Dragon Quest Monsters is back, and differently from Dragon Quest Heroes, we are not too happy this time... Games with monster battling have been really common since Pokémon, but Dragon Quest Monsters always had enough quality to rise above the rest.

The game presents the usual monsters from the Dragon Quest universe (I’m looking at you, Slimes), that are very popylar with the japanese public, but the excessive focus on battling brins in the repetition.

The story is pretty generic, you play like a boy that looks like a Trunks clone and is part of Cell, an organization that studies monsters. End of Dragon Ball jokes. Eventually you’ll find yourself in a plot of becoming the best battler in the world, saving the world, or both.

In the beggining you can chose one of three monsters that will follow you trough the game. With the help of this first monster, you’re able to Scout other monsters, just like Pokéballs, it’s a system based on percentage, you try to cause has much "damage" to the monster as possible so that you have a random chance in this percentage of the monster joining your team. The stronger your monsters are, the easier is to Scout others.

You can have three monsters in your team, equip them with itens and chose automatic strategies so that they act by a simple command of "Fight" in the menu, whitout detailling their moves. You can use the touch screen to play, but the interface doesn’t help with really small buttons.

One of the biggest problems is that the game is too hard and out of proportions, asking that you keep leveling up for a long time just to get better fighting skills for your monsters and be able to advance in the story.

You can see the monsters on the map and you can avoid them, or even tease, but they keep changing their routines, appearing, disappearing with no logic at all, like if you were not looking. Something that happens often is that some monsters appear or disappear after some battles, and this can be annoying because you can fight against a strong monster just to lose in another battle with an unexplained clone of him that just showed up. Other times you can fight a monster and them another one that you planned to Scout, is not there anymore.

The graphics show a nice 3D that’s pretty impressive on Nintendo DS, with big maps that can be seen from afar with no difficult, not to mention the beautiful work on the textures that makes the models a lot more detailled and with an incredible art. The musics are the usual Dragon Quest themes, but even the battle theme will get repetitive with their clear marks.

With some nice graphics and an interesting battle system, Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker has some value, but it’s sin is to force the player to repetition in an unnatural way that actually don’t let you explore the best parts in the game. With an online system that’s clearly limited, with no online battles, it’s recommended to keep up with the graphic simplicity of Pokémon that shows it’s strenght in other more important areas.