to just wrap it up and give it away for a Christmas present. Sorry but this game isnt as impressive as I thought it was going to be. 4 Stars Overall and 3 Stars fun .

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