Square Enix officially revealed DRAGON QUEST MONSTERS: The Dark Prince at the Nintendo Direct today, where the main protagonist catches and trains monsters instead of fighting them.
In a slew of announcements from the Nintendo Direct today, Square Enix showed up to announce their newest title in the long-running Dragon Quest series, DRAGON QUEST MONSTERS: The Dark Prince being revealed with Pokémon-like monster-catching and battling. As one of Square Enix’s longest-running franchises alongside pillars like Final Fantasy, this newest entry should have fans excited and ready for more, especially with its December 1st, 2023 release date.
Here is the description from Nintendo for the upcoming RPG, with some more details on what players can expect from this unique entry in the Dragon Quest series:
“Journey into a fantastical world on a quest for revenge in DRAGON QUEST MONSTERS: The Dark Prince.
Psaro is cursed and is unable to harm anything with monster blood. Now, he must become a Monster Wrangler to create an army for battle.
The hunt for high-ranked monsters takes Psaro through the ever-changing seasons of Nadiria and its unique environments, with rivers of bubbling lava, mysterious ancient ruins, and soaring towers of cake. Along the way, Psaro meets the kind-hearted elf, Rose, who joins his adventure to seek out ever-stronger monsters.
The key to Psaro’s success lies with synthesis: the ability to combine two monsters and create a stronger offspring. Each new creation brings Psaro one step closer to his goal of becoming the Master of Monsterkind.”
With vastly different biomes to explore and certainly tons of different monsters from across the series, as well as new ones to be discovered, DRAGON QUEST MONSTERS: The Dark Prince looks to mix those raising, training, and battling mechanics we are so familiar with, while also adding a unique twist in how combining monsters creates altogether new ones to fight with, more similarly to Tecmo’s Monster Rancher series.
Even though the number of monsters you can use wasn’t explicitly discussed, we see 4v4 battles in the trailer, andhe line mentioning you would be “building an army,” so some of these fights could get quite large, theoretically. Additionally, becoming the “Master of Monsterkind” does sound quite similar to becoming a Pokémon Master, even if they both have a nice ring to them, adding to the obvious similarities with the world’s leading monster-catcher.
While the series is no stranger to spin-offs based on other popular intellectual properties, this section of the Dragon Quest series ventured into Pokémon’s mechanics first in 1998, but with how well titles like Dragon Quest Builders and others have done, one can only imagine that this should be a fun and exciting title for fans of the franchise. Releasing on December 1st, 2023, DRAGON QUEST MONSTERS: The Dark Prince looks to add another unique off-shoot to the franchise’s core.
