by David Rasmussen

Created on: April 21, 2009

How did a franchise with so much potential after it's GameCube outing fall so hard on it's arse when it launched on the Wii! When I heard news that Dragon Quest Swords was coming to the Wii I thought we'd finally get a good solid RPG for the Wii (that didn't include the words "Legend" and "Zelda" in the title) then it turned out to be a dud (which means SquareEnix knew what it was doing by dropping it from the PS3's schedule and saddling it on the Wii). Luckily SquareEnix had a better version of Dragon Quest on the DS to make up for the lacking Wii version in Dragon Quest Monsters : Joker (and then carried on with a trilogy of Dragon Quest games also for the DS... so, what, no good Dragon Quest games for the Wii? Come on, SquareEnix! Get it together!)

An RPG that plays like a fantasy version of Poke'mon? Count me in. With an entire world designed by DragonBall Z's creator Toriyama (he so does a ton of video games these days it seems), you find the world looks like it should be called DragonBall Z Quest Monsters : Joker as there are endless clones of people who look like they were cloned from the DBZ universe but who cares about that, let's talk about the gimmick of the game!

The gimmick, it seems, is the ability to "Scout" monsters and train them to become the greatest of your kind... because apparently somebody had to copy the Poke'mon formula of success sooner or later... I guess. Finally able to enter this competition between monster trainers (because the secret organization you work for wants to spy on it for some reason) you find yourself charged with gathering monsters for competition, and that is where the long hours of gameplay come in. For the first dozen hours of gameplay I logged in I only explored two islands (of the several in this game), and spent all my time scouting monsters, fusing them together, and gathering again.

Scouting is rather straightforward. With the monsters in hand (starts with one then as you gather and train more you have up to three you can use) you "scout" a monster of interest by charging your monsters, who show off their "power" by giving the monster your scouting a "whack"... oh, an explanation. Here is where this game greatly differs from Poke'mon, in a good way, as each "whack" only shows power but does NOT harm the monster (unlike Poke'mon which you could risk knocking out and losing your target), instead you only show your strength but even then you can still gain or lose a creature even with a show of strength! Each creature

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