There’s something wonderfully Dragon Quest about meeting a king and almost immediately being sent out into the world to solve problems for him. That was more or less how my time with Dragon Quest Monsters: The Withered World started at Gamescom, where I played around 45 minutes of the PS5 version as Nera. I met the king, got my first objectives, explored the world and eventually fought some bosses. Pretty standard RPG stuff, really. Except I wasn’t the one doing most of the fighting.
That job belongs to the monsters. The Withered World is a Dragon Quest Monsters game after all, which means all those Slimes and other creatures we’ve been beating up for decades suddenly become potential party members. The obvious comparison is Pokémon, although Dragon Quest Monsters has been doing its own version of monster collecting for a very long time. What matters is that I very quickly stopped looking at an enemy as something that simply needed to disappear. If I saw a monster I liked, I wanted it.
Come on, just join me
You can bring four monsters into battle with another four waiting in reserve, and combat is turn-based. You can issue orders yourself or let your monsters follow broader strategies, but the interesting part for me started before some of those creatures had even joined my party. There are a couple of ways to recruit them. Sometimes a monster you defeated will decide for itself that it wants to come along, which is always a nice surprise. The more deliberate option is called Show of Force. Use it during battle and the game shows a percentage representing your chance of convincing that monster to join you based on the strength of your team. Then you make the attempt and hope for the best.
It sounds incredibly simple, but that percentage immediately made certain encounters more interesting for me. Suddenly I wasn’t just trying to win the fight. I was looking at the monsters on the other side and deciding whether one of them might be useful in my own party. And, well, Dragon Quest has a bit of an unfair advantage here because its monster designs are brilliant. Slimes are obviously Slimes, but there are so many weird, colorful and sometimes completely ridiculous creatures running around that I already know I’m going to waste far too much time collecting them. Credit where it’s due to the monster designers, because I wanted half of them purely because they looked funny.
Two monsters go in…
Recruiting them is only the beginning. The part that really got me interested during the demo was Synthesis, where you can take two monsters you’ve raised and combine them to create something completely new. The parents disappear in the process, so you do have to be willing to say goodbye, but what comes out the other side can be considerably stronger. I got to see how selecting different parents changes the possible monsters you can create, and this is exactly the sort of menu where I can see myself spending an embarrassing amount of time. A synthesized monster can inherit up to three Talents from its parents, meaning you’re not simply hunting for the monster with the highest numbers. Which parents you combine and which Talents you pass down can gradually shape what that new monster becomes.
There are also special Synthesis combinations that can produce monsters you otherwise wouldn’t be able to recruit normally. Keep combining monsters over multiple generations and their Plus Value can increase as well, potentially giving the resulting monster better base attributes or even pushing it into a higher rank. I only got a small look at how far all of this can go during my Gamescom session, but it already had me thinking about combinations instead of treating every monster I caught as a permanent member of the team. That creates a rather dangerous situation for someone like me. I’ll recruit a monster because I like its design, level it for a while, discover that combining it with something else gives me a completely different creature and then probably start the entire process again because I want to know what happens with another combination. With more than 500 monsters in the game, I can already see where those hours are going.
Still unmistakably Dragon Quest
Around all that monster collecting is a very traditional-looking Dragon Quest adventure. I played as Nera, one of two available protagonists alongside Bianca, and spent part of the demo following the story, talking to characters and completing objectives for the king. I obviously only saw the beginning, so I’m not going to pretend I know where that story eventually goes, but everything about those opening moments was immediately recognisable as Dragon Quest.
The same goes for the world itself. I played on PS5 and The Withered World looked really good, with bright environments, colorful characters and monsters that translate beautifully into 3D. Your creatures also follow you while exploring, which meant my little group was constantly running around behind Nera rather than simply disappearing into a menu until the next battle. Considering collecting them is such a large part of the game, I’m glad you actually get to see your chosen monsters accompanying you. Boss fights gave me a better opportunity to think about the party rather than recruitment. Each monster has its own abilities and Talents, so putting together a team isn’t simply about taking the four creatures you think look coolest and hoping for the best. Some attacks are better suited to particular enemies, other monsters can support or heal the party, and Nera herself has access to Wrangler’s Spirit, which can restore MP and raise the defence of her monsters when it activates. There was already enough happening during those early fights to make me curious about what a carefully built team will be capable of much later in the game.
Early conclusion
Dragon Quest Monsters: The Withered World gave me a fun first 45 minutes, but Synthesis is the part I really want to spend more time with. Recruiting a monster is already satisfying, and knowing that it could eventually become the parent of something much rarer gives me a good reason to keep experimenting. Add those classic Dragon Quest monster designs and I can already see myself spending far too much time building my party.