Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince Review: A Wrangler’s Royal Feast

Dragon Quest Monsters has always held an extremely special place in my heart. While Dragon Quest—or Dragon Warrior as it was known back then—had been around since 1989, my first-ever Dragon Quest experience came in the form of a Game Boy Color game called Dragon Warrior Monsters. It didn’t take long before I was hooked. As a kid obsessed with Pokémon, I was always looking for new games that let me collect monsters—and DWM didn’t disappoint. And, now, here we are in 2023, celebrating the series’ 25th Anniversary (in Japan) with the latest DQM title: Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince. And, boy, has age certainly not slowed this series down.

The Ties that Bind

Watch out, fellas, we’ve got a real contender for Dad of the Year over here!

Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince follows none other than Psaro (pronounced like “sorrow”)—a half-human/half-monster hybrid and iconic antagonist of Dragon Quest IV—as he learns the ropes of monster wrangling. As a child, Psaro once traveled to Nadiria—a monster-filled underworld—to beg his monstrous father to save his ailing human mother. Rather than having any pity on his son, however, Randolfo instead seizes the opportunity to beat Psaro within an inch of his life—cursing him to never lay harm to another monster again in the process. After an unspecified number of years, Psaro finally embarks out on a journey to slay his own father—all by using the might of other monsters.

Out of all of the Dragon Quest games that have come out so far, The Dark Prince is particularly special in terms of story. While it isn’t uncommon for DQM and DQM-adjacent titles to feature younger versions of party members from mainline DQ games such as Terry, Yangus, and Eric, TDP is the first in the series to ever feature a protagonist who is both 1.) an antagonist and 2.) operating within the timeline of their original game.

Given his more family-friendly makeover, it’s really easy to forget that the adorably grumpy-looking Psaro is the same one who goes on to commit countless atrocities in DQIV. However, while The Dark Prince doesn’t necessarily follow its source material beat-by-beat, it does its darndest to make sure that you don’t ever completely forget who this future final boss is (sorry for the spoilers on the 23-year-old game)—and I love it. The Dark Prince is, by far, the most expansive DQM title in terms of lore-building. As a series that typically stays incredibly loyal to traditional concepts of good and evil (which I’m not shaming at all), it’s exciting seeing a game whose narrative blurs the lines a bit. Just be sure that you’ve actually played DQIV before going into this one, though, as TDP just kind of assumes you know what’s going on and glosses over major story beats related to its source material.

Oh, the Places You’ll Teleport to Using a Giant Tower

DQMTDP does a great job with giving monsters their own lives and personalities!

Given that the ever-growing list of embarrassing problems masquerading itself as Pokémon’s Ninth Generation has been at the forefront of gaming for a good chunk of this year, 2023 hasn’t been particularly kind to monster-collecting enthusiasts. And, if you’re anything like me, you might have been holding your breath that Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince was going to be some kind of miracle that would set everything straight. And if that does sound like you, I have some bad news and some good news. The bad news is that it’s not some Xenlon-tier testament to gaming, especially when it comes to the game’s rougher graphical approach and floaty controls. The good news, however, is that none of the problems I just mentioned stop it from being a phenomenally fun time.

In terms of its more technical aspects, The Dark Prince operates like… well, like just about every other Dragon Quest Monsters game out there. Rather than featuring a large, freely explorable interconnected world similar to its main series counterparts, TDP takes a more bite-size approach by chunking things into individually explorable areas—with each area offering diversity in terms of what monsters live there, and the presence (or lack thereof) of special locations like dungeons or towns. Truthfully, it isn’t anything that we haven’t seen from a DQM game before, and I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t hoping for a more open-world experience. Fortunately, The Dark Prince did mitigate my woes a bit with a new approach to its older mechanical style.

Being a half-monster monster-wrangler hellbent on taking down dear old dad, almost all of The Dark Prince’s gameplay takes place within Nadira. If you’ve played the second Dragon Quest trilogy (DQIV – DQVI), you might remember Nadiria’s size being anything but big enough to fit an entire game into—but you’d be wrong. Operating in a manner similar to how The Divine Comedy describes Hell, Nadiria is comprised of a handful of circles—each complete with Upper, Middle, and Lower Echelons (mostly, anyway). And, before you ask—no, it’s not all doom and gloom.

