Note: Review is based on the Deluxe edition with all DLC, will note DLC-specific material where appropriate. Some knowledge of Dragon Quest 4 may be spoiled in this review, particularly in the moral section, so be advised if spoilers concern you.

Sometimes, after a series lies dormant, a company decides to revive the series in the hopes of rekindling the magic it once had. Square Enix attempted this with Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince, made seven years after their last Monsters title. Overall, I enjoyed it and consider it a worthy purchase, but it's not an unalloyed success in every regard.

First a bit of background. The Dragon Quest Monsters series is the Dragon Quest equivalent of Pokemon, using its own wacky and unique Akira Toriyama-inspired monster designs to provide a monster raising RPG style game where you use your monster teams to defeat rivals and ultimately become the ultimate monster wrangler. Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince is the latest in the series and a bit unique. First off, the other Monsters games have, at most, an indirect connection to the canon DQ games. This game, by contrast, is a prequel, side-story, and alternate universe to the original Dragon Quest IV. Not only does this tell us a lot more about Psaro's origins not elaborated on in prior games, it runs concurrently with the original DQIV plot from Psaro's POV (point of view), which is going to lead to a changed version of the canon. Short version, this game can be played without knowledge of the original DQIV/DQIV remakes, but if you have played them, this will make a lot more sense in many ways.

The basic gameplay is fairly typical by DQ Monsters standards. The story starts around a small hub world and eventually allows the player to explore other worlds. In the process, Psaro will encounter monsters whom he can fight and convince to join him, and fight other monster teams commanded by other monster wranglers. In between these gameplay segments, the plot will be furthered. The plot is that Psaro is the exiled prince of Randolfo, the Master of Monsterkind of Nadiria, an "underworld" to the world of Terrestria and its Heaven analog Zenithia. As a half-human and half-monster, he finds his father had cursed him to be unable to harm any monster during his exile as an insurance policy his exiled son could not turn against him. Embittered by this and the death of his mother (which his father did nothing to prevent), Psaro initially seeks to become a monster wrangler to slay his tyrant father and take his throne. Later, upon finding an elven girl named Rose who is persecuted by humans, he becomes further embittered and seeks the destruction of the race that tormented her in turn. As this runs concurrent with the original plot of Dragon Quest IV and eventually leads to an entirely new take on the canon, the story mainly allows us to follow the plot from Psaro's POV and we discover how his character changes over the course of the plot.

The gameplay mentioned above has some important changes for those who may have played the prior Monsters games. There are only two "sizes" of monster, Small and Large, each with their own benefits. Certain features like monster riding from the Joker games are not available. There is a new "Seasons" mechanic that opens and closes certain parts of each world map for exploration and makes different monsters available. The seasons change between Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter according to a timed meter and dynamically change the world map around you. Unlike some of the prior games, worlds are not randomly generated like the remakes of the first two games, though their layout changes depending on the seasons, which can be changed with certain in-game items. Like prior games, they also allow for monster fusions, where two monsters over a certain level can fuse into a new one. There are also Monster Eggs, which spawn in certain places in certain worlds and are often the only place to find certain types of monsters not obtainable elsewhere.

The DLC also adds a few features. The Treasure Trunks DLC adds a chest the player can check each real-world hour for a respawning list of early-game bonus items. The Coach Joe's Gym DLC adds some "training dungeons" the player can undertake via certain conditions to win certain items. The most useful of the DLC, however, is Don Mole's "Mole Hole", a dungeon in which the player can recapture any monster they had before, and is definitely worth having to save the player time for fusing certain monsters.

Finally, there is some online interactivity. The game allows players to compete against one another online from around the world. I found connectivity excellent and stable, with little trouble finding opponents online. There used to be some very restrictive "nanny filters" on naming any monster with any word deemed remotely offensive, which led to some false positives. While recent updates to the game and the system software of the Switch have largely cleared this up, be advised there is a hard limit of 16 characters for monster names.

Graphically, this is a nice-looking game. While not the fanciest game, especially with a somewhat utilitarian UI, the world design of each world is quite good. Some set pieces even get some very wacky designs, like the world that looks like it's made out of baked goods and desserts. The monster designs are just as good as in other works illustrated by Akira Toriyama, and the character design for Psaro is particularly nice, replacing his nice if slightly edgy black outfit from the remakes with a red outfit that fits the slightly less edgy appeal of this game. That said, outside world set pieces, major characters, and monsters, the effort on the "little stuff" isn't bad, but even the Switch port of DQ11 looks more elaborate.

