Dragon Quest possesses a lot historical past that any new recreation carries a level of raised expectation. Dragon Quest Monsters: The Darkish Prince delivers most of the conventions I’ve come to anticipate from the sequence: the colourful opening music, the charismatic Slime, and the emotional storytelling I already affiliate with the franchise. However this recreation goes past these well-treaded territories, providing an clever and stylish but easy method to fight and dungeon design that makes it a strong spin-off expertise.
In The Darkish Prince, you play as Psaro, a half-human, half-monster boy who turns into a strong monster wrangler due to a curse that makes combating them together with his personal fingers unattainable. Wrangling is all about capturing monsters and controlling them throughout turn-based battles. As I progressed all through the boy’s journey, I discovered stronger creatures so as to add to my roster. The sport additionally has a web based mode that allows you to combat different gamers, which is an efficient option to check completely different group compositions. In my case, it took so lengthy to discover a match that my time was higher spent adventuring solo.
Synthesizing new monsters by fusing two mother or father creatures is the very best technique to acquire a greater crew, and this method makes all of your effort in beforehand maximizing weaker monsters value it. Everytime you create a brand new monster, it’s doable to maintain a few of the talent factors spent within the creatures you’re fusing. Via this method, I crafted some extraordinarily highly effective monsters, surpassing their common variations discovered within the wild. This technique pushes you in the direction of extreme grinding, although. Everytime you fuse a brand new creature, it comes at degree 1, no matter its dad and mom’ ranges. Within the last sections of the sport, fusing a brand new monster on the fallacious second means spending quite a lot of time leveling up earlier than getting again on observe and making an attempt to defeat a boss.
With the huge variety of doable monster combos you possibly can create in The Darkish Prince, I used to be stunned by how streamlined fight is. The sport lets you arrange techniques that outline whether or not a celebration member will concentrate on attacking enemies or therapeutic different get together members, for instance. On the similar time, it’s doable to order particular actions for every monster. Nonetheless, exterior of boss fights, participating extra strategically in battles hardly ever felt vital. The system waters down a lot of every encounter that I often entered automated mode and let the A.I. do the considering.
Because the boy works on his craft, we study Psaro’s previous and his journey alongside his pals, Rose and Toilen, to change into robust sufficient to problem his father. This can be a traditional, nearly too acquainted, premise, however even with the absence of closely foreshadowed surprises or plot twists, The Darkish Prince captivated me, making for a comfy journey with the appeal of an old style fairy story.
The sport presents the identical slow-paced introduction different Dragon Quest video games have, making the primary few hours a slog. Nonetheless, I turned slowly entangled within the story. Initially, I used to be progressing solely to unlock new monsters, however I noticed I used to be as enthusiastic about studying extra about Psaro’s story as I used to be about discovering new creatures. Sadly, only a few conditions provide even a glimpse of what he’s considering, and it by no means gave me an opportunity to know the reasoning behind his acts higher. On this side, the sport’s respect for its roots hinders its capability to develop an intriguing character with no possibility moreover nodding or saying sure or no.
Whereas completely succesful as a standalone title, The Darkish Prince is straight linked to Dragon Quest IV. It offers us an opportunity to be taught extra about Psaro, a vital determine within the older title, and in addition to look over some occasions associated to the earlier recreation from a unique perspective.
Psaro’s journey takes us by means of areas in Nadiria, a magical dimension with completely different areas known as circles. Every circle splits into three tiers, with one last dungeon. Sadly, this construction makes for a repetitive and predictable sample; after finishing the primary 4 circles, I knew precisely what to anticipate from each new area. These areas are made worse by noticeable dips in efficiency, because the framerate suffers significantly. Whereas I may simply ignore these minor efficiency points, the circles’ recursive design turned extra tiresome every time I went for lengthy gameplay periods.
However, the dungeons are essentially the most stunning aspect of every circle. All of them share an analogous construction: many flooring, a traversal gimmick, and a teleport earlier than the boss room. Whereas they could really feel as repetitive because the circles, the puzzles inside every dungeon make them enjoyable and various. The builders discovered a strong stability between problem and delight when designing them. The Darkish Prince veers extra towards conventional dungeon design, with treadmills you must activate to advance or ladders and holes within the floor to get to the highest of the constructing. Although most dungeons are forgettable, they provide a refreshing mental expertise even with out leaning on any design extravaganza.
By rigidly following Dragon Quest traditions, we find yourself with flat, cartoonish characters who inhabit a repetitive, cyclical world. However The Darkish Prince performs to its strengths to ship a strong RPG expertise with a comfy narrative seasoned by a protracted record of charismatic creatures and entertaining dungeons.
