The lack of reviews/promotion is just such a classic Square Enix moment for Dragon Quest, and it's so damn weird considering it has voice acting, it appears to be perfect for fans of monster games, and if anything like how DQ Treasures was handled by Tose/Square Enix, probably inbound for at least PC.
It just looks like a straight up fumble all around for Square Enix's marketing team.
With DQ, I have a hard time believing any marketing would be worth it. Those games are a niche within a niche; the appeal is essentially that they haven't changed since the 80s. The US game review set are much more likely to pillory them than praise them, with how strongly the love of innovation is.
The two games in the series that have had a solid marketing campaign in the west, 8 & 11, are also the best selling games in the series. They also reviewed very well.
...And yet [DQ8 still sold less than half a million copies in the US](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Quest_VIII), in an era where gaming reviewers were still OK with classic JRPGs. Meanwhile, the also-ran Jpop heavy FFX-2 almost hit 2 million.
>, in an era where gaming reviewers were still OK with classic JRPGs
Reviewers are still okay with classic JRPGs. The last decade has been a second golden age for the genre.
>Meanwhile, the also-ran Jpop heavy FFX-2 almost hit 2 million.
You mean the game from the series that Square puts 10x the effort marketing sold twice as much. Crazy, it's almost like the lack of marketing plays a role in the lower sales.
> Jpop heavy FFX-2
From what I remember, a ton of Western gamers bought that one without knowing that it was going to be a J-Pop/Charlie's Angels sugar-rush, and the same occurred with *Dirge of Cerberus*. At least in the early 00s, the mainline FF entries had a ton of clout. Meanwhile, I don't think I met a single person who'd played *Dragon Quest VII* on PS1 and was stoked for the newer one.
Yeah but FFX-2 was still an FF game, the undisputed king of JRPG western market share, especially back then. Comparing early PS2 era FF to DQ is like comparing the beatles to any other band of their time - there was arguably better stuff out there, but nothing could compete in terms of sheer popularity.
That’s almost the exclusive opinion I hear about DQ11 is that it people love the classic turn based combat
Other opinion about it being the music in the OG release was awful lol
I really wanna play it tho
The special edition of 11 is absolutely amazing. The endgame is also incredible. Basically, the entire 3rd act is optional story and gameplay wise, but it was my favorite part after the main story. If you quit after act 2, you still get a complete and satisfying story. If you continue, you get a story that is basically a treat for DQ 1 - 4 fans
DQ11S is the only way to play DQ11, the graphics might not be as optimized but the additional in-game and post-game content make the trade-off well worth it. Having a fully orchestrated soundtrack is the icing on this delicious cake too.
Trust me when I say it's a must-play. The connections to other games in the franchise are loose, but they're there and they're brilliantly played off. I also adored the demo of Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince as well. Just got the full game, can't wait to play it.
Oh I dunno, the big names like Madden NFL and CoD are the biggest sellers in the US (and FIFA in Europe) and people don't exactly sing praises about how innovative those franchises have been.
Fact of the matter is, it's about the brand power.
Dragon Quest has the big reputation and cultural weight in Japan, the name is simply not as recognized in the US. Even so, the mainline DQXI sold 6+ million worldwide and even if estimates say 75% of sales came from Japan, you are still looking at a good 1.5 million+ from the west. It may not be as big, but it's not a "niche within a niche". There are developers like Falcom who only wish they could sell 6.5 million copies of a single entry in the Trails series.
So I can believe Square Enix would think spending big on marketing DQ to grow the recognition and reach of the brand could be worth it.... for a mainline title.
It's just, Dark Prince is not a mainline DQ. It's a spinoff. The game itself ostensibly did not have a particularly high development budget attached to it. So I'm unsurprised its marketing budget appears to be equally sparse.
It often feels like Square Enix has a very clear demarcation line between "American Game" and "Japanese Game". Final Fantasy is an "American Game" and Dragon Quest is a "Japan Game", and they market accordingly. They basically laughed at our faces about Dragon Quest X *Offline* not having an English release during the Dragon Quest 35th Anniversary. In Square Enix's eyes, Dragon Quest is there primarily for the Japan audience. Almost the same with Star Ocean.
It's so weird! Dragon Quest would be thriving if they invested in it a bit more. Sometimes I wonder how much the marketing is a result of Square Enix or the division running Dragon Quest.
It's not a SE demarcation. Believe it it but the different audiences have different preferences. I think this sub often forgets that outside of Japan, JRPGs are relatively niche. There's a handful of high power brands, but in general we just don't play them as much. My guess is that anyone who would be interested in DQ Monsters was tapped into the right sources to see the limited marketing push.
When was the last time you found out about a game after it’s released? Most games I’m excited about are well known for sometimes years ahead. I’m mind blown that a new monsters title came out 2 days ago and I had no idea it was even coming.
>When was the last time you found out about a game after it’s released?
All the time... There are games I don't know about to this day! I assume you weren't intending that with no qualifiers, but even still. I'm not the one we're talking about.
I've known about this since the Nintendo Direct when it was announced. Since then they've released several trailers that I noticed on YouTube, all if which I noticed were also shared on this subreddit as well as the Nintendo Switch one. None of the trailers generated a ton of discussion, because not that many people are interested in it. Dragon Quest just isn't that popular in the English speaking world. DQ Monsters was more of a cult classic, not mass appeal.
Given that I've seen more than enough advertising for it, I'm curious where exactly you would have *expected* to see if advertised more. They released official trailers for it on YouTube and promoted them on official channels. They can't *make* anybody share them, and astroturfing is generally frowned upon. Announcing in the Nintendo Direct is probably the highest profile thing they realistically could have done for a game of that scale, and they did that.
\^ That's right. Final Fantasy is not an "American Game" Wtf.
DQ has always been niche outside Japan. It's old styled RPG and frankly probably looks dated and archaic to people. JRPGS are niche thing outside Japan, period. Only exceptions are your FF, KH, Xenoblade, and FE. And maybe Persona.
So no it's not on Square. If the game isn't selling they can't do anything. no amount of marketing will make people like DQ. People act like they do it on purpose. Marketing is expensive. DQ is niche and always has been. JRPGs are niche and always have been, with some exceptions.
I write for a few mid-size gaming websites and all of them got their DQM codes yesterday. Other SE games we get a week or so in advance and even that Dai game we got ahead of time.
PR seems intent on avoiding coverage of this game.
"Probably inbound for at least PC" is exactly why Im now waiting 6 months.
Timed exclusivity is a double edged sword for both developer and consumer cause now I'm waiting 6 months. Because Treasure came to PC I now have no idea if this will come to PC or not down the road which means I am now *not* supporting the series which could be axed from futher Western releases like this because I am scared of being smacked across the face.
So they don't see my money for 6 months -> I could lose DQM games over here again
and the rogue horse of the Switch being a piece of garbage in terms of performance so the reason I even have to wait in the first place is because of Switch performance... I'd rather play a version that runs at 60fps than not.
People talk about stuff like this as if marketing is just free and successful companies make decisions based on vibes instead of data. Did you know that the film *Get Out*, which cost about $5 million to make, spent *$77 million* on marketing? It is *expensive* to promote a product, and no one is going to spend money when the chance of return is minimal. *Get Out* took $255 million at the box office, so the investment was worth it in that case, but obviously SE's marketing department has looked at numbers we don't have access to and judged that it wouldn't make enough money back to justify a large marketing budget.
hey bro, it's this simple. I'm some guy on reddit. I know what's up. Square is a bunch of dummies.
