Quick Look: Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 2

Dragon Quest Go!

Make those monsters!

also DS quicklooks Go!

RICHARD NOOooooooOO!

Of COURSE there's a slime!

Patrick, Ryan and Dragon Quest? Sign me up!

So many Quick Looks.  An embarrassment of riches!

I somehow ended up with a copy of Dragon Warrior Monsters for the GBC at some point in my childhood and loved it. I've been interested in checking another one out, so here's to hoping that this grabs my interest!

EDIT: Oh... this... this doesn't look fun at all...

damn, two quick looks containing trees with mustache in 3 hours.

The Quick Looks must flow!

I might get that.

So much video content!!!!

why does both screens look a bit blurry?

as someone named Richard, having your name appear in block capitals saying you're being recruited can make you a tad bit paranoid :|

This quick look is officially #slimey

@Wikitoups:

I can't watch, makes my eyes hurt.

Ugh.. this game looks incredibly boring.

I love how Nintendo of American saw fit to publish this pile of shit instead of Xenoblade, which was already translated.

WTF, I HAVE SO MANY PODCASTS TO LISTEN TO AND YOU GUYS KEEP PULLING OUT QUICK LOOKS.

It is amazing we get multiple hour+ long quick looks at extremely underwhelming games like TrackMania, yet a massively popular, well-received game like this gets a brush over treatment with people who admittedly don't want to be playing it and don't know the system.

Come on guys, if you don't want to do the quick look, give the assignment to someone who does. Is the beginning a little non-eventful? Sure, but there are so many details to the game which weren't mentioned I might as well have gone to Joystiq if I wanted to be presented something half-assed.

I find this happens now and then when the people tasked with an assignment doesn't have a high opinion of said game. Of course you are welcome to your opinion, and it might be justified in most cases, but at least spend the time to research what it is you are making a quick look out of, and present the information to the viewer, along with your disdain. At least then it would be a somewhat informative, albeit negative, quick look.

P.S.

Love the site, love the content, love the people. Keep on keeping this site above the norm.

Personally I think that worm music is dope as shit.

heh Ryan's blue slime is named after DQ fan, Bethany Massamilla

The GBC Dragon Quest Monsters game let you pick specific aciton for your monsters. I think maybe the "order" command lets you do that in this game, but Ryan checked that before he had any magic, and he looked at Buddy.

Terrible sound design and soundtrack. ugh.

Don't you just select orders and change it to follow direct orders. That's how party members have always worked in DQ.

Maybe it said that in the text Ryan didn't read while he was complaining about not having any control.

Also as far as I know DragonQuest was doing monster collecting before Pokemon

@FreedomTown: TrackMania is underwhelming to you, but even as someone who played and liked this game, this looks very uninteresting to me. Sure, a little research would help these guys in many quick looks, but when you are clearly only complaining about that because you have a high opinion of this game, it's a bit more of an empty criticism.

@FreedomTown: couldn't agree more. Love the site but this was disappointing. Also I found it surprising that they know those games, especially the Dragon Quest series, take a while to really start. I'm not even sure i'd be interested in this game (even though I like the main series) but the quicklook didn't tell me anything I could possibly want to know about a game such as this.

I can understand the frustration with the pacing at the start of the game, with a lot of the gameplay not being made apparent yet. The series, or at least the previous title, is more about customizing your team to your liking with breeding/inheritance, skill upgrades, and equipment.

As a side-note: you totally can issue direct orders to your team with the "Orders" command.

@FreedomTown said:

[...]

Come on guys, if you don't want to do the quick look, give the assignment to someone who does. Is the beginning a little non-eventful? Sure, but there are so many details to the game which weren't mentioned I might as well have gone to Joystiq if I wanted to be presented something half-assed.

[...]

Love the site, love the content, love the people. Keep on keeping this site above the norm.

I wholeheartedly agree. They should've have let Kessler do the quick look.

Not even Ryan and Patrick's lovely banter could make this game interesting.

Looks awfully slow and generic to me.

...This game looks really dumb. And let it be known that I can't fucking stand anything about Dragon Quest. I hate the art style, the monsters, the bad hair, the bad colour use... bleh..

Guys this is quicklook not a review. It is a look at the game at about two hours in and with an RPG like this you have t take it with a grain of salt.

man this quick looks was really boring for me for some reason. I just could not get into it. I really like RPG's though.

Quicklook, not a review. Isn't the point of these to mess around with the game for a little while and talk about what's going on? That being said, I love dragon quest and will be picking this title up.

I enjoyed the Dragon Warrior Monsters games but never played Joker. The sound design and characters are pretty much exactly the same as the old games just has some different monster names...kinda wished I had a DS but also just wanna go back and play the old games

@FreedomTown said:

It is amazing we get multiple hour+ long quick looks at extremely underwhelming games like TrackMania, yet a massively popular, well-received game like this gets a brush over treatment with people who admittedly don't want to be playing it and don't know the system.

Come on guys, if you don't want to do the quick look, give the assignment to someone who does. Is the beginning a little non-eventful? Sure, but there are so many details to the game which weren't mentioned I might as well have gone to Joystiq if I wanted to be presented something half-assed.

I find this happens now and then when the people tasked with an assignment doesn't have a high opinion of said game. Of course you are welcome to your opinion, and it might be justified in most cases, but at least spend the time to research what it is you are making a quick look out of, and present the information to the viewer, along with your disdain. At least then it would be a somewhat informative, albeit negative, quick look.

P.S.

Love the site, love the content, love the people. Keep on keeping this site above the norm.

