Dragon Quest possesses a lot historical past that any new sport carries a level of raised expectation. Dragon Quest Monsters: The Darkish Prince delivers lots of the conventions I’ve come to anticipate from the collection: the colourful opening tune, the charismatic Slime, and the emotional storytelling I already affiliate with the franchise. However this sport 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 robust monster wrangler due to a curse that makes combating them together with his personal arms 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 an internet mode that permits you to battle different gamers, which is an effective solution to take a look at 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 mum or dad creatures is the most effective methodology to acquire a greater staff, and this technique 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 number of the ability factors spent within the creatures you’re fusing. By means of this technique, 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 stage 1, no matter its mother and father’ ranges. Within the remaining sections of the sport, fusing a brand new monster on the flawed second means spending a whole lot of time leveling up earlier than getting again on observe and attempting to defeat a boss.
With the huge variety of doable monster mixtures you possibly can create in The Darkish Prince, I used to be shocked by how streamlined fight is. The sport means that you can arrange ways that outline whether or not a celebration member will give attention to attacking enemies or therapeutic different get together members, for instance. On the similar time, it’s doable to order particular actions for every monster. Nevertheless, exterior of boss fights, participating extra strategically in battles not often felt essential. The system waters down a lot of every encounter that I often entered automated mode and let the A.I. do the pondering.
Because the boy works on his craft, we find out about Psaro’s previous and his journey alongside his buddies, Rose and Toilen, to turn out to be sturdy 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 school fairy story.
The sport presents the identical slow-paced introduction different Dragon Quest video games have, making the primary few hours a slog. Nevertheless, I grew to become slowly entangled within the story. Initially, I used to be progressing solely to unlock new monsters, however I spotted 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 pondering, and it by no means gave me an opportunity to grasp the reasoning behind his acts higher. On this facet, the sport’s respect for its roots hinders its capability to develop an intriguing character with no choice in addition to nodding or saying sure or no.
Whereas completely succesful as a standalone title, The Darkish Prince is instantly related to Dragon Quest IV. It provides us an opportunity to be taught extra about Psaro, a vital determine within the older title, and likewise to look over some occasions associated to the earlier sport from a unique perspective.
Psaro’s journey takes us by areas in Nadiria, a magical dimension with completely different areas known as circles. Every circle splits into three tiers, with one remaining 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 grew to become extra tiresome at any time when I went for lengthy gameplay periods.
Then again, the dungeons are probably the most shocking 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 different. The builders discovered a strong stability between issue and delight when designing them. The Darkish Prince veers extra towards conventional dungeon design, with treadmills that 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.