#dqm

[acquired-stardust]

Dragon Quest Monsters Game Boy Color 1998

[dragonichaven]

100% completely forgot to upload this here!

[eldragon-x]

just had the most exciting playthrough of dark queen of mortholme. hero got far enough to get to queens second phase several times and to prompt her "i am going to die, yes?" dialogue but I also pushed them enough to get the "am i even improving anymore" dialogue twice, for the queen to go back from kneeling down to burn their corpse to just snapping her fingers again, and for them to eventually decide to try just one more final time. that attempt honestly could've gone to either of us but i won.

[lady-quen]

[syd-beads4evac]

New earrings in my store! 100% goes towards helping Hanaa evacuate her family!

[liquidmetalslime]

Commemorative illustration to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Dragon Quest Monsters series!

[bandhyukoh]

Cinematographer DQM on the film "The Dream Songs" (너와 나) with music by Oh Hyuk © arri_asia

[cocosnowlo-drawings]

I love his reduced color palette

[whiskiijack]

[sonicasura]

This fella right here is a Great Angor Lizard, big ol' chunky fire breathing dragon monster from Dragon Quest. Have fun!

Leon Scott Kennedy

Portgas D. Ace

Pomni

Link

Ichigo Kurosaki (Bleach)

Emmet

[poizonedapplez]

No fucking way, we're getting a DQM about Psaro??? This is gonna be good.

I just had to doodle him because he looks so adorable in this game 🥺

Can't wait for Psaro to say, "It's slaying time"

[retphienix]

Dragon Warrior Monsters and DWM 2 are still quite possibly my favorite in the monster taming genre but this is both despite and because of their ridiculous design.

So mindless ramble time.

These games are a precarious mess of decisions that should not work that when all put together add up to an experience I highly value and consider one of the most enjoyably unique monster tamers out there and I don't think I'm somehow 'enlightened' to make that statement, I think I'm fucking nutty lmao, but I do mean it.

At its core (or more accurately, as I type I'm able to think of lmao) there are two things I adore about DWM 1 and 2 and they are FUNKY.

The games let you become overpowered EXTREMELY simply.

The games lean more on "exploring" the possibilities of breeding INSTEAD of "gotta catch em all!" collecting mentality.

To vaguely explain the "benefit" of each of these: I think the power scaling fits, especially because it primarily scales off time (amount of generations and grinding done) rather than just giving it to you immediately. So YES, you do become OP "easily" as in you don't have to particularly try- if you mash some monsters together that have skills you like then you get stronger and whoops now you're really strong- but you don't just skip to being max stats in seconds or anything- it lets you experience the challenges pretty well on a natural playthrough, you just feel well prepared more often than not.

I would explain it as "grinding but with extra steps". If you enjoy the loop provided you'll accidentally grind too much, but that's the same in a lot of RPGs and if you're "enjoying" it, is that NECESSARILY bad?

And the collection aspect is perhaps a unique feature of how I interact with it but I can explain:

As opposed to a normal (for example) first gen pokemon run where the core ideas of collecting and the ease of doing so (pokeballs are everywhere and the lifeblood of the game's DNA is on how dopamine inducing it is to get as many as possible) results in me ending a run with 90+ out of 151 relatively easily- a normal run of DWM has me end with like 60~ or so monsters out of the 215 available.

The reason being that collecting is CLUNKY in DWM, it's not particularly fun, it's not easy or accessible- it feels more random and it doesn't feed my dopamine receptors at all. You need a LOT of dupes for breeding, as well as a lot of breeding trees requiring you to give up a monster that was a challenge to breed in the first place (so you are asking for PAIN if you want a living dex situation) and you're likely not to get excited thinking "I should get like 10 dragons to start breeding combinations with!"

INSTEAD, DWM rewards dopamine by presenting me with a laundry list of possibilities whenever I return to the pedestal to breed. So instead of trying to "catch em all" I am repeatedly shown a web of possible choices that I can convert my limited stock of monsters into, with my main focus always being on what my main 3 monsters will end up becoming.

It becomes fun exploring what monsters I'll end up seeing- what names will pop up as possibilities- what's behind door #2 instead of becoming a checklist that I have to fill (because they made that a bit of a drag).