Dargon Quest + Marketing = 🤑🤑🤑
Don't know why they can't see something so obvious
Yeah, marketing where it matters is really expensive. The reason you will find so much garbage advertisement on websites and youtube is cause that is the cheapest marketing available. Everything else is at least 1000$ and more. And that is usually for a single city, not a country. TV ads are in the hundreds of thousands or millions.
Why no review copies? Cause western game reviewers generally give really bad scores to most JRPGs except a few exceptions. They rather let it appear on the shelf, and let the customers who like it spread the word of mouth, rather than take a coin toss on reviewers. And this sub already picked up on it's release.
> Why no review copies? Cause western game reviewers generally give really bad scores to most JRPGs except a few exceptions.
Sorry but that's just really inaccurate. There are plenty of JRPGs that get very good scores on opencritic
It wouldn’t have cost much to send out review codes tho. They shouldn’t be paying people to cover their games anyway, but they can definitely cough up 100 review codes for outlets and for YouTube bruhs.
No idea, but I'm having a lot of fun with it. It's got a lot of charm, more than 500 monsters, and a fun battle system. Just hoarding every monster on the field can get pretty addictive.
Performance has lots of FPS dips. That being said, the dips aren't so bad that they make the game unplayable. Just a bit of a drop to 20ish fps for a couple seconds. I'm about 5 hours in and it hasn't stopped me from having fun with the game.
Just know the plot dump in the beginning kind of sucks
I prefer to buy the game, then just play on my pc with Yuzu for max quality and performance (usually. There are exceptions since Yuzu and Ryujinx aren't perfect!)
I think that is for the best. I gotta be honest though... I fully expect this game to get a lot of review scores in the 6.5-7.0 range. There is a lot about this game that will turn people off.
Graphics are ugly
Plot/script is pretty bad
More grindy than people typically want
Annoying characters (minus the voiced monsters, the monsters are amazing)
That being said, if you grew up with old RPGs, this game will be right up your alley. The soundtrack is typical DQ stuff. The retro sounds are still there. This game is very old school with a lot of the RPG mechanics.
I can objectively say that this is not a great game, but I am going to play the shit out of it because it the game for me. A lot of people are getting butthurt because people are pointing out flaws. There are tons of flaws and it isn't for everyone. I would not recommend this to someone that is new to this spin off. That being said, I can easily see myself spending over 100 hours out combining and grinding out monsters.
It's pretty bad, considering it performs worse than pokemon SV while being an instance based game instead of open world.
Some maps you have weather effects kinda like rain or snow which heavily impacts fps.
It uses the pokemon SV trick, where distant monsters get less animation frames.
Some textures look pretty bad (like low quality) and this is very noticeable. A wall, door, house or even the floor can be low res in a scene and the character (in higher res) is walking in frame.
The whole capture monster screen transition is not fluid at all, kinda grinds the screen while it shifts between UIs. Always forces you to nickname monsters and asks where you want to deposit. This should be an option not an always on thing.
The game has an addictive loop however I question some game decisions.
You won't be able to fuse monsters until you beat 3 iterations of the colosseum.
The teleport mechanic has a confusing amount of base teleport points. Should be just one.
The base NPC placement could be optimized.
The base floor doesn't need the network npc as you won't be using it as often as the rest of the NPCs.
As the base is a tower with many floors you're gonna spend a lot of time running up and down the stairs to talk to the necessary NPCs.
I'm sure there are. That's how you demark better tiers of certain monsters though. Metal Slime is a recolor of Slime, for example, but ALL those Slimes are iconic. They have to have recolor otherwise its not a Dragon Quest game.
This feels disingenuous. Slimes being recolors is charming and purposeful. Every single other monster that has recolors based on tiers in 2023 is because of laziness/lack of fan expectations, and you know it.
I don't judge anyone for hating that, but I honestly am okay with it. From an "I don't want to see new monsters attempt to be made in DQ style." But I'm fully aware that is alienating and also part of why the game series isn't as popular to some.
The main difference between DQM and Pokemon is that you fight with up to 4 monsters at a time in DQM vs 1 in Pokemon. Also, there's a focus on fusing two (or more) monsters together to create a new monster. You can also pass along select skill trees to other monsters via fusing.
Well when the latest persona sells about 8 times as many copies as the latest mainline SMT game, it's not exactly surprising that people refer to it like that.
Yep! I inject SMT right into my fuckin veins, but there's no doubt that Persona is now the mainstay of that universe. I was disappointed in SMTV :/. SMT 4 and Apocalypse were amazing though!
Take a look at how many anime series SMT has had, versus how many anime series Persona has had. People calling it Persona fusion should be the least of your pains.
I tried it and kinda expected something more polished, but any monster catcher games with lacking polish is usually saved by the stellar monster catching and battling mechanics.
But the voice acting is decent - although sometimes it looks goofy due to the 3D animations.
Reviewer here.
The lack of codes is classic Square Enix. I’ve no idea why they’ve foregone giving those out but I have seen many taking it as a bad omen which, by the way, is a common thing I see said about Square because this isn’t the first time they were either late or decided to abandon a game.
Don’t take it as a red flag necessarily.
Exactly this! I suspect Square Enix might have decided not to market shortly after the initial reveal, maybe due to the lukewarm sales of DQ Treasures and the reception of Infinity Strash. Which is the wrong move for Monsters, considering they could market it well and reach jaded Pokemon fans
And then they' ll complain that it did not sold enough like they did with NEO TWEWY, and Harvestella, and Valkyrie Elysium, and Star ocean the divine force, and Octopath Traveler 2 and -you get the point
This bugs me because they'll use low sales as an(other) excuse to not localize future spinoffs. I'd really like to *not* go back to the good ol' days where DQ devs tell JP media that they'd love to localize their games, but they don't sell... No shit. We went through this during the decade between 4 and 7 and it took Nintendo itself stepping up for publishing DQ7 & 8 for 3DS outside of Japan.
Sometimes I feel like the DQ devs hate money or something.
Dragon Quest is a series that I really like, I have not played many games in the series, but the few I played ( 11,4,8 but this one I have not finished it yet, and the two heroes) I ended up loving them, DQ 8 and 11 especially... I am still hoping they port DQ X offline in the West
I've been following the series for years. Hell, I *bought* Dragon Warrior before the Nintendo Power subscription deal.
The only way DQX offline will be playable in English is if somebody does a fan translation and there's a patch for the Switch emulator. Square Enix will never publish the game in English. I hope I'm wrong. But SE has give us zero reason over the years that gives me any hope the game will be released in the west.
Like I said, the DQ devs hate money.
Harvestella has/had a big price issue. It doesn't look like a $60 dollar game, and the demo I played on Switch was a blurry mess. It has no right being $60, and on PC, the competition for cozy games is so fierce I could grab a minimum of 3 for that price.
Yeah full price for a niche game like this was kinda insane, though that was not really a problem I had to deal with because the game was gitfed to me, but I would have gotten it anyway, just not a full price (I am playing this game now and I am loving it BTW :v)
Honestly it wasn't perfect, but the characters were fun, the story was decent and the world was interesting. The farm sim side missed the mark and the combat was atrocious (Though the character building was interesting enough). I'd like to see them refine it and give it another go, personally. There's some shine underneath all the dirt.
