Cursed by his father at a young age, Psaro, the half-human prince is unable to harm monsters, so he becomes a monster wrangler and vows to dethrone his father as the ruler of all monsterkind by training a team of powerful monsters. Traversing Nadiria, Psaro makes friends and earns a reputation, gaining the title of “Manslayer.” As his adventures go on, he becomes more resentful of humans and decides to destroy mankind for the safety and betterment of monsterkind. How can this story have a happy ending? Read on to see my thoughts on Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince!

The following review contains spoilers for Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince.

This latest installment of the Dragon Quest franchise is a dark departure for the cheery series, but it’s still as goofy and pun-filled as ever. The world is rendered in whimsical 3D environments that push the Switch to its limits, but generally manage to stay at a steady framerate, save for the occasional lollipop shower, or other weather effect. The big new feature is the changing seasons. The world shifts between four phases, winter, spring, summer, and fall, revealing different parts of the map and featuring different monsters. It’s a fun gimmick, but it sometimes leads to having to wait for the world to change layouts to a different season. Thankfully you eventually unlock ways to advance the seasons as you like, but it does give the story a feeling of spanning several years.

The Dark Prince’s story is a lot to take in. The plot runs parallel to the story of Dragon Quest IV, so it banks on players being familiar with the gist of that game. I’m sure there are some overt easter eggs that I didn’t understand during my playthrough, but it didn’t hinder my experience. There were one or two places where I wished I had seen a bit more of the other side of the story, but it makes me excited to play Dragon Quest IV.

I had hoped there would be more conflict with Psaro’s background. The early game underscores the notion that the rules of society aren’t the same for Psaro and other humans, but this doesn’t really come up after he immerses himself in the monster world. His descent into villainy felt forced, and while I’m sure it makes sense in the context of Dragon Quest IV, on its own it was a little frustrating to see Psaro refuse to see the error of his ways, especially when the options are presented to you, but railroaded to lead to bad outcomes. “But thou must!” is a classic trope within the Dragon Quest series, but that doesn’t make it any less annoying. That straightforwardness has its own charm, but this time it bothered me for some reason.

One of the things I found so compelling about this game was the monsters’ treatment as characters and npcs. They run shops and inns just like humans, and have a diverse and quirky range of personalities. Getting monsters to join your team is contextualized as “scouting,” and when you fail they get upset with you. In universe, everything is treated as though you’re dealing with characters, not collectable monsters. It’s a little strange that they’re so willing to be fused into each other to become stronger monsters, but maybe that’s just monster culture. 

As far as gameplay is concerned, Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince doesn’t reinvent the wheel; it’s an old school RPG monster battler with a few modern quality of life features. My first Dragon Quest game was from this family, Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker, and The Dark Prince felt very similar to it: I was building a team of one to four monsters and going from marker to marker on the map. Unlike the DS game however, this is fully voice acted, and has convenient features like the ability to skip almost any cutscene or Zoom to most locations you’ve been to before. The Dark Prince’s presentation is beautiful, with a familiar soundtrack and fully voice acted cutscenes. Even without the sound on, I felt the localization was charming, and the story had me interested in seeing what comes next. However, the game eventually falls into a very samey pattern repeated for each of its areas, and I wished the motivation driving me to new areas was a little more diverse. Some cutscenes felt stiff, and I wished they featured more unique animations, rather than pivoting the characters and monsters around like machinima. I appreciate the ability to skip any cutscene, but I wish it wasn’t presented so quickly in the cutscene UI. It’s an interesting game and a fun cast, but I wish it wasn’t so eager to have me rush past it all.

One frustrating feature of The Dark Prince is the randomization that goes into collecting rare monsters. Complicated and specific monster combinations aren’t new to me when it comes to fusing unique monsters, but it felt like too many of them relied on having a specific recipe that would be difficult to accidentally stumble into. Maybe that speaks to how many monsters are in the game, but I found it frustrating that I was driven to use a fusion guide relatively early into my playthrough. There are probably one too many recolored versions of each monster in the game, and it kind of cheapens the variety when the middle of the game is padded with so many monsters that you’ve seen before, only in a slightly different hue. Some monsters can also only be obtained via eggs that are found in the overworld, and have such rare rates of appearing that I gave up trying to collect them all after reading about 40-hour long farming sessions by other players.

I had a lot of fun with Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince. The game might offer some stiff competition to Pokémon in the monster-catching marketplace if it had included a trading mechanic, but the local and online PVP is enough to keep the most experienced monster wranglers motivated long after the story is over. There’s a comforting gameplay loop that comes from seeing the numbers go up as you watch your monsters grow in strength and you unlock better talents for them, and the game is very forgiving when it comes to failure. Overall, the game’s story combined with the classic atmosphere I’ve come to love about Dragon Quest made for a great experience, and I would absolutely recommend this game to anyone who is a fan of the Dragon Quest series. It may not be dynamic enough for some modern audiences, but even with its flaws to me it’s home sweet home.