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Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 2: The Slimes Strike Back
KiTA
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Dragon Quest Monsters Joker 2
Yes, it's that time again. Nintendo has graced us with another game that will consume our lives and dominate our DSes. Picking up the aborted and abused Square Enix translation, Nintendo is releasing DQMJ2 in the US on 9/19/2011.
The Fifth game in the DQM Spin Off Series, DQMJ2 is a full 3D Monster Hunting game with a Dragon Quest feel. You start out with a humble Slime, and beat, bash, and breed your way up into the biggest villains of Dragon Quest history.
Isn't this just a Pokemon ripoff?
No, and go back to Gamefaqs. DQ5 (years before Pokemon) had monster catching, and even the original DQM was leaps beyond Pokemon in terms of complexity.
Most of the complexity in comparison to Pokemon comes via the breeding system, which is almost the same as Joker 1. Basically, each monster has a set of 1-3 (4 or 5 for the Mega and Giga size monsters) skill trees, and you gain skill points roughly every other level. These trees can give traits, stat boosts, spells, and special attacks. Breeding 2 monsters together gets a new monster, and you can then select 3 (4,5) skill trees from the parents.
There are also special combinations. For example, the DQ2 last boss is bred from the second to last boss of DQ2 (which is fitting since it's a marathon battle against one after the other). Zoma is based on monsters from the last dungeon of DQ3, etc etc.
Skill trees are taken almost straight from DQ8 and DQ9 -- and there are evolving skill trees. Take a monster with Fire at max level (50 points in it), and it's child will have Fire 2 as an available tree to take. Take some of the more insane skills and breed them into one or two monsters, and their kid will have an outrageous skill available to them. Dragonlord from DQ1 + Bad Breath = Uber Breath, the ultimate breath tree, for example.
Traits?
Each monster has traits, these cannot be passed on (but can be gained from skill trees). These are what make monsters unique beyond just stat caps and animations. Some examples are Psycho (allow for Dragonball Z / DQ9 Martial Artist style psyche ups), Crafty Zapper (does extra damage with lightning), etc etc.
Mega? Giga?
Monsters in DQMJ2 have sizes. This adds a huge level of complexity to the game, as bigger monsters take up multiple party slots -- but are ultimately stronger to compensate. For example, the Green Dragon from the original DQ is a Mega monster (Size M), and thus it has outrageous stats for it's rank, can have up to 4 skill trees and generally has more traits than previous monsters.
In my import copy I was running around with Orochi, a memorable boss from Dragon Quest 3 that is a Giga mosnter -- an entire party in and of herself. She has absurd stats, 5 skilltrees, and great traits, including one that makes her take 1-3 turns each turn.
These are competitively balanced however -- Giga monsters may hit the entire enemy party, but they are the only available target, and some Mega and even Standard sized monsters have traits that make them eat Mega and Giga monsters alive.
X? XY?
Each "mascot" monster -- one of each family -- can be bred together with itself to make a X monster. For example, a Slime + a Slime, at a certain level, is a Slime X, which looks like a Slime but has vastly improved stats, is a higher rank, and has beneficial traits. A Slime X and a Slime X bred together at a certain level is a Slime XY, a S ("Shin" or Special) rank Monster with incredible stats, incredible traits, and an ultimate skilltree as a bonus. While these are limited (there are no special combinations using these XY monsters) they allow you to play with your series favorites, even competitively.
Wait, up there you said "aborted and abused" SE translation?
Yes, Aborted. Square Enix has apparently officially decided that Dragon Quest is dead in the US, and will instead be focusing on... dying slowly, I guess? SE USA really isn't relevant anymore, at least to DQ fans, as Nintendo has thrown their full support behind DQ in the US.
How's the translation?
DQ6ish. There are punny names, but they're not overpowering, and while one character has an accent, it's nowhere near as bad as DQ4's "read it out loud and maybe you can understand it" stuff.
How long?
I put about 350 hours in the Japanese import, easily, and loved every second of it. If you cheese the hell out of the game you could beat the main story mode in probably 20 hours or less, but the tournament adds a shitload of replay, to say nothing about trying to get the monster encyclopedia full.
Wait... Tournament?
Yes, TOURNAMENT. This is the main reason you play Dragon Quest Monsters Joker 2. Like Joker 1, it has a wonderful online component, with an automated tournament that anyone with Joker 2, anywhere in the world, can get in on.
Unlike Joker 1, however, the tournament automagically places you in various brackets (Scout, Ultra Scout, etc) based on what monsters you have -- so no race to the biggest team possible -- and actually, get this, bans AR using jackasses. It's actually possible to enjoy the tournament in this one without running into 3 copies of the unique monster you can never get two of and is marked as impossible to enter into the tournament.
