Despite usually enjoying games where you collect little critters, tame them, train them, and then make them smack each other over the head, I feel like I’ve fallen out of love w⭕ith the genre. I don’t know if it’s because the last couple of Pokemon games haven’t landed for me or if I’ve grown tired of that particular formula, but I couldn’t even finish Scarlet & Violet.
It felt like nothing would fill that void for the past year, but then I played ꩵ168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince at Gamescom. My love for monster-taming ga♎mes is alive once more. Althoug♛h I’ve dabbled in the main Dragon Quest series, I’ve never played one of the Monsters spin-offs, so checking out The Dark Prince was an entirely new experience.
Monsters naturally shares a 🌠lot of DNA with the main series, you have a colourful cast of 🐻characters, you explore and complete the story and side quests, and, of course, it retains that signature Akira Toriyama style. The only real difference is that the character you control doesn’t fight for themselves. The protagonist of The Dark Prince is a young Psaro, the villain of Dragon Quest 4. Don’t worry, you don’t need to have played that to get what’s going on here. After his father, the Demon King, curses Psaro, making him unable to harm monsters with his own hands, he has to resort to getting other monsters to fight for him. That’s how our monster-taming adventure begins.
There are over 500 monsters to wrangle in The Dark Prince, making it the most extensive series roster to date outside Japan. As you travel, you’ll discover and fight wild monsters visible in the world, so there’s no surprise as to which you’re engaging with, saving you endless hours of running through tall grass to find a specific monster 🍸buddy.
How your monster party works differs from other monster-taming games you might be used to. You have four active and four reserve slots, meaning you could potentially have 🔯up to eight monsters with you at a time. Four in active battle, and four benchwarmers t𝄹o throw in should one of your first monsters be defeated. However, while some monsters fill only one slot, some larger monsters take up two. You’ll have to balance whether having a bigger, brawnier monster is better than having two weaker monsters.
Combatܫ is as involved as you want it to be. You can give specific orders to each monster, or you can just auto-battle and let them get on with it, letting you grind out experience points without all the extra effort. It’s nice to be able to orchestrate some battles while totally ignoring others as I scrabbled down notes. It’s going to make mapping out breeding regimes while grinding up hordes of enemies far ꦅmore convenient.
During battle, you can scout monsters to rec♒🌊ruit them, then name and upgrade them, and even use them to synthesise stronger monsters. Thanks to the breeding mechanics, you can have two of the same monsters with entirely different stats and skills, making it a paradise for players who love to fine-tune their perfect party.
The Dark Prince feature๊s different themed environments with quirky ways to interact with them. The one I played▨ was styled like a candy land, in which you could travel around to certain areas by grabbing dandelion-like candyfloss plants. The area was interesting to explore as a result of these quirky ways to traverse, and the monsters had their own behaviours, too, with some attacking one another in the wild.
Other themed realms include a forest, icy, and lava locales, but most interestingly, all the environments change with the passing seasons. This not only affects the landscape visually but physically, as well🌺 as changing the monsters found there. A lake you couldn’🍒t cross before may become frozen in winter, allowing you to walk upon it. In the summer, there might be mushrooms you can jump on. You don’t have to wait ages for each season either, as it happens within minutes, and you’ll see a blustering leaf effect blow across the screen to signify the change quite frequently as you play.
Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince off𒆙ers a refreshing change of pace for monster-taming fans, especially those who have grown a little tired of Pokemon like me or felt disappointed by Dragon Quest Treasures. It will launch on December 1 exclusively for Nintendo Switch.