So it's different, it feels rewarding to randomly stumble through meeting new mons instead of seeking every single one out. And I like that :P

Now, aside from all the balance nightmares of being centralized around breeding and breeding making you STRONG, the biggest "issue" that makes DWM 1 and 2 funky is that these two ideas of "becoming powerful relatively easily" and "breeding just to explore" come together to make the monsters themselves almost entirely devoid of identity.

Like, just listen to how this all pans out.

The primary means by which you become more powerful is by breeding monsters.

Breeding monsters lets you combine their existing movesets + their innate moves + the moves unique to the resulting offspring.

You don't get to KEEP all of these moves- but you DO keep 8 of them.... so you get to pick the best 8.

For all 3 of your monsters.

And there are no limitations such as typing or whatever.

So you end up breeding both to explore what new monsters you'll find, and to see if maybe you find a new move in that mess of options that's better than your current loadout- and these come together to make the progression loop PROPEL you towards having 3 really powerful monsters that know 24 really powerful moves, all of which might not even be specific to the monster they are- and now you're wondering what makes your monster actually unique and whoops there's the issue lol

(part of this is due to the gameboy games not explicitly showing you stats relevant to what makes your monster unique, but this is still an issue)

Because there are specifics to every monster- the most notable being their innate moveset which does encourage you to explore the breeding to find NEW monsters so you get to see if their 3 moves are worth using-

but due to how the skill system works and due to how the breeding system encourages you to use it regularly- they become blurry and entirely devoid of impact very quickly.

Do they still matter? Technically! As in you can still benefit from knowing a monsters resistances or whatever. A statement that made me ask myself "Wait do resistances actually exist in these games?" and yes they very much do. But do they REALLY matter, especially on a casual level?

Nah.

Because you can just breed a handful of times and now your shitty green bean monster that should be bottom tier has really high stats and 8 amazing skills and whoops you beat the game. He's extra weak to blaze moves btw- but you got lost in the sauce of breeding and he had really high stats for no reason so being weak to it didn't super matter whoops. (it still kinda mattered)

It's a mess- and as a unique experience locked to 2 games in the genre- I kinda fucking adore it.

I do wish they better presented the unique features of each monster- if resistances or (less important due to the breeding system granting you the means to keep leveling until you hit max if you really wanted to->) their innate stat growth rates, but they don't, and in practice none of this ends up being impactful enough to allow you to "fuck up" by having a monster with bad resistances or something like that.

If it was presented it'd be another layer of entertainment for the breeding exploration- as it is guide only material it becomes meaningless and instead the game just becomes a really fucking fun romp of mashing monsters together to see new combinations until you win- I adore what it is :)

[dragonichaven]

Dragon Quest Monster 3 Fusion Map - Demo Version

Finally manage to compile every single monster fusion in the demo! For a grand total of 144 obtainable monsters! Man that was a lot, but enjoy the current checklisted mapping of the monsters in the demo! They're listed by family type, so if you just wanted to make a team of slimes you could 100% could heheh Goo time™!

Keep in mind that most of the two monster fusions (the ones that don't have a big list of fusions needed) have multiple monsters that can fuse into them. But monsters with the big fusion family lines more often than not require specific monsters to fuse into the required result, ex. Slime Knights, Dessert Demon, and Restless Armor. 👍

[eldragon-x]

sharing these pieces of dialogue if you cease fighting well into the game because they make me feel something

[lady-quen]

A goodie inspired by hld_doreko on twitter 🥰🥐

[squid-procrow]

I've been playing the new Dragon Quest Monsters game and I've had like, two thoughts -

everything is either huge or tiny and I LOVE it and

I never played the previous game but I know the general vibes of the story. I'm going to cry if they don't give Psaro the same love they did Malroth ;v;

Art spoilers for story (ig?) and a VERY late game monster I grinded for, literally 10h early game. IDK why I did that but-

Psaro IS SO TINY!!!

Also I literally raised E ranks into the true dragonlord- with the end goal of my boi malroth ofc. But getting half his tree done was so time-consuming I gave up and decided to continue into the mid tiers. and the DLC will probably help ngl