The First Review For Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince Is In

@Solomon_Rambling It's not baffling. Famitsu's ratings are worthless.

@Maulbert Worthless to westerners maybe, but Japan rates things differently than us. By all accounts alot of westerners reviews are worthless to those who aren't western.

Even in the western world depending on where you are, reviews are worthless. People who live in European countries find American reviews worthless, and vice versa. Every country judges things differently.

@Maulbert I've been hearing this sentiment a lot lately. What did they do to violate their credibility, exactly? I feel like every gaming media publication gets accused of bias anymore. "Nintendo Life gets paid off for their review scores," "IGN gets paid off," "Metacritic isn't reliable because of review bombing," etc. Is there any source that can be trusted, or is it all just fake news? Or is it that we, the consumers, are the biased ones and we can't handle when a prominent critic has a different opinion from our own? Not trying to call you out or anything, I'm just being philosophical.

Famitsu rating a Dragon Quest game a 9 is hardly news lol

@Not_Soos Famitsu scores have been comically inflated for a while. Games from larger publishers very rarely dip below 8 on one of their 4 scores.

@GooseLoose1 I’ll bite, what are some cultural differences in how Japan rates games vs. how the western world does? Are games just held to a different standard?

This game is very special. I like to play dragon quest games in big measure because is a great family novel with a genocide old man/father misogyny facist. I playing this with All happy monsters want to kill my father hahahahahahhaha

9/10

@SpoonySpoons I think culture plays a big role on how things are judged. I can't go through 30+ years worth of scores, but as someone who's glanced over them through the years. Many games here which got only so/so scores, got bigger scores there.

Really? I've got a few hours on it now and so far it has come across as very low budget, especially in terms of story presentation, which really doesn't feel its very much in tune with the monster tamer angle.

It also runs terribly, especially for being a switch exclusive.

This is famitsu. Doesn't surprise me they rate this game rather highly.

That being said, I enjoyed the demo. Currently playing the game now. If anything, the game is worth a solid 7/10.

@Maulbert

Im just curious, what did they do, that makes it in your opinion worthless?

Oh sweet the first review is in can't wait to check it-- see's it's famitsu nevermind. I'll wait until there's an actual review to see.

I played some of the demo, and man this game is not nearly polished enough for a 9/10 score. It feels very rushed.

Honestly I don’t care what score this game gets I JUST WANNA SEE THE DQ4 PARTY AGAIN!!! (Oh and also Psaro. I forgot about him.)

DQM looks amazing. It has cake land for goodness sake, give it game of the year. I am hyped to get back from work to play it.

@Expa0 Yeah you can tell from the trailers it's going for that Scarlet // Violet performance benchmark.

@GooseLoose1 Famitsu accepts bribes so their reviews should not be taken seriously.

@LastFootnote Agreed it feels very bare bones. Like super low budget. The 3DS remake of DWM2 is far better and is almost a decade old...

@The-Chosen-one They accept bribes. Like putting a reviewer in the game as a character is one example.

@SpoonySpoons It's about the publication, less so about cultural differences. Not sure if all Japanese review outlets are like them, but gaming is so big in Japan that you might have to accept bribes to drive sales with exclusive content from publishers. They gave that crappy, universally panned Resident Evil PVP shooter a 9/10 too.

Can we just not have these articles "the first score is in"? They are always Famitsu, and their scores are literally meaningless

Pokemon Scarlet & Violet on its release was the laughing stock of the Internet with people sharing hilarious videos of the bugs and shoddy quality. Known Pokemon superfan reviewers said they were embarrassed and saddened by the state of the game.

Famitsu said it was one of the 5 best games of the year. Not one of the 5 best Switch games. 5 best video games on ALL platforms, released in the WHOLE year.

That's when I wrote them off.

@csward53 Gamespot they except bribes even there is evidence against them just google "gamespot review of Kane & Lynch scandal" yet people only attack Famitsu without even any evidence.

@Not_Soos
Because people don't actually read reviews and just look at the number at the bottom. People are also unable to think and judge for themselves and if they don't agree with a score/review policy they have to make up reasons as for why the outlet is wrong before they've even played it for themselves.

