Line #18 YMMV/DragonQuestMonsters


1	* AntiClimaxBoss:
2	** In the second game, the Soul world is the final postgame main world, which you get by beating the Baffle and Brawn worlds (and that requires you to trade keys with the other version to get the key you don't have, as Baffle is exclusive to Tara's and Brawn is exclusive to Cobi's). Like the two worlds you have to beat to access it, it's just another tower that consists of a series of teams to beat, and at the top you fight the Grand Master that built and commanded these towers, who you would think would be some brutal {{Superboss}}. But no, his team isn't even a full team, being just a Gorago on its own, and that Gorago is much weaker than the bosses you can find in the magic key worlds.
3	** Also in the second game, in the randomly-generated magic key worlds, their final bosses will typically be accompanied by two lackeys to give them a fairer fight against your full team. However, occasionally these final bosses will be spawned alone, making it really easy when it's 3-on-1 and they can't act multiple times a turn like bosses in the later games can. To add insult to injury, for some reason these solo final bosses have much lower stats, with about a ''quarter'' of the usual HP they would have had, allowing you to effortlessly crush them in just a turn or two.
4	* BreatherLevel: The Gate of Ambition in the first game's postgame. A simple 30-floor dungeon where the only enemies that spawn naturally are Bug families, which at this point of the game aren't very threatening outside of the occasional StatusEffect. The boss at the end is Dracolord, who only has Firebolt as his main spell and a weak heal. He does however turn into his draconic form during this fight, but is otherwise the same boss. Assuming you had an easy time getting through the dungeon itself, he really poses no threat at the end.
5	* CaptainObviousReveal: In the first game, the only real ongoing plot elements are that your sister is missing and Greatlog has a new champion that you're going to have to fight at some point. Half the [=NPCs=] seem to know about the champion, but conspicuously omit mentioning what this person's name is, what they look like, or anything else about them. [[spoiler:Sure enough, your sister is that champion.]]
6	* ContestedSequel: The latter entries, especially the ''Joker'' series as a whole compared to the first two games. ''Caravan Heart'' is frequently seen as the OddballInTheSeries, which tends to lend itself to less than favorable opinions. ''Joker 1'' attempts to shake up the formula with 3D models, a new location, gameplay that's more inline with the main series, and a new cast. However many find the VideoGame3DLeap to be problematic for the former point, and TheyChangedItNowItSucks for the latter and the overall sentiment. While many find ''Joker 2'' to be a fine game [[BadExportForYou in terms of the Professional version and not the original]], comparisons on whether it does more to bring it in line with the quality of the first two installments, or if it's still inferior.
7	* DisappointingLastLevel:
8	** In [=DQM2=], as the main worlds grew increasingly larger and more elaborate, with a thorough story each and a wide variety of inhabitant monsters, the final main world Limbo consists entirely of a small island about six screens large, with just a few random encounters and nothing but the entrance to the final boss' castle. Then inside that castle, you just fight your rival one final time, then progress through the castle, which just consists of a room about eight screens large with no obstacles but the same few random encounters you fought outside in Limbo, and then the final boss' throne room, where you just fight the final boss. If you came into Limbo sufficiently strong enough to beat the final boss, you could clear Limbo in just five-ten minutes (the only thing that keeps you from clearing Limbo instantly is the likely ForcedLevelGrinding you'll have to do to beat the guard and the final boss). The vast post-game content keeps the game from ending on a disappointing note though.
9	** Also in the second game's postgame, there's the aforementioned Soul world, which is just two screens large with no random encounters nor any story to it, and consists of a tower with just six boss fights that are too easy for a final BonusDungeon, with its final boss being especially disappointing as covered prior. Then the rewards for beating it are insulting, just being normal items you can buy and equipment you can already find in the dungeons of the magic key worlds.
10	* FridgeHorror: You find out the world of ''Caravan Heart'' is the future of ''VideoGame/DragonQuestII''. If you go to Moonbrooke, it lies in ruins. Either the Princess of Moonbrooke was unable to fulfill her promise to restore her kingdom, or she did fulfill her promise, but the castle was attacked and destroyed again.
11	* EvenBetterSequel:
12	** The second game to the first; there's a more involved plot that isn't such a blatant ExcusePlot with actual worlds to explore, the entire Water monster family was added alongside several other strong monsters, it's a lot less clunky to breed and raise monsters (due to there being actual worlds you can go to and leave whenever you want without having to burn a Warp Wing, while monsters' wildness no longer increases at a crazy rate when they're left on the farm), the game plays quite a bit faster alongside being more polished in general, and the magic key system was introduced, which gave the player access to an unlimited amount of randomly-generated worlds and allowed them to be able to obtain nearly any monster in the game without having to breed (the only exceptions being the Demon Lords and the 4 star monsters). The only arguable detriments of the second game is that it can be too easy whereas the first game could provide a decent challenge, and Agility was made a total DumpStat with how little it actually influenced turn order, while in the first game it played a much stronger role with less randomization in the monsters' turn order.
