Compare & Contrast: Dragon Quest Monsters: Difference between revisions

Ever since Pokémon came around, it seems there's been a boom of monster-training games. In our previous C&Cs, we looked at two that came before the popular franchise came about. Today, we're not only going to be looking at one that came after, but we're also going to be looking at our first formal monster training game, AND our first series of it. It's the Dragon Quest Monsters series.

==The game==

==The plot==

[[File:CompareContrast3 2.png|thumb|left|200px|Conceptual art for the Eyeder monster]]

There's really not much to it, as you can see. But the gameplay is where it's at.

This is where things get interesting. Dragon Warrior Monsters has a fairly unique battle system. See, every monster has a personality. For the most part, your party of up to three monsters will be acting on their own (you can give direct orders, but the interface is clunky), and similar to the {{bp|Battle Palace}} in {{v2|Emerald}}, personality determines what it likes and doesn't like to do. There's also the wildness stat, which goes down as you use the monster in battle, but steadily raises if they are kept awake on the farm.

There's a trick you can use, though. Unlike Pokémon, your monsters' personalities aren't set in stone, and you can change them. Monsters' personalities are determined by three hidden stats, sometimes called their bravery, prudence, and caring. These can be changed with some effort. First off, directly telling them to take a specific battle plan in battle will adjust the values. Telling them to CHARGE will increase their bravery, but lowers their prudence a bit. Making them take a MIXED action will increase their prudence, but lower their caring a bit. Giving an order to be CAUTIOUS will increase their caring, but lower their bravery. RUNning from a battle will lower their bravery greatly. Take an action enough, and their personality will start to shift, and they may perform better (or worse) in-battle. The catch? It becomes harder to change these stats at higher levels, so it's better to get it done sooner rather than later. There also exist books which can raise or lower an individual stat, and not only are they rare finds in the Gates and only purchasable late-game, but they burn holes in your pocket.

Besides that, you can also choose to FIGHT. This simply takes the (CHARGE/MIXED/CAUTIOUS) orders you set for a monster in the menu, and use them. This is also what they will do if you choose to use an item. Besides meat, you may also use healing items, and staves (which will do damage). Note that either of these won't affect a monster's personality, nor will direct orders. Finally, you may choose to RUN from a battle.  

Finally, there is the subject of the tournaments. Here, your monsters are on their own. You can't use items and whatnot there, sort of like a Battle Tower or link environment. This is where personality training pays off, and those who suffer through the clunky interface of manual attack selection are just '''screwed'''.

==The monsters==

[[File:CompareContrast3 4.png|thumb|left|200px|A battle in the GBC version]]

As before, once you have a monster of a certain type, getting another will be difficult, requiring a lot more meat to be convinced to join you. Meat is very important in this game, as the recruitment odds are otherwise on the low side in this game. A lot of monsters just plain won't join at all unless you feed them meat. On the other hand, another difference between DQ5 is that there are no limits on what species you can get. Thus, anything in scope is fair game.

But the main reason to breed monsters is for stats and skills. In regards to stats, the average of each of the stats between the two parents is taken, and is divided in half. That will be the stats the resulting monster starts out with. Yes, at Level 1. For example, if the parents have an ATK stat of 700 and 300, the average would be 500 (700+300=1000, /2=500), and half of that is 250. The monster's natural stat gains take over from there. You might be thinking this is ridiculous. And yes, that's an extreme example, but these kinds of stats are actually nigh-mandatory to beat the higher level tournaments. Breeding can also increase a monster's maximum level. Depending on the parents' levels, the offspring may have up to five +s. Each of these adds two more levels to the maximum.

[[File:CompareContrast3 5.png|thumb|right|200px|You are always having a bad hair day.]]

A whole book could be written about the monster system in Dragon Warrior Monsters. For the sake of keeping this article short, some of it has been relocated to the Additional Information section you can access by clicking my profile page. And even there, it's still not quite as big as it could be.

==The rewards==

==The summary==

* Monsters have psuedo-random actions in battle, like the Battle Palace in Emerald

''"System Error" is a Canadian who has a habit of letting laziness snowball out of control. He originally intended for this to be out in like August of last year, and here we are in June 2012. But hey, at least he got it done.''

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