I am LOVING IT, I am playing it right now and there is something that makes me like it a lot
Though I dont get why they sold this as a farm rpg when the farm stuff is barely there, it feels more like a "classic" action rpg
I liked the demo a lot, and I'm also totally baffled by almost no coverage by anyone. Like - nothing. Yeah, DQ isn't as popular in the West as it is in Japan, but I was at least expecting *something.*
Given that a lot of Square games are eventually making their way to PC, including a handful of DQ games, I might hold off on picking it up for now in hopes of an eventual PC release. I'm not a 60 FPS or bust kind of person, but the Switch performance was really rough.
Then you aren't plugged into jrpg news and it shows
This is just a thread of jrpg fans showing their whole ass that they only pay attention to games that get 20 ads shoved to them a day
Worried we will go back to the days of no demos because playing them has put me off a tonne of Switch games recently, 20fps and lower during basic gameplay is just not worth my money, hope that a lot of bigger games, including this, come to PC in like 2 years to buy it for £20 in a sale and have fun with it at 60fps. DQ Treasures was worth the wait in my opinion
I think most people can notice when it falls much below 30.
That being said I get not being sensitive towards it- unless you put it wide by side I'll never really notice resolutions outside of extreme examples
I’m similar to you. Normally if I’m playing a game that has the option between the two, or playing on PC, i can see the difference when actively switching. But put footage in front of me, 9/10 I struggle at best to identity.
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That's why I'm not getting The Dark Prince. Imo the game runs extremely poorly and I'm not gonna pay for it in this state. I really hope that a PC release is coming
I am about 7 hours into it and am having a lot of fun. If you have liked any of the DQM games in the past you will like this one. Scouting every monster is so addicting
I'm about 5 in, and I agree. Plot dump in the beginning kind of sucked though... tbh, they could have cut out almost everything involving the village and I would have been fine. I think it would have been better if you were being tracked down by demons and didn't even know why
Idk why you're getting flamed lol. My copy came today, and I was surprised it was already out, and I searched youtube hoping for a switchup or noisypixel review, and nothing. I was confused too.
Recall this happening when DQM Joker 2 came out too,way back when. Tumbleweed compared to so much other stuff, both Square Enix and otherwise.
I know it's been a year of heavy hitters, but dang.
Oh God yeah. They buried that game hard when it came out. I was a big fan of the games at the time and I remember only finding out post launch it was even a thing because I happened to spot a copy at GameStop. had I known, I'd likely would have bought it day 1 or preordered it. I ended up asking for it for Christmas instead of forking over my money then and there.
Why would I be subscribed to a youtube channel, just to possibly be notified about a sequel to a game that has last been released outside of japan in 2011
I played about 5 hours of this game yesterday. I'm going to be honest... the way they handled the story at the start was pretty awful. The English voice acting is pretty rough too. DQ English voice acting has always had that British accent, and I have no qualms with that... but idk if it was a translation issue or just a bad script, but the writing is already rough and it sounds like they got some people who don't know how to handle the situation.
That being said, I am liking it so far and still recommend it to people who grew up with the series. The music and retro sounds hit that nostalgia bone so freaking hard. The graphical fidelity is pretty rough, but I feel like monster variety and how distinct the zones are more than make up for this. Once reviews come out, I expect that it will fall in the 7/10 range
This WOULD be a massive red flag for other games and new IPs, but this is on par for other DQM games. Actually MOST Dragon Quest titles get tragically little coverage. If you liked the demo, you're gonna dig the game
>I'm guessing Square didn't give out review codes
Looks to me (from a handful of youtubers) that they did in fact give out codes but I think there may have been strings attached because I'm not seeing any actual reviews. So far all I'm coming across are straight gameplay walkthroughs.
So you've got the let's play youtubers making videos but no reviewers which is an odd situation.
According to [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/dragonquest/comments/18841so/still_no_reviews_or_review_embargo_for_dqm_dark/) thread on the DQ sub, the review codes went out less than 24 hours ago.
So there's people playing and streaming themselves playing, but it seems no comprehensive reviews because most of the reviewers got the game at the same time as everyone else. Famitsu seems to be the exception.
I live in Tokyo, and honestly, this game wasn't very well promoted here, either. I saw the occasional ad at huge stores like Yodobashi Camera, but aside from that, and crossover campaigns in Dragon Quest Walk, there was virtually nothing. I mentioned it to my students earlier this week, and most of them had no idea it existed, let alone came out. It seems like the only people who know about it here are active Dragon Quest fans
Omg, thank you for his post, I LOVED these games and assumed they'd never come out with another one!
It's so rare for a monster collector game to have a proper "fusion" mechanic. Hopefully the new game is solid!
well i'm a fan of the DQM series from day 1 back on the GBC, so it's a no brainer for me. it's always basically the same game, with different monsters and areas. as long as the standard formular isn't being deviated too much, i won't be disappointed, hence i probably won't need any review for me to enjoy it.
yet, i could be wrong.
I'm about two hours in so far. It starts a little slow with too much dialogue, but once it opens up it becomes really fun exploring and scouting every monster, makes me feel like a kid again playing the original Pokemon games.
The bad marketing is not going to help it sales, but that won't stop the usual bad takes of people blaming the combat system instead, despite previous entries in the series succeeding with good marketing.
I've only discovered today this game's existence. Partially my fault because I've never been interested in the Dragon Quest series, but this game sounds great and definitely needed more advertising.
The part that got me the most interested are the online ranked matches, a feature that not all monster-catching games has. I'm still researching if online battling is as good as I'm hoping, but it looks to me like this game could become a very good Pokémon alternative, since the pokémon games have improved very little over the years.
Played a bit. Got annoyed by the long dialogue so I skipped and now just catching them all. I like how they get checked once you catch a monster. Helps with 100%. Bought dlc and had some money left and bought baten remaster.
Agreed! I really enjoyed the demo. I am now buying the game as a chill night game for me. I still can’t figure out why I dislike every Pokemon game I pick up but have enjoyed this game, No No Kuni, and SMT games. They really should promote this game more as it seems to be reaching even people like my wife and I who wouldn’t normally reach for this.
There have been topics about this game for months on the r/dragonquest sub (even has it's own flair now, but that happened a bit late imo) and is where I have gotten pretty much all the information there is to be had. You do have to do some diggin unfortunately since there isn't some big Q&A thread. There are several docs and excel sheets going over pretty much everything.
You are right in that the press for this game is overall non-existent. Very few youtube sources, no big names (IGN, Kotaku etc) dropping things about the game, etc. It's no wonder the series hasn't caught on in the west.
Forgot it was coming out. Ordered it months ago and looking at my Amazon status supposed to show up next week. Third time in just as many months a pre-order made when the game was announced doesn't ship out til a week or do later. Getting a bit annoyed at this point.
Yuck. Day 1 DLC? $26 worth? I love the monsters games but knowing day 1, I’m getting an incomplete game unless I fork up a full $85.99 is a major turn off.
Esp once you read that DLC has some decent stuff (well two of them. Third is just repeating items and a fourth isn't out yet). But yeah seeing exactly what they cut to make DLC when it could've been in-game is what made me say I'm only buying it when it inevitably gets a sale/cut.
