Dragon Quest Treasures preview: loot hunting with a little help from your monster friends
Erik and his sister Mia from Dragon Quest 11 are getting their own game with Dragon Quest Treasures. As the title suggests, this Dragon Quest side story focuses on treasure hunting.
The game is a twist on the usual Dragon Quest formula, and is more in the vein of the Dragon Quest Monster spin-off series, where your characters don’t do the actual fighting, but instead, rely on monsters they’ve captured to attack foes.
Dragon Quest Treasures shares some similarities with the Pokémon series, which is all about collecting creatures and battling alongside them. Although creature collection is a big part of Dragon Quest Treasures, the difference is right there in the name.
Recruiting the huge variety of monsters is your way to collect even more loot, rather than a goal in itself.
The two siblings live on a Viking longship and dream of exploring the world and finding treasures. One fateful night, they meet two creatures, Porcus and Purrsula, and are soon transported into the world of Draconia, which is conveniently full of riches and friendly creatures.
You meet a couple of slimes Oozabella and Goonther, who join your treasure-hunting crew.
At the beginning of the game, you play mostly as Eric’s younger sister, Mia, but both characters are playable throughout the story. Your main goal is to find treasures and get rewards for them, and you can track the goodies down by using a skill that allows you to see what these creatures can see. Each monster’s magical vision is different, so you’ll need to tame a variety of monsters to get the job done.
Draconia is packed full of loot, so you’ll be filling your pockets before heading back home to bank it so you can head back out again.
Combat in Dragon Quest Treasures is different from older games in the series, including the Dragon Quest Monsters games. Here there’s an action-based battle system instead of the staple turn-based combat we’ve seen throughout the franchise. During battle, you control one of the siblings while three monsters actually engage in combat with your foes.
The combat actions are limited to hitting, jumping and dodging, and you get the occasional super attack for each of your three monsters, but it takes a lot of basic hits to charge the special move. Despite being rudimentary, the combat system does the job.
Action-based combat replaces the usual turn-based we've seen throughout the Dragon Quest series.
Erik and Mia also have slingshots at their disposal, which can be used with a variety of ammo types they find and collect. Some of these help you catch monsters, others apply elemental effects, while others are used for healing.
Recruiting monsters happens in two phases: you can first scout the creature after defeating it and then you pay its “price”, with each monster requiring different items or gold to join you. One slightly annoying thing is that the chance of scouting a monster after you've beaten it seems random, so when a cute and special one just decides it doesn’t want to join you, it can feel a bit frustrating.
Different monsters also come with special movement abilities that help you make your way through Draconia, which makes the lack of guarantee that you’ll recruit a particular monster even more annoying, as you might end up missing important abilities for quite some time.
Forte skills are different movement abilities that come with each monster type.
Dragon Quest Treasures looks and plays well on the Switch, and unlike other Unreal Engine games that seem to push Nintendo’s handheld beyond its limits, this one runs without any noticeable issues, at least in the early stages of the game which we previewed.
All in all, Treasures is a bold move in a different direction from previous Dragon Quest games, so if you expect something similar to Dragon Quest 11, you shouldn’t, and that’s fine. It’s still enjoyable to play and with its cute art style, new mechanics, and fun treasure-hunting loop, it is shaping up as both a great entry point for newcomers to the franchise, and something fresh for long-time fans to try out.
Dragon Quest Treasures releases on December 9, 2022, for the Nintendo Switch.