Wait, I heard we got screwed in the US?
Yes, we did. Japan got "Dragon Quest Monsters Joker 2 Professional" in March, which added 500 new monsters (including the DQ9 bosses), doubled the length of the single player game, and expanded pretty much everything. We aren't getting that version at this time (and it's highly unlikely they'll be releasing it in the US since the 3DS is being pushed now).
Worse still, the 2 games NWFC tournaments aren't compatible -- so most of the Japanese playerbase isn't playing DQMJ2 anymore.
Which is a good thing. Have you ever SEEN the 2ch DQMJ2 community? They're scary serious about their slimes over there.
Still, the vanilla game is wonderful (350 hours!), the tournament is great, and the more people that pick it up the greater the chanes of us getting DQMJ2 and the just announced Dragon Quest Monsters 1 3DS remake. (DQM: Terry's Wonderland 3D)
ComicCon 2011 Trailer
E3 Trailer
Anyone else picking this up?
Yes, it's that time again. Nintendo has graced us with another game that will consume our lives and dominate our DSes. Picking up the aborted and abused Square Enix translation, Nintendo is releasing DQMJ2 in the US on 9/19/2011.
The Fifth game in the DQM Spin Off Series, DQMJ2 is a full 3D Monster Hunting game with a Dragon Quest feel. You start out with a humble Slime, and beat, bash, and breed your way up into the biggest villains of Dragon Quest history.
Isn't this just a Pokemon ripoff?
No, and go back to Gamefaqs. DQ5 (years before Pokemon) had monster catching, and even the original DQM was leaps beyond Pokemon in terms of complexity.
Most of the complexity in comparison to Pokemon comes via the breeding system, which is almost the same as Joker 1. Basically, each monster has a set of 1-3 (4 or 5 for the Mega and Giga size monsters) skill trees, and you gain skill points roughly every other level. These trees can give traits, stat boosts, spells, and special attacks. Breeding 2 monsters together gets a new monster, and you can then select 3 (4,5) skill trees from the parents.
There are also special combinations. For example, the DQ2 last boss is bred from the second to last boss of DQ2 (which is fitting since it's a marathon battle against one after the other). Zoma is based on monsters from the last dungeon of DQ3, etc etc.
Skill trees are taken almost straight from DQ8 and DQ9 -- and there are evolving skill trees. Take a monster with Fire at max level (50 points in it), and it's child will have Fire 2 as an available tree to take. Take some of the more insane skills and breed them into one or two monsters, and their kid will have an outrageous skill available to them. Dragonlord from DQ1 + Bad Breath = Uber Breath, the ultimate breath tree, for example.
Traits?
Each monster has traits, these cannot be passed on (but can be gained from skill trees). These are what make monsters unique beyond just stat caps and animations. Some examples are Psycho (allow for Dragonball Z / DQ9 Martial Artist style psyche ups), Crafty Zapper (does extra damage with lightning), etc etc.
Mega? Giga?
Monsters in DQMJ2 have sizes. This adds a huge level of complexity to the game, as bigger monsters take up multiple party slots -- but are ultimately stronger to compensate. For example, the Green Dragon from the original DQ is a Mega monster (Size M), and thus it has outrageous stats for it's rank, can have up to 4 skill trees and generally has more traits than previous monsters.
In my import copy I was running around with Orochi, a memorable boss from Dragon Quest 3 that is a Giga mosnter -- an entire party in and of herself. She has absurd stats, 5 skilltrees, and great traits, including one that makes her take 1-3 turns each turn.
These are competitively balanced however -- Giga monsters may hit the entire enemy party, but they are the only available target, and some Mega and even Standard sized monsters have traits that make them eat Mega and Giga monsters alive.
X? XY?
Each "mascot" monster -- one of each family -- can be bred together with itself to make a X monster. For example, a Slime + a Slime, at a certain level, is a Slime X, which looks like a Slime but has vastly improved stats, is a higher rank, and has beneficial traits. A Slime X and a Slime X bred together at a certain level is a Slime XY, a S ("Shin" or Special) rank Monster with incredible stats, incredible traits, and an ultimate skilltree as a bonus. While these are limited (there are no special combinations using these XY monsters) they allow you to play with your series favorites, even competitively.
Wait, up there you said "aborted and abused" SE translation?
Yes, Aborted. Square Enix has apparently officially decided that Dragon Quest is dead in the US, and will instead be focusing on... dying slowly, I guess? SE USA really isn't relevant anymore, at least to DQ fans, as Nintendo has thrown their full support behind DQ in the US.
How's the translation?
DQ6ish. There are punny names, but they're not overpowering, and while one character has an accent, it's nowhere near as bad as DQ4's "read it out loud and maybe you can understand it" stuff.
