Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker (DS)

A good-looking grindfest -- with bonus Slime action!
2/18/2008 12:00 AM | 0 Comments | Page 1 of 2

Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker is like a pocket-sized version of Dragon Quest VIII for the PlayStation 2. It features the same charming cel-shading, 3-D environments and basic role-playing game elements as its larger cousin, but strips away most of the story in favor of emphasizing combat. Though perhaps better-suited to the portability of the DS, the battle-centric gameplay may prove too repetitious for some players.

On a secret mission for your dad and the mysterious CELL organization, you enter the Monster Scout Challenge, which will have you scouring the islands of Green Bays for 10 Darkonium crystals. The crystals aren't terribly hard to find, but if you are to have any hope of getting past the creatures that inhabit Green Bays, you'll need to assemble a crackerjack team of monsters to do your fighting for you.

The plot is almost incidental to the point of Joker, which is to capture and train as many monsters as you possibly can. Imagine a Pokémon game set in the Dragon Quest universe, and you'll have a basic understanding of how the bulk of your in-game time will be spent. As you wander across the islands of Green Bays, you'll encounter hundreds of strange and fanciful monsters of varying strengths and abilities, including Dragon Quest favorites like Hammerhoods and Slimes. The monsters are plainly visible as you explore the islands, making it easy for you to seek out or avoid fights as your situation demands.

Once in battle, Joker swaps the real-time 3-D environment for the turn-based combat with which Dragon Quest (or RPG fans in general) will be quite familiar. You can bring up to three main party members and three substitutes with you into battle, then issue the usual fight/use-spell/run-away-screaming commands. The animations are kept to a minimum, ensuring that the action stays speedy.

If you think your opponent would make a valuable addition to your roster, you can attempt to 'scout' it by showing off how powerful your current monster team is. Each member of your team puts on a show of force, raising the new monster's meter by a certain percentage based on how impressed it is by your efforts. The higher the meter is at the end of the show, the more likely the new creature is to join your ranks. Monsters weaker than your team will be easier to impress, while those that are stronger will be more difficult to woo.

Although it's possible to get the meter all the way up to 100 percent, it's not necessary in order to recruit a new monster. So long as you make some kind of impression on the prospective recruit, you've got a shot of winning it over, which means that you can try to scout each and every creature you meet, regardless of how strong it is in relation to your team. The likelihood that a monster that can crush you like a bug will join you is slim, but those rare occasions when you beat the odds can be quite exciting. As your monsters level up, they earn skill points that can be used to beef up their personal stats or allow them to learn useful spells. How you allocate skill points can become particularly important if you decide to start synthesizing the members of your menagerie. Synthesis blends two monsters to create a creature that carries over skills and abilities from both parents. Send too many monsters down the same skill path and you'll find yourself with a decidedly lopsided team.