Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker for Nintendo DS Reviews by Gamers

This game is What Pokemon should have been, and I mean Pearl, Ruby, and all the rest that are DS only. When I got Pearl I expected something very similar to DQM: Joker. This game (Joker) has a much more involving story line, and crisp graphics. And the monster synthesis system actually makes you want to grow your monsters to level 10 just to see what new monsters you can create.

The only real complaint are the character models. There are maybe 10 (or 12) different models, and even though the character will have a different name each time, they will look just like the last one you saw. It makes the game's immersion factor difficult if everyone looks the same. Secondly, the dialog: while it's nice to give the characters cultural accents, it can be distracting to read things like "'eer b'in lat'ey?"

Aside from that the game-play, graphics, and story are pretty good for a game that really does revolve around collecting monsters and battling them; and in the end that's what Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker really is - a Pokemon clone, but done better (at least with cel shaded graphics).

The first time I experienced the sensation of the wonderful Dragon Quest series was through this game. Dragon Quest Monsters:Joker gave me a lot to take in, as well as a lot of spending 12 hours at home trying to get to the end of certain towers and dungeons and then defeating whatever boss that was at the end. Anyway, one of many things I noticed about this game was that instead of taking the approach that the more recent Dragon Quest games for DS have, was that this game was completely 3D. And also, the battles show both sides of the battle, as opposed to only being able to see the attacker. The first time I saw the commercial and gameplay videos, I just thought it was a Dragonball Z/Pokemon experiment, which in my opinion I wouldn't have minded. But all Pokemon and Dragon Quest remotely share is combat and that's all.
DQMJ brings so much more to the playing field that Pokemon should learn from. The graphics are top notch, the soundtrack (as in all Dragon Quest games) is excellent, and the customizing options of the game are executed nicely. A large part of DQMJ is the Monster Synthesis option. Basically, you combine two weaker rank monsters, and make a new, stronger one. The problem I had with this was that both specimens had to be level 10, which made this seem like an annoying chore.
What this game boasts about other than it's self-supporting label was the ability to scout any monster in the wild. This depends on the attack power of your beasts, and even with a scout rating of 1% might coax the beast into joining you. Though the difficulty of this game greately increases toward the middle and becomes increasingly irritating, this game is a well executed monster taming RPG that role-playing fans will definately enjoy.