I disagree, I think super under-informed quick looks are the best. You can almost feel PR people squirming somewhere as the giant bomb guys neglect to tic off a list of features and just play the game instead.

P.S. you can totally issue specific commands to your monsters. Do I hold anything against Ryan for not knowing that? Nope!

@FreedomTown: @edsone: @norfair187:

If you are a fan of any particular game as in this specific case you will almost 100% be guaranteed to know more then the dudes doing quick looks. A Quick Look is not a review. It's just a very general surface look at the game that is done with minimal time investment. Sometimes the quick looks are done by people who are also reviewing the said game (or are very interested in the game in the first place), in those cases they know more, otherwise it's a pretty much a going in cold thing as it might be for any person unfamiliar with the game/franchise.

Also i'm kind of skeptical of the statement "massively popular, well-received game like this" considering the distribution of the 3DS, amount of comments and general peoples unfamiliarity with this. So I would say this is not quite "massively popular" and it's more honest to say that it's popular and important to you. Trust me there are also plenty of games that get QL's on GB that are important to me and make me want to try to tear out my own hair in frustration watching the guys play. But applying some logic and thought makes me realize that at the point where I know more about the QL'd game then the GB crew the QL immediately looses all informative value and retains purely entertainment value.

They don't have to do research for a QL if they don't want to, after all that's the point. To be able to present content on the fly, with a small team of dudes.

The complaint you are raising has been brought up on Giant Bomb time and time again. You aren't the first and you won't be the last. It's pretty much accept it or not. Because it ain't changing. I don't mean it in a dick way guys, just trying to temper your expectations/reactions :)

Edit: (if I said something fucked up, i'm currently drunk and can't give my slosh a second pass atm)

That one second victory chime is just terrible.

Oh god, interlaced.

@FreedomTown: Is there anyone in the office who's a big enough fan of DQ?

Also, I think QL's are exactly what they should be. A quick look of a game you might otherwise know nothing about. If a game is poorly designed and slow to start, you can really tell in quick looks like this, and I think that tells us a lot more about the game than it would have if they researched the game for hours and told us all the facts. This isn't a review, or even a preview.. it's a quick look.

That said, I'm a big fan of Dragon Quest and the Pokemon series and I thought this looked fantastic.

@edsone said:

@FreedomTown: couldn't agree more. Love the site but this was disappointing. Also I found it surprising that they know those games, especially the Dragon Quest series, take a while to really start. I'm not even sure i'd be interested in this game (even though I like the main series) but the quicklook didn't tell me anything I could possibly want to know about a game such as this.

But c'mon, this video is just the opinion of two dudes, one who has only been playing for a couple of hours. Why would you be disappointed? It's not exactly a full review... tis a quick look.

A tree stump named RICHARD is way funnier than it should.

Cast a spell:

gotta catch them all

i liked the first one, maybe i will try this.

I really liked Dragon Warrior Monsters, didn't finish the first Joker, and am kind of uninterested in this one. I guess I've just lost interest.

@Tennmuerti: Dragon Quest, and additionally the DQ Monsters spinoffs, are absolutely massively popular and well received, especially in Japan. Additionally, this is a DS game, not a 3DS game. (I know you are drunk or whatever, but I might as well clarify).

@FreedomTown: I agree, but I also think that most of the people who are going to be interested in a game such as this probably know about the game already and plan to purchase it regardless. That said, I too am disappointed to see games I care a lot about (recent example: Radiant Silvergun) get almost completely overlooked or not treated with the respect I think they deserve. However, I do tend to watch Quick Looks for the humor and banter of the GB crew more than any sort of information, since I find myself to be generally far more informed about the games I plan to play than they are.

I loved the first one, put a ton of hours into it.

Four years have passed, and when the game was announced to finally come over here I was excited. Unfortunately, I realized that I just don't like these kind of games anymore.

@Doomdeadly: It's just the first time I'm haring about DQ Monsters like ever, and that's kinda weird for a massively popular game, considering games take up all of my leisure time outside of work.

• Dragon Quest - sure
• Japan - sure (since I wouldn't know)
• DQ Monsters massively popular outside JP and people who are into Japanese games? I dunno, but if people seems to be saing so, ok sure i'll roll with that

I really liked the Dragon Quest Monster for the GBC. Even though that was very grindy already.

Dragon Quest Monsters Joker isn't really an improvement upon even that old GBC game really. I think the asthetics are ugly and the 3D environment looks terrible. But the worst thing about the last DQM:J, well apart from the insane grind heavy play, is the pacing which is just insultingly bad.It takes some seconds 'til the battle even loads, some additional seconds 'til it really starts, most animations are fairly slow also and to top it off, after you've ended a battle it takes like 3-4 seconds before the overview map has loaded again and you can move on. It's fucking awful and it doesn't look like they improved upon this in DQM:J-2. In fact the changes they made so far seem neglible.

The combat in DQM:J got godawfully boring and there isn't much you can do with strategy, in the end it really comes down too constant grinding and breeding new monsters. However breeding requires even more grinding... so yeh. You'll probably end up grinding Metal Slimes over and over again which is the most fucked up annoying thing on earth, as those things tend to leave the battle quickly and are hard to hit.

I don't care how goddamn popular Dragon Quest is, Dragon Quest Monster: Joker was a bad game with a lot broken design and the second iteration seems to be no different.

HA! Ryan named the slime Bethany...anyone remember Bethany from GameFAQs or Gamespot? Or maybe that Quicklook for World of Warcraft? She always had a slime plushy on her desk.