Product Description

• Collect over 200 monsters to create the ultimate team of monsters!
• Train your monster squad to be the strongest! With over 160 skills to teach your monsters, the combinations are almost infinite!
• Synthesise amazing new creatures that inherit the best abilities of their parents and perhaps gain some new rare skills too!
• Battle other teams of monsters, using awesome powers to see who is best!
• Explore a rich, visually stunning 3D world filled with monsters, treasures and surprises!
• Challenge a friend and their monster team via DS Wireless Play!
• Compare and challenge your team against players in Europe and the USA, via the Wildcard World Cup available with Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2743 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: Square Enix
• Released on: 2008-03-14
• Rating: To Be Announced
• Platform: Nintendo DS
• Dimensions: .21 pounds

Manufacturer's Description
DRAGON QUEST MONSTERS: Joker is a hot new monster collection RPG for the Nintendo DS. With advanced 3D graphics and a unique multiplayer system - fighting, collecting, training and breeding monsters has never been so much fun!

Customer Reviews

This Game Will Suck Your Life Away
Dragon Quest Monsters initially began as Enix's answer to Pokemon. However, since it's beginnings on the Gameboy, it has grown into so much more than just a Pokemon clone. Dragon Quest Monsters Joker has its own spin on the "gotta catch'em all" philosophy. First of all, rather than using "pokeballs", you must impress Monsters using your Scout abilities to get them to join you. The higher rank the monster is, the more powerful your team must be to impress it. Second, your team consists of 3 primary monsters and 3 backup monsters. During battle, you are allowed to have out 3 monsters, but you cannot switch to your backups during battle, making for some difficult fights. Monsters level up in the style of Dragon Quest 8, where you gain skill points in addition to stat boosts that you can allocate as you see fit to the monster's skills. Monsters can use spells and abilities just like in the regular Dragon Quest games. Third, rather than breeding monsters, monsters are synthesized to create new breeds of monsters.

The main difference between this game and the regular Dragon Quest series is that rather than have random monster encounters, you can actually see the monsters on the field. This is great because you don't have to go through the guesswork of having to encounter the monster you want as you do in Pokemon. You can just walk around until you see it, then run up to it! Personally I like being able to see the monsters before I fight them so I don't have to waste time looking for certain ones. Also, the monsters respawn at a fairly rapid rate, so you don't have to worry about running out of monsters to fight when leveling up. An interesting part of this is that as you explore, you may notice certain strange objects in the area. These are actually indicators of rare monsters that may show up in that area. For instance on an early level, you walk by a campfire and some giant stones that look like dumb-bells. If you come back, you might encounter a Gigantes in that area!

As if that were not enough, Dragon Quest Monsters Joker also has an online battle portion where you pit your team against other teams on a regional, national or global scale to find out who's the best. Unlike other games where your only reward is bragging rights, this game has in game rankings and you earn items and monsters for each victory!

Dragon Quest Monsters offers solid gameplay on par with the main Dragon Quest series. With over 200 monsters to choose from, excellent online play and a great storyline, this is one game that is not to be missed!

Much better than Pokémon...
I bought this game purely on a whim, just to pass the time on long journeys and that sort of thing...but I seriously can't stop playing it! The graphics are surprisingly good, and the diversity of the monsters isn't bad either. However, the best part has to be the sense of pride that you feel when you finally manage to synthesise an S- or X-Grade monster.

Finally... Dragon Quest comes to DS!
If you ever played Dragon Quest: Monsters on the old Gameboy, you're sure in for a treat. This game has sprawling 3-D levels that allows you to roam freely and encounter monsters that will chase you, run away or stand their ground as you approach them. The game takes you to the world of Green bays, a cluster of Islands that are inhabited by monsters and their masters alike. You are the hero who had been locked up by your own father and your are released to compete in the Green Bays tournament to collect Darkonium and fight your monsters to win the sacred Mark.
At some point you will see a monster called an Incarnus- I won't tell you what happens as it will spoil the story. This game is not like pokemon as this involves 'scouting' which determines if you can recruit the monster into your growing monster team or not and also micromanaging your monsters' skills and attributes to become the ultimate fighting force.

If you complete the monster library and monster skillset library you'll have a lovely surprise waiting for you so you may determine a certain monster's overall form!