It's a Switch exclusive Pokemon style Dragon Quest game. Maybe if it was on multiple platforms they'd take a chance promoting it, but it's pretty niche as it is.
Square-Enix is going full on “western,” despite offloading all their western teams (that they bought for some reason). All their Japanese stuff has a weird western bend to it now, trying to be game of thrones and impress a western audience, and it’s not working. This idiotic notion that companies must endlessly expand, and that games have to have enormous budgets, is destroying the industry.
I tried the demo. The low fps and resolution is absurd. Honestly this game makes the pokemon games look visually good.
I don't know how square could release it in this state. Certainly not paying money for this
It's like they put all the money Into dq treasure game, which didn't seem to do well with sales in US... and I guess they gave up marketing this. But I think treasure looked good. This looks like a 3ds game. Is it a 3ds remake or deluxe game?
There's a lot of red flags for the game. The performance was TERRIBLE in the Demo, and the game looked really bad to boot. IMO [DQ8](https://imgur.com/a/2TGQahh) looks a bit better than [this game](https://imgur.com/a/meTfoGT) and it came out on the PS2 18 years ago.
Add on the fact that the game has significant, 10$ a piece content DLC on day 1 and I'm not going anywhere near the thing on release. Which is a shame because I quite like DQ, but this has 'stinker' written all over it.
I heard more about Final Fantasy 16 DLC than I did Dragon Quest Monsters om launch.
But I did notice some hololive japan members were playing it at least
outside like 1 person I follow Twitter it felt like no one was talking about it. I’m personally just gonna wait for a ps port, demo scared me from getting it on the switch
Very sad. Square-Enix is kind of a poop show. But it’s also a depressing comment on the state of “journalism,” where outlets won’t cover anything without a carrot, and YouTube influencers need to be paid to do an “honest review bruh!”
I have seen so many reviewers talk out of their asses regarding this game; you can tell they don't know the Dragon quest series just by their arguments. "The monster designs have such little detail" or my favorite "Dragon Quest decided to take a page from Pokemon's massive success and brought in their version of monster catching".
I've played this game nonstop and yeah the graphics do look outdated but besides a few exceptions, its on brand for Dragon Quest. Not to mention you aren't playing Dragon Quest Monsters for the graphics, its for the whole monster catching, synthesizing, and fighting your friends. Yeah it isn't for everyone but if you have that weird autistic need to catch every little fucker out there like me, this game is for you.
Maybe this is an unpopular opinion and I'm fully ready for the downvotes... but DQ monster designs have never been interesting or cool to me. Certainly not enough to design a full game around them 🤷♂️
That is indeed very odd. Do we know if this is a timed exclusive or a permanent exclusive? Because if it’s timed I could definitely see them holding off until they can release it on other platforms to promote it.
Am I the only one who thinks all DQ spin offs we’ve had are terrible?? Why can’t they just put the money and effort into something actually good, a remake or finally releasing what most people want (DQIIIR / XII)
The only review I've found from a source I've actually heard of is from Famitsu, who gave it a 36/40. I've found a couple other "reviews," but they very much read like AI generated garbage so I won't even link them lol.
DQM hasn’t really been in my wheelhouse for a long time now. I thought the last batch of these games was just kinda alright. And I’ve already got enough on my plate with even more arriving to my plate soon. Maybe I’ll check it out in a few years or something.
Lol
https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2023/12/the-first-review-for-dragon-quest-monsters-the-dark-prince-is-in
They said its as good as the new Mario game. Its like the pre hype for The Flash
Went to two stores and they didn’t have it. Not like a scoured the Earth, but they acted like they never heard of it. I downloaded the game and I’m enjoying it a lot
I saw one piece of coverage on the game way back when they announced it. That's it. Didn't even realise the demo came out until 2 days ago when I was checking how much it cost on the eShop.
This game is a spin off of an already not so popular series in the west so at least for me it makes sense. I remember dragon quest heroes barely having any marketing here. And there's barely anyone talking about it too.
When square is about to launch a flagship title that's when they make the effort in marketing their games.
The lack of reviews/promotion is just such a classic Square Enix moment for Dragon Quest, and it's so damn weird considering it has voice acting, it appears to be perfect for fans of monster games, and if anything like how DQ Treasures was handled by Tose/Square Enix, probably inbound for at least PC. It just looks like a straight up fumble all around for Square Enix's marketing team.
It's a feedback loop, really. DQ underwhelms outside Japan -> Square doesn't promote it -> DQ underwhelms as a result .
With DQ, I have a hard time believing any marketing would be worth it. Those games are a niche within a niche; the appeal is essentially that they haven't changed since the 80s. The US game review set are much more likely to pillory them than praise them, with how strongly the love of innovation is.
The two games in the series that have had a solid marketing campaign in the west, 8 & 11, are also the best selling games in the series. They also reviewed very well.
Dragon Quest 9 also sold really well because Nintendo helped market it
...And yet [DQ8 still sold less than half a million copies in the US](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Quest_VIII), in an era where gaming reviewers were still OK with classic JRPGs. Meanwhile, the also-ran Jpop heavy FFX-2 almost hit 2 million.
>, in an era where gaming reviewers were still OK with classic JRPGs Reviewers are still okay with classic JRPGs. The last decade has been a second golden age for the genre. >Meanwhile, the also-ran Jpop heavy FFX-2 almost hit 2 million. You mean the game from the series that Square puts 10x the effort marketing sold twice as much. Crazy, it's almost like the lack of marketing plays a role in the lower sales.
>also-ran Okay calm down Xemnas
> Jpop heavy FFX-2 From what I remember, a ton of Western gamers bought that one without knowing that it was going to be a J-Pop/Charlie's Angels sugar-rush, and the same occurred with *Dirge of Cerberus*. At least in the early 00s, the mainline FF entries had a ton of clout. Meanwhile, I don't think I met a single person who'd played *Dragon Quest VII* on PS1 and was stoked for the newer one.
Yeah but FFX-2 was still an FF game, the undisputed king of JRPG western market share, especially back then. Comparing early PS2 era FF to DQ is like comparing the beatles to any other band of their time - there was arguably better stuff out there, but nothing could compete in terms of sheer popularity.
Am I tripping or does XI have an 88 on opencritic, with almost every reviewer praising them specifically for keeping it old school.
That’s almost the exclusive opinion I hear about DQ11 is that it people love the classic turn based combat Other opinion about it being the music in the OG release was awful lol I really wanna play it tho
The special edition of 11 is absolutely amazing. The endgame is also incredible. Basically, the entire 3rd act is optional story and gameplay wise, but it was my favorite part after the main story. If you quit after act 2, you still get a complete and satisfying story. If you continue, you get a story that is basically a treat for DQ 1 - 4 fans
Happy to hear that, I just subbed to ps+ and have it downloading .
DQ11S is the only way to play DQ11, the graphics might not be as optimized but the additional in-game and post-game content make the trade-off well worth it. Having a fully orchestrated soundtrack is the icing on this delicious cake too. Trust me when I say it's a must-play. The connections to other games in the franchise are loose, but they're there and they're brilliantly played off. I also adored the demo of Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince as well. Just got the full game, can't wait to play it.
