Dragon Quest Monsters: The Withered World Preview – Can you synthesise a good monster pun?

If there’s one thing that really stands out to me as a Dragon Quest Monsters newcomer, it’s just how heavily it leans into the puns. If you thought Pokémon were all eye-rolling puns for names – Exeggcute, anyone? – then that’s nothing on Sham Hatwitch being a pig in a witch’s hat, a knife-toting candle called Wax Murderer, Sacksquatch being a sandbag with a face on it, and so, so much more. Dragon Quest Monsters: The Withered World is trying to make sure that more people than ever can appreciate its pun-tastic monsters, bringing it to PS5 and Xbox Series X|S for the first time, as well as Switch, Switch 2 and PC.

Dragon Quest Monsters: The Withered World starts with a classic fantasy tale opener, as Bianca and Nera (companion characters returning from Dragon Quest V) are separately drawn to the Witherwood realm by the promise of being able to find Leaves of Life to save their respective fathers. What they find, unfortunately for them, is a kingdom that holds next to none of its previous bountiful vibrancy. Reaching the imposing tree castle and introducing themselves to the king, they’re told of how Leaves of Life used to be found everywhere, but that the world is now a wasteland after being corrupted by the Evil Eye. Time, in classic Dragon Quest fashion, to head out and defeat this evil! With monsters!

The whole journey is all about recruiting, training, battling with and eventually synthesising or breeding monsters to build up your team and grow in power. It starts with that first choice, presented to you by Fluffy, the unsurprisingly fluffy creature that brought the pair to this world – he also reappears alongside some great guitar riffs and a bit of a synth choir for his soundtrack. You first have to choose which of the two girls you want to play as, with both having natural preferences for certain types of months. Nera loves herself Slime, Nature and Material monster families, while Bianca leans in on Dragons, Beasts and the Undead. They also have some occasional battle perks which can trigger in combat.

Receiving your first monster depends on a bit of a personality test conducted by Fluffy, though you can quickly redo it if you don’t like the monster he picks for you. After that, though, it’s all about recruiting and synthesising your monsters, and it really is recruiting as opposed to catching. In a battle, you can convince one of the opposing creatures to join you with a Show of Force, which tots up the perceived strengths of your current lineup to improve the odds of the target deciding to join you. With a battle team of up to four monsters it’s the sum of their strengths up to a 100% total.

The battles themselves see your lead line up of four monsters go up against whatever monsters you’ve run into – these aren’t random battles, but rather running into or avoiding creatures you see wandering through the rounded overworld. You can take a bit of manual control here, commanding your team to target specific enemies, or you can pull the trigger and enter into an auto-battle mode, and even pull the other one to speed up the action. It’s really rather straightforward and direct, so I definitely appreciate the auto-battling aspect to quickly race through battles, but want to see more tactical depth through the full game.

But then, some of that will come from the synthesising. All of the monsters you recruit come with scores in six attribute categories – HP, MP, Wisdom, Agility, Defence and Attack – with one of those hexagonal charts you see in any kind of sports team analysis. Beyond that they also have a specific personality, talents and traits. Synthesising a new monster has you simply pick two potential parents – they need to be level 10 or above – and then selecting from the list of monsters that these can create. This sacrifices the parents, but lets you potentially pick a new type of monster that you’ve not seen before, find shiny combinations, and also select three specific tales to carry forward and their points total, which then feeds immediately into the skills and traits the child monster has.

It’s a great system. There’s next to no randomness here, so you know exactly which child is being synthesised, what their base stats will be, the talents and traits, with the only real unknown being what personality they end up with. I can absolutely see why this is a particularly addictive side to the Dragon Quest Monsters series!

But so is just seeing the variety of ridiculous creatures that Square Enix and Tose have cooked up, and the ludicrous names they’ve attached to them. It’s also a bit of a laugh just trying to come up with your own names, whether it’s trying to outdo the jokes already in the game, or teasing friends and family by lending a particularly ugly slime their real name.

Oh, and if one of your monsters falls in battle? They end up in a coffin until you can revive them, but here’s the thing…. that coffin will float around behind you, staying in the line of monsters as you explore the overworld. Dragon Quest Monsters: The Withered World is worth it for that fact alone.

Tags: Dragon Quest, Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince, Dragon Quest Monsters: The Withered World