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The year is 2020, there’s this thing called COVID, and I’m stuck at home with next to nothing to do. Schools have shut and we are running a reduced timetable of online lessons leaving me with all these hours to fill during the week. It was this “freedom” that widened my gaming repertoire to include some of my favourite experiences, Persona 5 is the one that stands out the most, but it is closely followed by a game called Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age.
Not the most marketable title but following Persona I was looking for a JRPG, turned-based combat, irreverent experience and Dragon Quest XI delivered in spades.
However, since that game, startling little has emerged from Square Enix as regarding a sequel. What we have had, and will continue to with Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince later this year, are various spinoff titles.
Enter Dragon Quest Treasures. Taking a couple of the side characters from Dragon Quest XI, it tells a unique tale following Erik and Mia as children. As the title would suggest, the game revolves around the pursuit of treasure, a sentiment I can get behind in this age of everything costing approximately $ 1 million. Swapping back and forth between Erik and Mia for different segments of the story, you are accompanied by a variety of the monsters that were the bane of your existence in the mainline entry.
The world is very familiar even if it technically isn’t the same plane of existence. The art, music, and humour are all the same, the only real differences appear in the game’s mechanics as we say goodbye to the turn-based combat of XI and introduce a real-time action focus as seen in the Final Fantasy series in recent years.
The real quirk here is that as the protagonists are children here, understandably your characters aren’t particularly proficient in combat just yet. Therefore the main power in your party comes from the monsters you befriend as you progress through the campaign. Whether it be slimes, drackies, orcs or any else from the cornucopia of beasts inhabiting the world, you can be joined by any of these provided you are willing to put the work in to persuade them to join your cause. The “work” in this case is hitting them with a special friend pellet from your slingshot and then paying them gold or whatever later on. What a slime wants with gold I’ve no idea.
Whilst Erik and Mia are consumed by gold lust, your winged companions Porcus (he’s a pig) and Purrsula (she’s a cat) have their sights set slightly higher, throughout your quest, you will seek the legendary seven Dragonstones, what they do, is to be seen.
As mentioned before the world is exactly as I remember it, exaggerated features, ridiculous dialogue, and beautiful vistas. The music is epic and exactly what you’d expect from a Square Enix JRPG, driving you through the story with a real sense of scale and weight.
Combat is the real difference and it’s solid. I would have preferred the good old turn-based system to return but I understand the need for some diversity otherwise this may as well have been a mainline entry. Basically, you encounter an enemy, and your companions take over. It’s akin to what I imagine a real-time combat Pokémon game might look like which don’t get me wrong is fun, but it did leave me feeling somewhat pointless as I stood off to the side watching the carnage unfold, you can get involved should you desire but there’s really little need to outside of some boss encounters.
One cool innovation is the introduction of monster abilities. Depending on which companions you choose you have access to a number of special abilities. Slimes allow you to bounce on them to reach high-up places. Drackies will let you glide on them to access new areas, and Orcs use their oversized sniffers to locate hidden treasure. As you unlock more friends, you get more powers, increasing the scope with which you can consider the world around you. This is a stark improvement given that DQ XI had two modes of transport: legs or horse legs.
Overall, Dragon Quest Treasures is a charming spin-off to the mainline series that satisfies the DQ itch but does leave me wanting more as the grand scope of the campaign isn’t quite there for me. That might be the point, a smaller, more intimate story, but it’s not my cup of tea. Hopefully, Monsters later this year is good, but I yearn for Dragon Quest XII but given the complete radio silence on that since 2017 I don’t expect much soon.