How long?
I put about 350 hours in the Japanese import, easily, and loved every second of it. If you cheese the hell out of the game you could beat the main story mode in probably 20 hours or less, but the tournament adds a shitload of replay, to say nothing about trying to get the monster encyclopedia full.
Wait... Tournament?
Yes, TOURNAMENT. This is the main reason you play Dragon Quest Monsters Joker 2. Like Joker 1, it has a wonderful online component, with an automated tournament that anyone with Joker 2, anywhere in the world, can get in on.
Unlike Joker 1, however, the tournament automagically places you in various brackets (Scout, Ultra Scout, etc) based on what monsters you have -- so no race to the biggest team possible -- and actually, get this, bans AR using jackasses. It's actually possible to enjoy the tournament in this one without running into 3 copies of the unique monster you can never get two of and is marked as impossible to enter into the tournament.
Wait, I heard we got screwed in the US?
Yes, we did. Japan got "Dragon Quest Monsters Joker 2 Professional" in March, which added 500 new monsters (including the DQ9 bosses), doubled the length of the single player game, and expanded pretty much everything. We aren't getting that version at this time (and it's highly unlikely they'll be releasing it in the US since the 3DS is being pushed now).
Worse still, the 2 games NWFC tournaments aren't compatible -- so most of the Japanese playerbase isn't playing DQMJ2 anymore.
Which is a good thing. Have you ever SEEN the 2ch DQMJ2 community? They're scary serious about their slimes over there.
Still, the vanilla game is wonderful (350 hours!), the tournament is great, and the more people that pick it up the greater the chanes of us getting DQMJ2 and the just announced Dragon Quest Monsters 1 3DS remake. (DQM: Terry's Wonderland 3D)
ComicCon 2011 Trailer
E3 Trailer
Anyone else picking this up?
KiTA on
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I was most impressed by the graphics at first, seeing a reasonable representation of the kind of world we got in DQ8 on the PS2, and pretty high quality monsters for the DS.
But then I got drawn in by the team building and monster synthesis and sets of abilities and equipment and
EDIT: Ron Howard, you will probably not miss out on anything by not playing the previous one. Kind of like most DQ/FF games. And if you're a DQ whore you'll be able to jump right in and know what to expect from most of the monsters anyway.
http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198006524737
(For the less ethical amongst you, it's apparently been available for a month.)
I can give a quick rundown of what I did in the original DQMJ. In the original DQM 1 and 2, there was a special combination. Every time you breed monsters together, you get a + to them. For example, a 5th generation slime would be a Slime+5. This keeps up even if you change them, so the child of a Slime+5 and a Dracky would be, for example, a Imp+6. If you bred 2 Slime+5s together, you got a KingSlime.
In DQMJ, if you bred 4 slimes together, you'd get a Kingslime. Kingslimes had the skillset 勇気 (ゆうき - Yuuki), meaning "Courage," mistranslated as "Cleric" by the team. Also known as The Dragon Quest 3 Hero's Skillset. So it had Ironize, HealusAll, Thordain, Gigaslash, etc etc. In addition, you would jump from Rank F Slimes to a Rank C Kingslime, not a weak monster by any means, but breeding a Rank C Kingslime into another monster gave you a Rank C something else with a disgusting skillset. Made the first half of the game easy at the cost of an outrageous amount of work early on.
They nerfed the hell out of that in DQMJ2. Kingslimes still have the skillset (Ironize was removed but they added Gigagash to compensate) but you can't breed them like that. Kingslimes are now BehemothSlime x BehemothSlime, which you probably won't see until postgame. (Postgame the newbie area has Kingslimes at night, too). Not a bad skillset to get, still -- they also added a "Dark" version based on Psaro from DQ4, which is on Dark Slimes and Dark Slime Knights.
Iinstead of Kingslimes, they early powergamer's monster of choice are the two other combines they added... The resultant monsters (Giga Dracky and Great Sabercat - the pet of the DQ5 hero) have shitty (bad) traits that make them less than useful, but you can breed them away to jump from rank F to C.
Each rank has generic combinations. Breed any Slime with any Dragon, and you'll have 3 outcomes you can select -- a Slime of the highest rank of the two parents, a Dragon of the same rank, and one more thing which is no doubt decided via some math that I don't know of the lower rank of the two parents. If you keep breeding together monsters, you'll jump to a different generic breeding combination. For example, my Great Sabercat I bred together with a Swarm from the first area, which got me a Facetree (a boss from DQ...4?). Breeding Facetree with a Bad Egg (Slime) got me a Land Shark, which is a different generic rank C nature monster. Breeding the Land Shark with a Mud Mannequin got me a Golem, which I think is Rank B. Either way, Golem and one of the stump monsters from the first area got me a Rank B(?) Skeleton with a Scythe, and it wasn't long after that that I jumped to Rank A just by doing random combines.
