I wasn't sure if I was going to like this game or not, but a friend of mine suggested it and I have thoroughly enjoyed it. I love the Synthesis'ing Its like putting together a puzzle xD

I tried really hard to like this. Dragon Quest Monsters for the Gameboy was one of my favorite games, that I still get an itch for and replay every few years. And man, you can almost see the vision in this game. It’s really cool to see the monsters from my childhood animated, the mechanics are very similar, and there’s new monsters and stuff, it all seemed promising.

But this is just a very low quality product. Okay, fine, the story and cutscenes are silly nonsense, it’s a Dragon Quest game I’m fine with it. Okay, fine, animations are bad, environments aren’t interesting, and it feels like I’m playing a game made entirely out of reused assets, sure, whatever. It’s got the monsters, and the combining monsters, and the battle system, so that’s good enough, right? But it just wasn’t for me. Like, the number of times while playing I was thinking ‘I’d rather be playing the gameboy version’ just kept happening. Or heck, I even started getting nostalgic for the Digimon games and their quality of life features! Generating new monsters and exploring new areas were both incredibly unrewarding because I didn't really feel like the content went anywhere. It's all just the same like, 12 attacks recycled between monsters. There just isn't enough variety to keep me hooked.

So, as a huge fan of the older games in the series (and even of older dragon quest titles in general), I’ve got to say this game doesn’t meet the expectations or quality of a game that came out in 1998. I don’t think that’s nostalgia talking but take it for what it’s worth.

From a Dragon Quest fan, this is not a great title to dive into the series with.

Monsters follow a set menu for their abilities, like a "family group" every monster in said group has the exact same set of abilities. Nothing like playing the monster battle mini-game within the actual main titles (Dragon Quest 8 needs you to win all monster battles to recruit Morrie).

I don't understand why the devs reduced the age of Psaro and Rose for this game too. Psaro should be an adult of probably 30-40 years of age, and Rose was more like his wife than what they wrote in here. I don't understand why they made this decision. Did they make it to appeal to children? But children will play a video game with a main character of whatever age and be happy (blimey, children beg their parents to buy them GTA), the same when you're reading.

The music is the worst part of this game though, aside from the wonderful pieces from Sugiyama from Dragon Quest 4, but there are so many jarring tracks or no music at all, that feel so unnatural for a Dragon Quest title in it. I don't understand why the music is so bad in this title, there are so many great composers out there that they could hire or commission a new composer that delivers a similar flare that Sugiyama brought to the games (like when Larian Studios brough Borislav Slavov on after Kirill Pokrovsky passed away).

In the end, this game is only "okay" for fans of Dragon Quest, because fans are the only ones who will be able to put up with how bad this game is for the sheer love of Dragon Quest.