While a fittingly large amount of Nadiria is less-than-happy looking, Nadiria features some incredibly neat locales for players to explore—including one circle filled to the brim with discarded technology and another circle where everything is made of cake and candy. On top of this, The Dark Prince also offers a pleasant amount of exploration-based diversity, meaning that, while areas do tend to be a bit flat at first, you’ll eventually be rewarded with some pleasingly complex areas so long as you’re willing to put in a bit of effort.

On top of its varied locales, The Dark Prince also offers a new mechanic for players to enjoy—time (no, really, I promise it’s cool)! Represented by a unique in-game clock on their HUD, players can see time pass as they explore the world around them, with the passage of time responsible for a day/night cycle, weather, and even the changing of seasons! Naturally, the appearance (or disappearance) of certain monsters is the biggest draw to this system, but the seasons mechanic also physically affects the layout of each area that you’re in, opening and closing access to new areas, shortcuts, and treasure. Overall, TDP’s time mechanic is a great addition, being notable enough to bring consistent change to the game while also making sure that it’s not all-encompassing to the point of being annoying for players who are trying to get to certain places or recruit certain monsters.

A Master of Monsterkind

He’s… he’s beautiful…

Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince may have left me wanting a bit more in terms of its world, but there’s one thing about this game that doesn’t disappoint—its monsters. Featuring an impressive collection that spans well over 500, TDP’s resplendent roster of recruitable ruffians will most certainly have you rejoicing, and rightfully so! While the Dragon Quest series is never short on cool, quirky, and, at times, concerning baddies, I don’t think that I’ve ever had a Dragon Quest game’s bestiary delight me as much as this one has—especially as someone who’s always been partial to the slime family. Not only are there familiar faces abound, but there are plenty of newcomers, too, all but ensuring that you’ll leave this game with more than a few favorites.

Despite its grand offering of 500+ reformed bad guys for players to command (wait, are they still bad if they’re Paro’s?), monster mechanics have actually been simplified a bit. Operating incredibly similarly to how it did in the Joker trilogy, The Dark Prince offers a wide amount of monster customization for players to enjoy. While monsters do have permanent fixtures in terms of stat growth and passive abilities, their three skill trees (known in-game as “Talents”) can be manipulated by the player with a huge degree of freedom thanks to the game’s decision to remove any kind of breeding/synthesis dichotomy (gender, polarization, etc.). While I do feel that there’s something to be said about making things like monster breeding/synthesis/etc. complicated, I honestly found myself enjoying how easy it was.

While most of the changes related to monsters were done in favor of simplification, TDP did mix things up by adding in a monster size mechanic. While monster sizes aren’t new in the strictest sense, TDP sees their utilization quite differently than its DQM predecessors. Rather than implementing sizes based on monsters alone, every single monster in this game comes in small and large variants. Generally speaking, small monsters act as the “standard,” only taking up one of the four party slots, learning three passives, and boasting standard stats for their type.

TDP’s big boys, on the other hand, learn a whopping six passives, have much higher stat totals, and can attack anywhere from 2 – 4 times per round, with the drawback being that they eat up two of your four slots. Admittedly, the game does heavily favor tinier terrors—with large monsters being more difficult to get ahold of—but the fact that the size variation exists in the first place essentially means that the game goes from having 500+ potential party members to over a thousand—which, in my opinion, is super-duper cool (that’s an industry term, just trust me).

An Adventure Work Fighting (The Entirety of Humankind) For

Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince is a wonderfully whimsical—and, at times, delightfully dark—new entry into the Dragon Quest Monsters franchise. While its graphics were more dated than I’d have liked, and I did find myself wanting a more free-roaming experience, I’d be lying if I said that I was anything but happy with how this game turned out. I truly hope that Square Enix continues putting their all into making DQM better and better with each new entry. Happy 25th Anniversary, DQM!

Final Verdict: 4/5

Available on: Nintendo Switch (Reviewed); Publisher: Square Enix; Developer: Eidos; Players: 1 (Offline), 1 – 2 (Online); Released: December 1, 2023; ESRB: E10+ for Everyone Ages 10+; MSRP: $59.99

Full disclosure: A review copy was provided by the publisher.