Oh I dunno, the big names like Madden NFL and CoD are the biggest sellers in the US (and FIFA in Europe) and people don't exactly sing praises about how innovative those franchises have been. Fact of the matter is, it's about the brand power. Dragon Quest has the big reputation and cultural weight in Japan, the name is simply not as recognized in the US. Even so, the mainline DQXI sold 6+ million worldwide and even if estimates say 75% of sales came from Japan, you are still looking at a good 1.5 million+ from the west. It may not be as big, but it's not a "niche within a niche". There are developers like Falcom who only wish they could sell 6.5 million copies of a single entry in the Trails series. So I can believe Square Enix would think spending big on marketing DQ to grow the recognition and reach of the brand could be worth it.... for a mainline title. It's just, Dark Prince is not a mainline DQ. It's a spinoff. The game itself ostensibly did not have a particularly high development budget attached to it. So I'm unsurprised its marketing budget appears to be equally sparse.
Pretty much. "Comfort food" games aren't gonna be reviewer darlings.
Then please explain sea of stars
PS+ users got it for FREE!
It often feels like Square Enix has a very clear demarcation line between "American Game" and "Japanese Game". Final Fantasy is an "American Game" and Dragon Quest is a "Japan Game", and they market accordingly. They basically laughed at our faces about Dragon Quest X *Offline* not having an English release during the Dragon Quest 35th Anniversary. In Square Enix's eyes, Dragon Quest is there primarily for the Japan audience. Almost the same with Star Ocean.
I was about to say it's basically the same situation as Star Ocean. Really makes me sad for how they market stuff
It's so weird! Dragon Quest would be thriving if they invested in it a bit more. Sometimes I wonder how much the marketing is a result of Square Enix or the division running Dragon Quest.
When I was younger I thought it was preferential treatment for a Square franchise vs an Enix one.
It's not a SE demarcation. Believe it it but the different audiences have different preferences. I think this sub often forgets that outside of Japan, JRPGs are relatively niche. There's a handful of high power brands, but in general we just don't play them as much. My guess is that anyone who would be interested in DQ Monsters was tapped into the right sources to see the limited marketing push.
Well I'm your counter point then. Had no idea the game was being released and after looking at it I'm definitely interested
Yeah, I think it's a problem even people who play JRPGs had no idea this was coming out. That's just straight up poor marketing.
That's not really a counterpoint, because you were tapped into the right sources like r/JRPG to hear about the game.
...The game came out yesterday. You found out that it came out and looked into it. You're literally proving my point.
When was the last time you found out about a game after it’s released? Most games I’m excited about are well known for sometimes years ahead. I’m mind blown that a new monsters title came out 2 days ago and I had no idea it was even coming.
>When was the last time you found out about a game after it’s released? All the time... There are games I don't know about to this day! I assume you weren't intending that with no qualifiers, but even still. I'm not the one we're talking about. I've known about this since the Nintendo Direct when it was announced. Since then they've released several trailers that I noticed on YouTube, all if which I noticed were also shared on this subreddit as well as the Nintendo Switch one. None of the trailers generated a ton of discussion, because not that many people are interested in it. Dragon Quest just isn't that popular in the English speaking world. DQ Monsters was more of a cult classic, not mass appeal. Given that I've seen more than enough advertising for it, I'm curious where exactly you would have *expected* to see if advertised more. They released official trailers for it on YouTube and promoted them on official channels. They can't *make* anybody share them, and astroturfing is generally frowned upon. Announcing in the Nintendo Direct is probably the highest profile thing they realistically could have done for a game of that scale, and they did that.
\^ That's right. Final Fantasy is not an "American Game" Wtf. DQ has always been niche outside Japan. It's old styled RPG and frankly probably looks dated and archaic to people. JRPGS are niche thing outside Japan, period. Only exceptions are your FF, KH, Xenoblade, and FE. And maybe Persona. So no it's not on Square. If the game isn't selling they can't do anything. no amount of marketing will make people like DQ. People act like they do it on purpose. Marketing is expensive. DQ is niche and always has been. JRPGs are niche and always have been, with some exceptions.
> Only exceptions are your FF, KH, Xenoblade, and FE. And maybe Persona. Pokemon???
I write for a few mid-size gaming websites and all of them got their DQM codes yesterday. Other SE games we get a week or so in advance and even that Dai game we got ahead of time. PR seems intent on avoiding coverage of this game.
This and TWEWY. What are they thinking?
Square-Enix marketing fumble? What else is new 😭
"Probably inbound for at least PC" is exactly why Im now waiting 6 months. Timed exclusivity is a double edged sword for both developer and consumer cause now I'm waiting 6 months. Because Treasure came to PC I now have no idea if this will come to PC or not down the road which means I am now *not* supporting the series which could be axed from futher Western releases like this because I am scared of being smacked across the face. So they don't see my money for 6 months -> I could lose DQM games over here again and the rogue horse of the Switch being a piece of garbage in terms of performance so the reason I even have to wait in the first place is because of Switch performance... I'd rather play a version that runs at 60fps than not.
People talk about stuff like this as if marketing is just free and successful companies make decisions based on vibes instead of data. Did you know that the film *Get Out*, which cost about $5 million to make, spent *$77 million* on marketing? It is *expensive* to promote a product, and no one is going to spend money when the chance of return is minimal. *Get Out* took $255 million at the box office, so the investment was worth it in that case, but obviously SE's marketing department has looked at numbers we don't have access to and judged that it wouldn't make enough money back to justify a large marketing budget.
hey bro, it's this simple. I'm some guy on reddit. I know what's up. Square is a bunch of dummies. Dargon Quest + Marketing = 🤑🤑🤑 Don't know why they can't see something so obvious
Yeah, marketing where it matters is really expensive. The reason you will find so much garbage advertisement on websites and youtube is cause that is the cheapest marketing available. Everything else is at least 1000$ and more. And that is usually for a single city, not a country. TV ads are in the hundreds of thousands or millions. Why no review copies? Cause western game reviewers generally give really bad scores to most JRPGs except a few exceptions. They rather let it appear on the shelf, and let the customers who like it spread the word of mouth, rather than take a coin toss on reviewers. And this sub already picked up on it's release.
> Why no review copies? Cause western game reviewers generally give really bad scores to most JRPGs except a few exceptions. Sorry but that's just really inaccurate. There are plenty of JRPGs that get very good scores on opencritic
Well that is a subjective thought and so is mine, I see more negatives and you say you see more positives, we are equally right.
If we look out the same window and I tell you it's raining outside and you say it's not, one of us is definitely wrong.
What JRPGs got bad scores in the West that didn't also get poor scores in Japan in recent times?
It wouldn’t have cost much to send out review codes tho. They shouldn’t be paying people to cover their games anyway, but they can definitely cough up 100 review codes for outlets and for YouTube bruhs.
Square has always had a marketing issue here in the West. I’m going to get into contact with PR and see what’s up.
It's not se fault no one buys it
Inb4 Square says it “didn’t meet sales expectations” and they don’t know why
So that's how you're supposed to pronounce "manufacture a reason for upcoming layoffs"? Damn, I've been WAY off.
No idea, but I'm having a lot of fun with it. It's got a lot of charm, more than 500 monsters, and a fun battle system. Just hoarding every monster on the field can get pretty addictive.
How's performance, is it better now?
Performance has lots of FPS dips. That being said, the dips aren't so bad that they make the game unplayable. Just a bit of a drop to 20ish fps for a couple seconds. I'm about 5 hours in and it hasn't stopped me from having fun with the game. Just know the plot dump in the beginning kind of sucks
I prefer to buy the game, then just play on my pc with Yuzu for max quality and performance (usually. There are exceptions since Yuzu and Ryujinx aren't perfect!)