@csward53 and there are no bribes for reviews in the west? After all these years and proofs there are still people who thinks AAA western games gets perfect scores in major media sites without bribes of any sort -facepalm-

Release day and no further reviews! Thought there would be few posted by now

@Not_Soos @GooseLoose1

Famitsu is vanity PR. Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20141129124115/http://forums.selectbutton.net/viewtopic.php?t=476

Choice quote: "When Famitsu rates a game high, they do it out of respect for the readers — avid players of Kingdom Hearts as most of them are. Avid players of Kingdom Hearts don't want to be told what Famitsu really thinks of their ***** piece of ***** hobby. So Famitsu awards the "courtesy score" — which used to be all nines and a ten, and is now all tens and a nine. When Famitsu KNOWS a game is going to sell 2 million copies in a week regardless of what they say, this is what they do."

@Hellaween
Mine came early yesterday, played for a few hours.

Performance is kinda bad. Lots of pop in and low frames for monsters that are quite close to you, rain makes it worse, textures feel very budgeted. Story is simple and pretty much non-existent so far.

Maps are small but the season changes makes them feel bigger because you essentially have to explore them 4 times to see all the monsters/access all the areas.

It scratches that pokemon itch well and I really like it despite the issues. Seems more simplistic than pokemon on the surface but I think there is some depth here with the fusing of monsters.

You can speed up battles and automate them for grinding.

When levelling up you can either choose new moves or put them into stats which I thought was neat.

In important battles you can't pick the monsters moves, just its tactics (heal, go all out ect) some wont like that.

If you are a pokemon forgiver and could see the good in scarvi you'd probably like this. But if that game was unacceptable for you then steer clear as it is better but still not that far off performance wise. No bugs yet though.

Ui is nice and clean.

Lots of paid DLC which is yucky.

Played the demo seemed very dull and tedious

Regardless of what everyone thinks of Famitsu scores, this at least gives me hope that the game might be enjoyable. I can tolerable performance issues to some degree if the core gameplay is engaging and fun. Plus I love the DQ world. I’ll be curious how other places review it.

The demo didn't make me convinced this game is worth picking up at full price, mostly because of the performance. Granted, it was the demo, so hopefully the performance is better in the full game, but I've read different impressions about that. It is also strange that the reviews for this game are so late.

I'd love to get it, but the demo showed a lot of flaws in the graphical and performance department. Does anybody know if this is still a problem with the final release?

@Solomon_Rambling one review means nothing

@csward53 They accept bribes?! Well, looks like I'm never taking a Famitsu review seriously ever again.

@kpowgames You can even tell from the trailer that the framerate was bad. I don't think the slow walking at the end was intentional.

Not surprising that a DQ game gets a high score from Japan reviewers but nonetheless the game looks neat. I was personally turned off by the performance of the demo, although the performance could be improved by final release. I just recently got into the Monster spinoffs and so far Im having a blast with Terry's Wonderland 3D, so I may have to check this one out eventually

I hope they release a Dragon Quest Pixel Remaster for 1-6.

@TheImperfectInsider geez everyone in the comments are sheep and can't think for themselves. One person says something is true and everyone takes it as face value lol.

Probably inflated but if you look past the technical polish the amount of content is crazy. I know people were putting like 20 hours into the demo and there are tons of monsters and synthesis and skill tree inheritance and size variants and shinies and online multiplayer. Also voice acting and seasonal changes and the story seems to be a really solid prequel to DQ4. Game's not pretty but all that should still net it decent scores: 7 or 8 is probably accurate.

@JohnnyMind

No problem! I would also like to add the fusing of monsters is a bit like SMT/Digimon and that really wasn't my sort of thing, so I've since left the game, I wanted something more traditional sadly. But that's more a me problem than the game's fault.

That was quite a hot take, so I'm surprised anyone agreed xD

Reviews are helpful and I appreciate them but too many people let them affect their decisions too much, or flare up when it's not what they expected them to be. Reviewers are just people, talented people, but people nonetheless and everyone is different and will have a different opinion.