13	** Joker 2 polished the good but clunky gameplay of its predecessor and had both environments that were more visually appealing and a story that was more engaging. It also had a much better post-game, which contains one of the most memorable villains in the series.
14	* GameBreaker:
15	** The Boss monsters, or Demon Lords as they're also called, as expected with them being the final bosses and major antagonists from across the Dragon Quest series. Incredibly powerful (with the strongest ones being the outright strongest monsters in the game), typically have access to very powerful skills either natively or from the breeding you'll have to do to get them, and in the first two games, they were all outright immune to any sort of status effect and stat-lowering move, while not having any sort of weakness like the Metal Slimes' low HP to balance out their status-immunity. Through skilled (and lucky) breeding, it's even possible to breed some of the strongest ones like [=DarkDrium=][/Nokturnus to be completely immune to all sources of damage other than basic attacks and Megamagic/Magic Burst.
16	** Rainhawks, made by breeding a Blizzardy and Phoenix, are immune to all fire and ice attacks and can use such moves themselves, have excellent attack, defense, and magic, and if leveled properly can defeat Gem Slimes and the like with basic attacks. They also have sizable HP.
17	* GoddamnedBats: Any monster with a permanent status effect such as poison, or one that drains mana.
18	* ItsHardSoItSucks: The main reason Joker 3 never made it out of Japan was it was much ''much'' harder than the usual DQM game and received a lot of criticism as a result. The game does not hold back with its brutal bosses and loves to have extremely powerful monsters you can't possibly beat until later in areas with otherwise normal enemies.
19	* SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome: Your first time catching a MetalSlime. Your first time creating your favorite boss from the original games. Winning your first online tournament match. Capturing your first Size 3 monster in ''Joker 2'' (monsters so big they count as a party in and of themselves).
20	** The opening to [[https://youtu.be/AKN1s9s0myA Dragon Quest Monsters: Battle Road Victory]]. Every DQ big bad, from 1 to 9. Every Dragon Quest hero, ''fighting the '''wrong''' big bad''. The ''VideoGame/DragonQuestIII'' hero giving a silent nod to the two kids, who rush up to fight the ''VideoGame/DragonQuest'' version of Satan (Nockturnus) and Beelzebub (Estark), ''alone''. Humanoid!Psaro [[YourPrincessIsInAnotherCastle jumping out of nowhere]] to take the kids on himself. The whole thing is absolutely nuts and ''seriously'' needs a localization.
21	** Any and all of the character movies from the Battle Road series -- special animations of Dragon Quest characters unleashing incredibly powerful, usually OneHitKill-class attacks.
22	* NightmareFuel:
23	** [[spoiler:''Dr. Snapped.'' As the final boss of the game, he's obviously going to transform, right? Except the resulting form is overqualified for EvilIsVisceral and manages to put the whole [[VideoGame/DragonQuestIV Psaro]] transformation sequence to shame.]]
24	** The YourPrincessIsInAnotherCastle ending of Caravan Heart. [[spoiler: You see the ghosts that keep Loto's memory alive walking in place at the corners of the screen, when suddenly three eyes appear in the middle of the screen.]] There's '''absolutely no explanation for this''' until you go back to the old dungeons and research just what in the world is happening, and even then you'll need to spend a few hundred hours grinding your way to a solution.
25	** The island sinking in ''Monsters 2''. Every chapter, more and more of the land sinks. Despite rising nervousness, nobody is willing to leave. Eventually you have to cross water just to get in a building! The take in the remake has less flooding but contains the just as harrowing site of the sky darkening and plant life of the island steadily dying.
26	* PlayerPunch: Most strongly seen in Caravan Heart. Only really apt if you played VideoGame/DragonQuestI and/or VideoGame/DragonQuestII, especially if you did so as a kid. Nothing comes close to calling the player ''old'' than seeing the kingdoms you once played through now in ruins.
27	** Another example are the ghosts who hope to keep Loto's legend alive, even worse so [[spoiler: the Dragon ghost who formerly guarded Lady Lora, who remains faithful to his master after all the time that had passed]]. He was only doing his job.