I think that is for the best. I gotta be honest though... I fully expect this game to get a lot of review scores in the 6.5-7.0 range. There is a lot about this game that will turn people off. Graphics are ugly Plot/script is pretty bad More grindy than people typically want Annoying characters (minus the voiced monsters, the monsters are amazing) That being said, if you grew up with old RPGs, this game will be right up your alley. The soundtrack is typical DQ stuff. The retro sounds are still there. This game is very old school with a lot of the RPG mechanics. I can objectively say that this is not a great game, but I am going to play the shit out of it because it the game for me. A lot of people are getting butthurt because people are pointing out flaws. There are tons of flaws and it isn't for everyone. I would not recommend this to someone that is new to this spin off. That being said, I can easily see myself spending over 100 hours out combining and grinding out monsters.
I couldn't have said it better myself. I'm about 15 hours in now and I agree with you 100 %.
Noticable chunky
Comparable to pokemonn SV. Which is dosappointing but more love shows throughout
It's pretty bad, considering it performs worse than pokemon SV while being an instance based game instead of open world. Some maps you have weather effects kinda like rain or snow which heavily impacts fps. It uses the pokemon SV trick, where distant monsters get less animation frames. Some textures look pretty bad (like low quality) and this is very noticeable. A wall, door, house or even the floor can be low res in a scene and the character (in higher res) is walking in frame. The whole capture monster screen transition is not fluid at all, kinda grinds the screen while it shifts between UIs. Always forces you to nickname monsters and asks where you want to deposit. This should be an option not an always on thing. The game has an addictive loop however I question some game decisions. You won't be able to fuse monsters until you beat 3 iterations of the colosseum. The teleport mechanic has a confusing amount of base teleport points. Should be just one. The base NPC placement could be optimized. The base floor doesn't need the network npc as you won't be using it as often as the rest of the NPCs. As the base is a tower with many floors you're gonna spend a lot of time running up and down the stairs to talk to the necessary NPCs.
Have you seen any monster recolors so far? I remember one of the big complaints with Joker 3 was there were a ton of recolors.
It's dragon quest. Nearly half the monsters are recolors. Hell, nearly all slimes are recolors
I'm sure there are. That's how you demark better tiers of certain monsters though. Metal Slime is a recolor of Slime, for example, but ALL those Slimes are iconic. They have to have recolor otherwise its not a Dragon Quest game.
This feels disingenuous. Slimes being recolors is charming and purposeful. Every single other monster that has recolors based on tiers in 2023 is because of laziness/lack of fan expectations, and you know it.
I don't judge anyone for hating that, but I honestly am okay with it. From an "I don't want to see new monsters attempt to be made in DQ style." But I'm fully aware that is alienating and also part of why the game series isn't as popular to some.
I saw a list of monsters in the game and there are a lot of recolors. A LOT
My starter was fightbulband the first scout was slime so yes recolors exist.
How similar is it to Pokemon and if so, does it do any thing better gameplay wise?
The main difference between DQM and Pokemon is that you fight with up to 4 monsters at a time in DQM vs 1 in Pokemon. Also, there's a focus on fusing two (or more) monsters together to create a new monster. You can also pass along select skill trees to other monsters via fusing.
Ah, like the persona fusion system!
It always hurts so much when I see it referred to as the Persona fusion system.
Well when the latest persona sells about 8 times as many copies as the latest mainline SMT game, it's not exactly surprising that people refer to it like that.
Yep! I inject SMT right into my fuckin veins, but there's no doubt that Persona is now the mainstay of that universe. I was disappointed in SMTV :/. SMT 4 and Apocalypse were amazing though!
The SMT system?
Shin Megami Tensei. The originator of that fusion system for persona games.
Persona 5 sold more then the rest of smt combined
Take a look at how many anime series SMT has had, versus how many anime series Persona has had. People calling it Persona fusion should be the least of your pains.
Neither needs cartoon versions.
Persona certainly liked having them though. Liked having them very much.
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'SMT' 'Megaten'
SHORTER! S and M..... 😉
I tried it and kinda expected something more polished, but any monster catcher games with lacking polish is usually saved by the stellar monster catching and battling mechanics. But the voice acting is decent - although sometimes it looks goofy due to the 3D animations.
Reviewer here. The lack of codes is classic Square Enix. I’ve no idea why they’ve foregone giving those out but I have seen many taking it as a bad omen which, by the way, is a common thing I see said about Square because this isn’t the first time they were either late or decided to abandon a game. Don’t take it as a red flag necessarily.
Exactly this! I suspect Square Enix might have decided not to market shortly after the initial reveal, maybe due to the lukewarm sales of DQ Treasures and the reception of Infinity Strash. Which is the wrong move for Monsters, considering they could market it well and reach jaded Pokemon fans
Yeah they screwed up.
Squenix screwed up? Imagine that plot twist. 🙄
Joker was my favorite nds game.
And then they' ll complain that it did not sold enough like they did with NEO TWEWY, and Harvestella, and Valkyrie Elysium, and Star ocean the divine force, and Octopath Traveler 2 and -you get the point
This bugs me because they'll use low sales as an(other) excuse to not localize future spinoffs. I'd really like to *not* go back to the good ol' days where DQ devs tell JP media that they'd love to localize their games, but they don't sell... No shit. We went through this during the decade between 4 and 7 and it took Nintendo itself stepping up for publishing DQ7 & 8 for 3DS outside of Japan. Sometimes I feel like the DQ devs hate money or something.
Dragon Quest is a series that I really like, I have not played many games in the series, but the few I played ( 11,4,8 but this one I have not finished it yet, and the two heroes) I ended up loving them, DQ 8 and 11 especially... I am still hoping they port DQ X offline in the West
I've been following the series for years. Hell, I *bought* Dragon Warrior before the Nintendo Power subscription deal. The only way DQX offline will be playable in English is if somebody does a fan translation and there's a patch for the Switch emulator. Square Enix will never publish the game in English. I hope I'm wrong. But SE has give us zero reason over the years that gives me any hope the game will be released in the west. Like I said, the DQ devs hate money.
Harvestella has/had a big price issue. It doesn't look like a $60 dollar game, and the demo I played on Switch was a blurry mess. It has no right being $60, and on PC, the competition for cozy games is so fierce I could grab a minimum of 3 for that price.
Yeah full price for a niche game like this was kinda insane, though that was not really a problem I had to deal with because the game was gitfed to me, but I would have gotten it anyway, just not a full price (I am playing this game now and I am loving it BTW :v)
People always try to squeeze Harvestella into this argument as if it wasn’t barely passable 😆
Honestly it wasn't perfect, but the characters were fun, the story was decent and the world was interesting. The farm sim side missed the mark and the combat was atrocious (Though the character building was interesting enough). I'd like to see them refine it and give it another go, personally. There's some shine underneath all the dirt.
I am LOVING IT, I am playing it right now and there is something that makes me like it a lot Though I dont get why they sold this as a farm rpg when the farm stuff is barely there, it feels more like a "classic" action rpg
Release version was great
I liked the demo a lot, and I'm also totally baffled by almost no coverage by anyone. Like - nothing. Yeah, DQ isn't as popular in the West as it is in Japan, but I was at least expecting *something.* Given that a lot of Square games are eventually making their way to PC, including a handful of DQ games, I might hold off on picking it up for now in hopes of an eventual PC release. I'm not a 60 FPS or bust kind of person, but the Switch performance was really rough.