@BakaForDays Yeah, knowing how much Japan loves Dragon Quest, they probably gave it a near perfect score because of bias instead of bribery.

Or maybe it was both, who knows? 🤷

@Tyranexx "I suppose SE didn't send out review codes in advance?"

That's most likely the case. Which is a very bad sign because that might mean that they're trying to hide something, if that is true.

Always kind of funny that it’s just Famitsu that people here bring up “bribes” or “bias” as if Western reviewer outlets are not guilty of the same thing. Hell some of the reviews here have been SuS but I guess those get passes too?

Famitsu gave a 38/40 to Pokemon Scarlet and Violet lol Just received the game so I will be able to play it in about an hour for a good 2h stream. I liked the demo. Framerate was slightly inconsistent but it wasn't game breaking. The colors really popped on my Oled TV and I can't recommend enough playing it this way. And yes, it looks like a late PS2/early PS3 game but the chara design still makes up for it. There's plenty of '"Unreal Engine" games with highly detailed textures but poor chara design/no charm out there so still nice to see a new Dragon Quest.

I'm a long-time DQ collector (I'm currently lying under a Slime comforter), and this game is...a solid 6. Fun to play, if not repetitive. The loading times, however, are just unacceptable. It's like playing Final Fantasy IV/Chrono Trigger on PSX.

I gotta be honest my time with the demo kinda put me off getting this at full price.
While I’m not a graphics snob by any stretch the way this game looks and performs is just too distracting for me to get fully immersed.
It genuinely looks like a Wii HD port in places.

Weird that we're at release and there's literally one review. Sure, you can play the demo but that isn't the same thing as playing the full game.

I love Dragon Warrior Monsters. I will buy the game, because nothing has scratched that same itch. But man, that demo was rough. It looked like a mediocre GameCube game.

@Nidorom fusing monsters and letting the monsters pick their moves is classic Dragon Warrior Monsters gameplay.

Been wanting a new Dragon Quest Monsters, but this is definitely a monkey's paw case. Game does not look good. I just wish we could have more monster catching RPGs with decent budgets and performance.

@Not_Soos I think it's mainly because you rarely see a Famitsu score lower than about 35/40. (I'm sure they happen but they're definitely an exception)

At least for me when a publication only ever seems to have positive things to say about everything I don't consider it's opinion that much.

@Dizzard That's not true!

This week's Famitsu scores are: 36, 32, 29, 26

Last week's were: 32, 32, 32, 30

Scores under 35 definitely aren't an exception!

from one person review i watched on youtube it's like they made a pokemon version of this game blurry visuals frame rate issues..

@GooseLoose1 I agree I find reviews from American companies especially in the TV and movies is just a lie. All they got to do is base the movie on liberal values and it gets a guarantee of 80 plus percent. Also very few critic scores matches audience scores. It's pretty obvious there paid to write good reviews or work for the publisher. It makes no sense. I do not go by any reviews made by people getting paid. You just can't trust it. Your better off watching gameplay, demo or reading player reviews

Do you really trust reviews from people who get paid to write reviews lol. From my experience especially from critic reviews in America it's just a lie. Long as the material is based on liberal values you get a good review no matter what especially in movies and TV. Watch YouTube, play demo or read user reviews

@HeeHo
For me i would be okay with a game looking like a HD wii game if it meant really good performance since it would make the game feel better to play though from what I've heard its unfortunately not the case (even with a turn based game its still nice when exploration feels smooth)

@Nidorom Ha! I was scanning the comments until I saw yours about the game being like SMT/Persona/Digimon. That’s half the fun, fusing monsters/demons etc. 😂😂😂 That’s a thumbs up from me for now. I will have to check out other reviews before purchase. I find DQ games a hit and miss with me. The mainline and Builders game were fantastic… but the spin offs are a bit lacklustre.

@graviton

Glad I could help! I really hope you enjoy it
There's a very deep system and loads of content there for those who like tinkering with it, I respect it but my brain just doesn't work that way!

Completely agree! I've played and loved 11 and Builders (would play the others in a heartbeat if they were remade) But this and Treasures didn't do it for me. Didn't even buy that other spin-off that came out recently.