The sounds and music are excellent, featuring the orchestral stylings of the late Koichi Sugiyama. That said, it's worth noting there are hardly any new tracks at all, mostly reusing music from prior games. Granted, it's still quite good music. The game features voice acting in both English and Japanese. Psaro is a silent antagonist but gets some voiced lines here and there, with his Dragon Quest Heroes VAs reprising the role. All the other characters sound excellent, and they should, given the tendency of the dubs in English especially to take actual theater performers to do the roles.

The game controls are fairly intuitive. I played on a handheld Switch and the controls are fairly self-explanatory, with the game providing helpful tutorials on the basics, and if you've played any RPG game whatsoever, it will feel like old hat. Stability is actually pretty good for the Switch. The draw distance is slightly short, but given the sheer amount that had to load on each map, they do a pretty decent job of balancing things. The actual world loads just fine and load times in general are never overly tedious. This game can run fairly hard on battery life under prolonged periods of play, so have it plugged in if you need to marathon it.

Morally, this has some concerning content.

Violence is typical RPG "give orders and watch it happen" style, for the most part. There are some scenes of implied or stated death, but no displays of blood and gore. Remains always disappear, even in most story scenes. The language is also fairly mild and kid-friendly. There are some monsters with "Hell" in their names, to denote their association with heat or demonic connotation (the "Hell Nino" being a living cloud of fire and a play on "El Nino") and a few mentions of "d*mn" will show up, generally in a religious sense.

Sexual content is quite low. The art style is tilted in a very kid-friendly direction, and while they do have some cameos by the DQ4 main cast (including Maya Mahabala, who originally wore a very skimpy dancer's outfit in the original games), this game made her dancer's outfit far more conservative during her brief appearance. Aside from some very mild flirting (mostly of the joking sort), this is pretty clean in that regard.

The occult and supernatural do have some presence, as demons, ghosts, and skeletons are prominent in the DQ games, being recruitable monster races. It's worth noting this is not necessarily an indicator of their moral stance, they can be aligned good, bad, or in-between. The main character is half-monster, half-human, and is also shown to have moral free will. They do briefly portray a fictional kid-friendly analog to a demon-summoning cult (whose goals you ultimately sabotage) at one point, but the player character, aside from commanding monsters that can be undead or demonic in origin, cannot otherwise do anything worse. The prevailing in-game religion is shown to be a generic Christianity analog per DQ tradition, with the "Zenith Dragon" as a stand-in for God, and one other character is a counterpart to the Devil, specifically referred to as a Fallen Angel. The backstory even has its own version of the rebellion against God and exile from Heaven which becomes important to the main plot as well.

Morally and ethically, Psaro is generally a decent person, showing a pronounced distaste for theft (for which they even admonish another character on the immorality of said act). Despite his initial desires for revenge, he is shown to have considerable restraint, refusing to attack others unless in self-defense or defense of others. He does become a leading authority figure of his own kingdom with subjects whom he serves as King, and aside from his confirmably despotic father, and initially, to the Zenith Dragon, he is otherwise respectful to other sources of authority. That said, given the game follows its own story, a lot of player choices are essentially meaningless, as Psaro has his own agenda until they finally deviate from the original canon of DQIV and its remakes.

On this note, some limited information needs clarification. In the original DQ4 (Dragon Warrior 4 for the NES), Psaro was not redeemable of his fall into evil, having gone mad from the death of the elf Rose and having chosen to fully forsake his humanity for revenge (the game includes a brief segment showing what would happen if Psaro retreads this path faithfully). In the remakes, it became possible to semi-redeem him, and while he forsook his desire to destroy humanity, he otherwise did not morally improve in most other regards. This game allows for a far more complete moral reformation of his character, to the point he starts out as a potential antichrist analog and becomes an unironic Messiah. Of course, the game will still follow canon up to a point, he otherwise fully intended to become the villain he would be in DQ4 until history changes. It's also worth noting the original DQ4 implies or states he was guilty of many reprehensible acts. This game clarifies the only act he confirmably did was the temporary extralegal detention of some humans due to being deceived into believing he had to do so to protect himself, and they are immediately released when the deception is revealed.

However, the story ends on an uplifting moral note, with Psaro having a full Saul-to-Paul level transformation, not only forsaking revenge like the remakes but ultimately becoming the unironic hero for the world he originally had intended to destroy and winds up defending instead. He also is shown using his authority over monsters to encourage peace, not further violence (unlike his father).

Overall, I rather enjoyed this as a Dragon Quest fan, both of the main games and the Monsters sub-series. It did feel a little underbaked and was missing features from the Dragon Quest Joker games and 3DS remakes of the original 1 and 2, but it still has quite a lot of content regardless. Technically, it's fairly solid and worthy of its price, though I would hope they release an expansion version at a later date to add back features this game is missing from prior titles. If you love the series or are just a diehard for monster collection games like Pokemon, this title is more than a worthy purchase.