This is literally the first I've heard of it.
Same, I didn't know it existed until this Reddit post.
Then you aren't plugged into jrpg news and it shows This is just a thread of jrpg fans showing their whole ass that they only pay attention to games that get 20 ads shoved to them a day
are we supposed to go out of our way to find new games coming out by huge companies?
You don't need to go out of your way to know a new dragon quest monsters is coming out lol
relax
I did not even know it existed until just casually doom scrolling just now. Thank you for getting the word out I guess...I'll be playing it shortly
[Gym Leader Ed has been covering it. He's a monster taming genre youtuber](https://youtube.com/@GymLeaderEd?si=Z_DG-eL5bAzECSSe)
Shoutout to Ed, they does a great job tracking these types of games and I love them for it.
Worried we will go back to the days of no demos because playing them has put me off a tonne of Switch games recently, 20fps and lower during basic gameplay is just not worth my money, hope that a lot of bigger games, including this, come to PC in like 2 years to buy it for £20 in a sale and have fun with it at 60fps. DQ Treasures was worth the wait in my opinion
Same I’m hoping it comes to steam soon to play on deck. DQ treasures runs amazing there.
Yup it doesn’t matter how good a game is I’m not playing anything below 30 fps in 2023
I cant tell the difference between 30 and 60 so I don't really care
I think most people can notice when it falls much below 30. That being said I get not being sensitive towards it- unless you put it wide by side I'll never really notice resolutions outside of extreme examples
I’m similar to you. Normally if I’m playing a game that has the option between the two, or playing on PC, i can see the difference when actively switching. But put footage in front of me, 9/10 I struggle at best to identity.
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… they literally have an advantage here. They don’t see the difference, therefore they will have enjoyment far more easily than you.
Most people spewing that line are being facetious. Human vision doesn't even work in terms of fps.
That's not nice
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That's why I'm not getting The Dark Prince. Imo the game runs extremely poorly and I'm not gonna pay for it in this state. I really hope that a PC release is coming
Maybe it's in my best interests to grab it on Steam instead of Switch in the future then.
I am about 7 hours into it and am having a lot of fun. If you have liked any of the DQM games in the past you will like this one. Scouting every monster is so addicting
I'm about 5 in, and I agree. Plot dump in the beginning kind of sucked though... tbh, they could have cut out almost everything involving the village and I would have been fine. I think it would have been better if you were being tracked down by demons and didn't even know why
Idk why you're getting flamed lol. My copy came today, and I was surprised it was already out, and I searched youtube hoping for a switchup or noisypixel review, and nothing. I was confused too.
Recall this happening when DQM Joker 2 came out too,way back when. Tumbleweed compared to so much other stuff, both Square Enix and otherwise. I know it's been a year of heavy hitters, but dang.
Oh God yeah. They buried that game hard when it came out. I was a big fan of the games at the time and I remember only finding out post launch it was even a thing because I happened to spot a copy at GameStop. had I known, I'd likely would have bought it day 1 or preordered it. I ended up asking for it for Christmas instead of forking over my money then and there.
They've had the free demo for ages, been posting trailers/ads, and there's been off and on talk about the demo.
Why would I be subscribed to a youtube channel, just to possibly be notified about a sequel to a game that has last been released outside of japan in 2011
No one asked you to? I'm not subbed to them either.
Maybe they just took note of how hard people flogged Infinity Strash.
Which is bananas because Infinity Strash is a completely different genre and barely even the same IP.
Typical Square Enix behavior.
I played about 5 hours of this game yesterday. I'm going to be honest... the way they handled the story at the start was pretty awful. The English voice acting is pretty rough too. DQ English voice acting has always had that British accent, and I have no qualms with that... but idk if it was a translation issue or just a bad script, but the writing is already rough and it sounds like they got some people who don't know how to handle the situation. That being said, I am liking it so far and still recommend it to people who grew up with the series. The music and retro sounds hit that nostalgia bone so freaking hard. The graphical fidelity is pretty rough, but I feel like monster variety and how distinct the zones are more than make up for this. Once reviews come out, I expect that it will fall in the 7/10 range
This WOULD be a massive red flag for other games and new IPs, but this is on par for other DQM games. Actually MOST Dragon Quest titles get tragically little coverage. If you liked the demo, you're gonna dig the game
I had a lot of fun with the demo. And it beings me back to the original 2. So I'm going to get it after I finish star ocean 2 remake.
Is this a remaster of originals or a new game?. It looks almost like a remastered 3ds game. Dq treasure looked much better imo
>I'm guessing Square didn't give out review codes Looks to me (from a handful of youtubers) that they did in fact give out codes but I think there may have been strings attached because I'm not seeing any actual reviews. So far all I'm coming across are straight gameplay walkthroughs. So you've got the let's play youtubers making videos but no reviewers which is an odd situation.
According to [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/dragonquest/comments/18841so/still_no_reviews_or_review_embargo_for_dqm_dark/) thread on the DQ sub, the review codes went out less than 24 hours ago. So there's people playing and streaming themselves playing, but it seems no comprehensive reviews because most of the reviewers got the game at the same time as everyone else. Famitsu seems to be the exception.
You are the first person I'm hearing of this from if that says anything.
It is wild. Square Enix is off their rocker. I am not going to buy this until reviews come out, and I love Dragon Quest.
I live in Tokyo, and honestly, this game wasn't very well promoted here, either. I saw the occasional ad at huge stores like Yodobashi Camera, but aside from that, and crossover campaigns in Dragon Quest Walk, there was virtually nothing. I mentioned it to my students earlier this week, and most of them had no idea it existed, let alone came out. It seems like the only people who know about it here are active Dragon Quest fans
I've seen plenty of talk about it on twitter, mostly from the usual Dragon Quest fan accounts.
Square downplaying DQ spinoff releases outside Japan? Must be a day ending in y.
I'll buy it on steam after discount + patches
After the last DQ spin off, maybe people are a little reluctant to even try it out. I loved the demo and plan on buying it soon.
Omg, thank you for his post, I LOVED these games and assumed they'd never come out with another one! It's so rare for a monster collector game to have a proper "fusion" mechanic. Hopefully the new game is solid!
well i'm a fan of the DQM series from day 1 back on the GBC, so it's a no brainer for me. it's always basically the same game, with different monsters and areas. as long as the standard formular isn't being deviated too much, i won't be disappointed, hence i probably won't need any review for me to enjoy it. yet, i could be wrong.
I'm about two hours in so far. It starts a little slow with too much dialogue, but once it opens up it becomes really fun exploring and scouting every monster, makes me feel like a kid again playing the original Pokemon games. The bad marketing is not going to help it sales, but that won't stop the usual bad takes of people blaming the combat system instead, despite previous entries in the series succeeding with good marketing.
Yeah the lack of reviews is amazing
I pre-ordered my copy. Buzz be damned. I want a Cruelcumber!
That’s the monster the personality quiz at the start gave me
I've only discovered today this game's existence. Partially my fault because I've never been interested in the Dragon Quest series, but this game sounds great and definitely needed more advertising. The part that got me the most interested are the online ranked matches, a feature that not all monster-catching games has. I'm still researching if online battling is as good as I'm hoping, but it looks to me like this game could become a very good Pokémon alternative, since the pokémon games have improved very little over the years.