28	* PolishedPort: The 3DS remake of Terry's Wonderland combines the best gameplay elements of both the original game and the Joker games, adds in a ton more monsters, adds more to the story and world building, and completely overhauled the post-game. [[NoExportForYou Sadly it was never released outside of Japan,]] though thankfully a fan translation exists for those who don't mind emulating the game.
29	** There was also a 3DS remake of Cobi and Tara's Adventure; it is also a huge upgrade of an already great game with all the improvements of the previous remake, more quality of life improvements, and even allows you to create your own monster.
30	* SequelDifficultyDrop: The second game is significantly easier than the first in the main story, as in the first game, the random encounters are relatively stronger and possess more powerful/dangerous skills, the bosses are significantly harder, it requires you to complete every Arena rank while there's more Arena ranks with much more difficult teams to beat, you gain a lot less experience from battles, stronger monster species are a lot rarer to find as random encounters, and being wiped out makes you lose your items in addition to half your money. The first game also lacks several of the stronger monsters in the second game, limiting strong breeding options, and its worlds functioning as roguelike dungeons ups the difficulty as well, as you can't just retreat to a town to heal and stock up nor can you leave the worlds in the first game without using a Warp Wing (and losing your progress in that world in the process).
31	* TearJerker: The DarkestHour ending of ''Monsters 2'', with the island apparently doomed. [[spoiler: Fortunately the good will of everyone you have helped revives Great Log.]]
32	* ThatOneLevel:
33	** In [=DQM2=], among the randomly generated magic key worlds, the "Lord" keys are especially horrifying. These worlds are filled with only the ??? family monsters, known as Demon Lords (which are the final bosses of previous games, as well as "evolved" versions of them). They're all [[BossInMookClothing extremely powerful]], while being pretty much immune to all status moves with loads of other resistances. Not only do you have Demon Lords running around everywhere, but you have incredibly buffed versions of these already incredibly powerful monsters serving as the world's bosses, and if your party was strong enough for magic key worlds to have 4 star end bosses, you will have one of the 4 star Demon Lords serving as the world's final boss (which are the strongest monsters in the game). While these worlds are incredibly difficult and dangerous, the Demon Lords provide an insane amount of experience, and as such, these worlds can be used for some [[PeninsulaOfPowerLeveling very fast levelling]].
34	** In [=DQM2=]'s story, the Sky World can be very difficult to navigate. The world is primarily a bunch of floating islands in the sky and the newest treasure you obtained from the Ice World lets you travel the skies. However you can only travel in straight lines, and if there's something blocking you from jumping off, you'll be sent back to where you started. Add in a fairly mountainous area to railroad you from reaching certain islands, a long winded FetchQuest that you need to accomplish by visiting different dungeons to collect the necessary gear to meet the ClimaxBoss of the world, and most directions given are a vague motion from where the information is given and not relative to the map itself can lead to the player getting lost and disoriented very easily.
35	* ThatOneSidequest:
36	** In order to gain access to the Old Man's gate, he asks to see a [=GoldSlime=], a monster that's at the end of a very expensive chain of breeding Metal Slimes into Metabbles into [=MetalKings=] which can then be made into a [=GoldSlime=], or breeding a King Slime (or its variants) with a [=GoldGolem=]...which itself is a convoluted mess unless you know some of the breeding shortcuts.
37	** To open the Library's Gate you need to have befriended 100 monsters, which can be a bit of a money sink if you haven't been acquiring monsters on your travels, or have a small pool of breeding options, either from gender ratios or all your choices are monsters you've already had.
38	* TheyChangedItNowItSucks:
39	** Caravan Heart's monster breeding system involves you beating up monsters until they drop a soul, then using 2 souls + 1 monster to make a new monster. This is partially because the monsters are characters in their own right in Caravan Heart.
40	** Then they went all the way with Joker, vastly lowering the monster count, adding VideoGame/DragonQuestVIII style skilltrees, and removing all the randomization all in an attempt to make the game work in 3D. Joker 2 undo some of these changes, the traits and skilltree system remain, but there is much more randomization (although the maps are still static, the monsters in them are incredibly varied) and the reintroduction of palette swaps and the addition of monster size plateaus pleased the fans.
41	*** Joker 2 Professional added 100 extra monsters to the 300 or so, making about 420. (On the other hand, some view this not as a bad thing in and of itself, they're just upset that [[NoExportForYou they never got to see all the cool new stuff]]).
42	*** Even worse, Strongers were removed from the main list, since every monster could do it. This made about 1260 monsters - even Battle Road Victory only had 800!

Context YMMV / DragonQuestMonsters