All in the first area. Granted, I was gimping the hell out of them by breeding away the second they got to level 10, but the higher ranks made up for it somewhat.
There are 8 families in the game:
Slime, Dragon, Demon, Undead, Nature, Material, Beast, ??? (Boss/Diety/etc)
Each one has a mascot that can be turned into an X or XY version:
Slime (Slime)
Green Dragon (Dragon)
Teeny Sanquini (Demon)
Skeleton (Undead)
Goodybag (Material)
Conklave (Nature)
Chimaera (Beast)
The first time I played the Japanese import I went all slimes (as I am wont to do) with some beasts, the second time I went with Demons / Dragons / Nature monsters. When my copy arrives from Amazon I'll be going Materials and Undead as a change of pace. They all have a generalistic focus (Slimes tend to be high agility, for example) -- so... yeah.
However, there's still Pokemon B/W to finish first, and then.. OoT. Dammit. Too many good games I want to play.
I needs a vacation.
Twitch: akThera
Steam: Thera
Zeboyd Games Development Blog
Steam ID : rwb36, Twitter : Werezompire, Facebook : Zeboyd Games
Better in every way.
PS - Don't watch the Giant Bomb Quick Look unless you want to be even more frustrated than watching the Shadow of the Colossus one. They shit allllll over it.
Steam: TheArcadeBear
I heard the Giant Bomb guys were really shitty this time. Apparently they expected to be able to scout every monster in the game and make all the super monster combines 20 minutes in. First time playing a monster catcher, mates?
They got a Seed of Life, and didn't know what it did, where anyone who's played a Dragon Quest game since DQ3 on the NES could tell you. It was pretty sad, actually, and they're usually not so bad about having a couple of people who aren't fans of a genre do a quick look on a game where they couldn't even talk about basics in the franchise.
RPGs are also usually pretty slow to start up, Dragon Quest games are among the worst culprits. Hopefully if they do a review on the game later, they'll put someone who's at least played a Dragon Quest game in the last 5 years in charge of that.
Steam: TheArcadeBear
Damn. I was planning on waiting, but I guess not then!
To be honest, it will likely be reprinted, and fairly quick, too. This is good news though, for our chances of getting DQMJ2 Pro and the 3DS DQM game they just announced in Japan just shot up a lot.
I'm in the same boat. 350 hours, I'm burned out on DQMJ2. I wanted DQMJ2P.
But we must reward progress, however slight. And with the Wifi Tourney (which I ignored in the import), there's at least some play there.
The story I heard is that Square Enix had started the translation then basically decided to write off all of Dragon Quest in the US, leaving this to rot on the vine. Nintendo stepped in at that time and picked up the (apparently more or less complete) translation SE had. They decided to just finish off DQMJ2 rather than shift to DQMJ2P. Really think that was a mistake, but, there might be economic reasons.
They might have plans / planned to release Joker2Pro later on -- it would probably be dirt cheap to pick up DQMJ2's translation and move it to DQMJ2P, with the only trick being timing it so that people aren't upset they bought the "bad" version right before the good version was released.
But with the 3DS not doing so hot, they're not going to be pushing DS games for much longer (certainly not for the year or so that DQMJ2P would take to come out). Plus there was a longstanding rumor that there's a 3DS DQM game coming, which (according to the rumor) we'll be getting, so DQMJ2P would be pointless. The 3DS DQM game rumor turned out to be true, so... Who knows. I think it would take a miracle for DQMJ2P to hit the states, but I'm holding up hopes for DQM1R for the 3DS. And hey, there's always importing.
Nope. But that was back when SE USA was in charge of SE games. Nintendo is handling DQ and DQM now. We'll see.
I thought we did in some cases, sort of, by virtue of getting a later release of the game that included the better content. Like getting all orchestrated music in DQ8 when Japan just got MIDI.
Twitch: akThera
Steam: Thera
It's beyond good to hear, DQM1 was a groundbreaking game, combining Roguelikes with Monster Catchers. I'm just hoping we get it, and they keep the rougelike elements in the remake.
This is Pokemon for people who think it is BS that they have to forget moves after learning more than four, and people who wish they could actually equip some battle items onto their Pokemon besides friggin' berries, and people who want better control over evolution and breeding, and people who wonder why you can only rarely do fights with multiple Pokemon at once.
I may never love again. I've always dug the hell out of the concept of having various monsters murder each other for my amusement, but at some point I started to develop an intense loathing for just those issues you mention.
Wheeeee~
Is that what's going on here?
I don't think you've ever played Pokemon.