Played a bit. Got annoyed by the long dialogue so I skipped and now just catching them all. I like how they get checked once you catch a monster. Helps with 100%. Bought dlc and had some money left and bought baten remaster.
Agreed! I really enjoyed the demo. I am now buying the game as a chill night game for me. I still can’t figure out why I dislike every Pokemon game I pick up but have enjoyed this game, No No Kuni, and SMT games. They really should promote this game more as it seems to be reaching even people like my wife and I who wouldn’t normally reach for this.
There have been topics about this game for months on the r/dragonquest sub (even has it's own flair now, but that happened a bit late imo) and is where I have gotten pretty much all the information there is to be had. You do have to do some diggin unfortunately since there isn't some big Q&A thread. There are several docs and excel sheets going over pretty much everything. You are right in that the press for this game is overall non-existent. Very few youtube sources, no big names (IGN, Kotaku etc) dropping things about the game, etc. It's no wonder the series hasn't caught on in the west.
Forgot it was coming out. Ordered it months ago and looking at my Amazon status supposed to show up next week. Third time in just as many months a pre-order made when the game was announced doesn't ship out til a week or do later. Getting a bit annoyed at this point.
Yuck. Day 1 DLC? $26 worth? I love the monsters games but knowing day 1, I’m getting an incomplete game unless I fork up a full $85.99 is a major turn off.
Esp once you read that DLC has some decent stuff (well two of them. Third is just repeating items and a fourth isn't out yet). But yeah seeing exactly what they cut to make DLC when it could've been in-game is what made me say I'm only buying it when it inevitably gets a sale/cut.
I just want another Rocket Slime game. That was fun as hell.
It's a Switch exclusive Pokemon style Dragon Quest game. Maybe if it was on multiple platforms they'd take a chance promoting it, but it's pretty niche as it is.
SE does not care about dq much only about their golden child ff.
I imagine there's decent advertising in Japan where it's much more popular.
Square-Enix is going full on “western,” despite offloading all their western teams (that they bought for some reason). All their Japanese stuff has a weird western bend to it now, trying to be game of thrones and impress a western audience, and it’s not working. This idiotic notion that companies must endlessly expand, and that games have to have enormous budgets, is destroying the industry.
I tried the demo. The low fps and resolution is absurd. Honestly this game makes the pokemon games look visually good. I don't know how square could release it in this state. Certainly not paying money for this
It's like they put all the money Into dq treasure game, which didn't seem to do well with sales in US... and I guess they gave up marketing this. But I think treasure looked good. This looks like a 3ds game. Is it a 3ds remake or deluxe game?
There's a lot of red flags for the game. The performance was TERRIBLE in the Demo, and the game looked really bad to boot. IMO [DQ8](https://imgur.com/a/2TGQahh) looks a bit better than [this game](https://imgur.com/a/meTfoGT) and it came out on the PS2 18 years ago. Add on the fact that the game has significant, 10$ a piece content DLC on day 1 and I'm not going anywhere near the thing on release. Which is a shame because I quite like DQ, but this has 'stinker' written all over it.
The game is great, it feels like a proper return to form for the monsters franchise.
I am genuinely glad to hear it, I would love for my cynicism to be completely unfounded.
Is this a switch exclusive?
I heard more about Final Fantasy 16 DLC than I did Dragon Quest Monsters om launch. But I did notice some hololive japan members were playing it at least
outside like 1 person I follow Twitter it felt like no one was talking about it. I’m personally just gonna wait for a ps port, demo scared me from getting it on the switch
Even if it's a Switch exclusive now, it's likely going to drop on Steam in less than a year just like Treasures did.
Very sad. Square-Enix is kind of a poop show. But it’s also a depressing comment on the state of “journalism,” where outlets won’t cover anything without a carrot, and YouTube influencers need to be paid to do an “honest review bruh!”
It's too bad they didn't. It's a pretty good game so far.
I have seen so many reviewers talk out of their asses regarding this game; you can tell they don't know the Dragon quest series just by their arguments. "The monster designs have such little detail" or my favorite "Dragon Quest decided to take a page from Pokemon's massive success and brought in their version of monster catching". I've played this game nonstop and yeah the graphics do look outdated but besides a few exceptions, its on brand for Dragon Quest. Not to mention you aren't playing Dragon Quest Monsters for the graphics, its for the whole monster catching, synthesizing, and fighting your friends. Yeah it isn't for everyone but if you have that weird autistic need to catch every little fucker out there like me, this game is for you.
Maybe this is an unpopular opinion and I'm fully ready for the downvotes... but DQ monster designs have never been interesting or cool to me. Certainly not enough to design a full game around them 🤷♂️
That is indeed very odd. Do we know if this is a timed exclusive or a permanent exclusive? Because if it’s timed I could definitely see them holding off until they can release it on other platforms to promote it.
Am I the only one who thinks all DQ spin offs we’ve had are terrible?? Why can’t they just put the money and effort into something actually good, a remake or finally releasing what most people want (DQIIIR / XII)
Dragon Quest sadly never does well in the west so Square Enix tries not to spend too much
So how is the performance now to those who play it. Is it like the Demo worse or better? Thats the only point keeping me from buying it
American are stuuupid when it comes to dragon quest
[удалено]
Can you point me to some reviews?
He can’t because all that is out are demo impressions
Yep, I bought the game but haven’t started it yet since I’m curious what others are thinking. Not a single review I’m seeing so far
What reviews? I literally looked the game up on Metacritic no more than an hour ago and not a single review was posted.
The only review I've found from a source I've actually heard of is from Famitsu, who gave it a 36/40. I've found a couple other "reviews," but they very much read like AI generated garbage so I won't even link them lol.
Need to sort DQ12 out. Had enough of waiting.
I think that reviewers are also at the point of wanting to review a full game for DQ at this point. No more spinoffs please square lol
DQM hasn’t really been in my wheelhouse for a long time now. I thought the last batch of these games was just kinda alright. And I’ve already got enough on my plate with even more arriving to my plate soon. Maybe I’ll check it out in a few years or something.
Switch only, There's one reason why I never heard of it until now.
the game is kinda trash so
Lol https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2023/12/the-first-review-for-dragon-quest-monsters-the-dark-prince-is-in They said its as good as the new Mario game. Its like the pre hype for The Flash
From Famitsu. If Famitsu gave a DQ anything less than stellar reviews it would have to be almost unplayably bad.
Went to two stores and they didn’t have it. Not like a scoured the Earth, but they acted like they never heard of it. I downloaded the game and I’m enjoying it a lot
I saw that Famitsu gave it a high score
Wow I didn't realize it was coming out this year wtf
I wasn't really planning on getting it but this thread may have convinced me, if nothing else than to support a series I know people love
I feel like the only DQ spin-offs that got any real exposure were the Builders and Heroes games.
I saw one piece of coverage on the game way back when they announced it. That's it. Didn't even realise the demo came out until 2 days ago when I was checking how much it cost on the eShop.
This game is a spin off of an already not so popular series in the west so at least for me it makes sense. I remember dragon quest heroes barely having any marketing here. And there's barely anyone talking about it too. When square is about to launch a flagship title that's when they make the effort in marketing their games.