Nintendo Okie

I’ve played a lot of Dragon Quest in my time, but I’ve never tried any of the spin-off series of the franchise. Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 2 combines elements from two of my favorite game franchises into one experience. Square Enix has managed to keep the Dragon Quest franchise mostly unchanged in the 25 years that it’s been around. How will this game stack up to those previous games?

What You Need To Know

Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 2 is the fifth game in the Monsters spin-off series of the Dragon Quest franchise. The original game dates back to the Game Boy Color and like the main series, the game play hasn’t changed too much. In this newest edition you star as a nameless lad (who you do get to name) who has stowed away on an airship bound for a Monster Scout Tournament. Your hope is to enter the tournament, but those plans change as your airship suddenly crashes on a mysterious island. From there you’ll set off on an adventure to rescue other passengers and crew of the airship, collect teams of monsters and battle in arenas in an attempt to get off the island. The game play is a bit of a mix between traditional Dragon Quest games and the Pokemon franchise.

It Feels Like Dragon Quest

One of the things that fans of the Dragon Quest have come to expect is a deep, engaging story filled with lots of different places to explore and fun characters to interact with. You get all of that with Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 2. While there’s not really a huge Overworld to explore there are a lot of varied environments that are all rather massive, so it feels a bit like exploring a huge world. Each of the different locations you will go to are similar to dungeons in a Zelda game that are all based around a central hub of your crashed ship. When you leave the ship you’ll be given the option to choose where you want to go on a map and you fast travel to each of those locations. You can also use your Scout abilities to hop between all of the different places so you don’t have a lot of travel that you need to do.

In addition to that you’ll be fighting all of the monsters you’ve come to know and love in the Dragon Quest franchise. You’ve fought these monsters hundreds of times before and they behave exactly like they have for years. It’s very familiar and welcoming to fans of the franchise. If this is your first experience with a Dragon Quest game then you get a very good idea of what the Dragon Quest franchise is all about. The battle system, while you don’t control actual heroes, feels very familiar to fans of the franchise. You can give your monsters pre-set behaviors that they will use to determine their actions in battle, or if you are more hands on you can actually micro-manage every action that your monster team takes during the course of a fight. The one advantage that this battle system has over a traditional Dragon Quest game is that your scout can take actions so doing things like using healing items don’t take away from the actions that your monster can perform. You basically get one free action every turn that can be used for healing purposes, or to use items in combat that can damage enemy monsters.

It Feels Like Pokemon

I accidentally called this game Pokemon when I was talking about it on the podcast a couple episodes back because it really does feel like a Pokemon game. You play as a Monster Scout, aka Pokemon Trainer, in charge of a team of monsters that you use to fight battles for you. Using them in combat earns them experience that can be used to gain additional skills. Monsters that are defeated in battle can’t be used again until you take them to a specific location that can be used to revive them and get them back to full health. You have a team of monsters that are your primary fighters; during battles you can “scout” enemy monsters. If you successfully scout them they are captured and added to your roster of monsters where they will earn experience, level up and gain new skills.

It’s very, very similar to the mechanics found in a Pokemon game and I think fans of that franchise would be very happy with this game as it will feel very familiar to them as well as Dragon Quest fans. Joker 2 thankfully doesn’t use the random battles found in previous games of this franchise, or Pokemon, so you can see a basic idea of who you’ll be going up against and try to avoid fights if you’re in desperate need of conserving magic power or health points.

You can even breed different monsters together to create new monsters and that change up the way you look at your roster.

Multi-Player Battle Arena

One of the things that Square Enix has been doing with Dragon Quest over the last few games is really making the experience more than just a single player one. Sometimes it’s come in the form of co-operative play where players can enter each others game to help out. In the case of Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 2 you get the chance to take your team of monsters and battle against other players. The arena mode from the main quest is the setting for these multi-player battles. The difference being that this time the fight is against an intelligent human opponent who won’t make as many mistakes that you can exploit.

For the collector’s out there you can even acquire new monsters via the Wi-fi Connection; trading monsters, or even scouting monsters from other Dragon Quest titles like Dragon Quest VI and Dragon Quest IX.

Grinding is a Time Sink

This really is a Dragon Quest game in just about every aspect. One of the biggest problems that the franchise has is that there is a necessity at times to have to grind out multiple levels to get your party as powerful as they need to be. Not only do you need to have your main party leveled up, but your substitutes need to be fairly powerful as well should they need to step up during a fight to take the place of fallen friends.

Normally I don’t have any problems with having to grind out levels because it comes with the territory in JRPG’s, but this is almost like having to level up two different parties at the same time. Your “bench” monsters will gain some experience along the way, but not nearly as much as if they were in the starting lineup.

Breeding Is a Mixed Bag

The Breeding System allows you to take two different monsters and breed them together to create a new monster that will be added to your roster. This gives you the ability to create new monsters that are more powerful, but they all start back at level one so you’ve got to do a lot of grinding in order to get them up to speed with the rest of the monsters in your crew. Some people will really like the depth that can be found in the system. There are hundreds of different combinations to try out; many of them will just give you different monsters that are of the same ability level. Finding the combinations that will yield more powerful monsters will take some time and some skill.

Other people will find the system very tedious and just wish that the game could be completed with a certain set of monsters. The way the system is set up you almost find yourself getting attached to certain monsters. You have to give each of them a name when you capture them or synthesize new monsters. There’s almost a sense of sadness when you have to use one of the monsters you’ve painstakingly leveled up and nurtured to get them to higher levels.

Conclusion

Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 2 is going to appeal to a lot of different fans. Dragon Quest fans will feel right at home with this game. Pokemon fans will see the similarities between this and their RPG of choice. If you’re thinking about jumping into the Dragon Quest franchise for the first time this might not be the ideal choice, but RPG fans will find a very solid title with a lot of depth, a great story, solid visuals and dozens of hours of content.

Final Score: 

Review copy of the game provided by Nintendo.
Played through the single player campaign in its entirety.
Total Play Time: 39 hours