It's been a couple of years since the last Dragon Quest Monsters game came out - three, to be exact. But personally, I've only ever played one of these monster-catching spin-offs before, and it was Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker in 2006 on the Nintendo DS, which was 20 years ago (dang, I'm old).
Well, fast-forward to 2026, and we have yet another new Dragon Quest Monsters game called The Withered World. If you're unfamiliar with Square Enix's subseries, it's basically Pokemon! You go around and battle the iconic DQ monsters you know and love, but you get to recruit them and use them for battle in your party. They can level up, learn new skills, and later on, you'll even get to synthesize them and combine them into rare, stronger creatures.
This new entry stars two young girls, Bianca and Nera, who have mysteriously ended up in a strange world called Witherwood, where they hunt for items called Leaves of Life to cure their sick fathers. I had no idea until I looked up their names after my gameplay session at Gamescom 2026, but it seems that these characters are from Dragon Quest 5, and in this game, you just play as their younger selves. I don't know if die-hard Dragon Quest fans will find that cool or interesting, but I think it's pretty neat!
But as a lapsed fan of the series, I have to say that after playing The Withered World for about 45 minutes, nothing about it enticed me to come back.
The demo starts with the two sisters meeting, then you take a short personality quiz that gives you a specific starting monster based on your answers. Since I'm not totally familiar with all the monsters in the franchise, I didn't really care who I started with, but I could see other people restarting the game to get one they really like. You also get to choose if you want to play as Nera or Bianca, and the two of them actually have different battle perks and monster families they resonate with. For example, Nera has a skill during battle that allows allies to gain MP slightly, and negative status effects can be removed from allies.
From there, I explored this withered world with my friend, who also has a sick father, and we ran around and collected a couple of monsters by taming them in battle. Basically, the more monsters you have on your team, the higher the chances are of you being able to Scout a beast. I didn't really love the process of collecting the critters, as it doesn't feel as exciting as Pokemon.
In those games, you have to weaken the enemy, and you toss a Poke Ball, and you never really know for sure if the Pokemon is going to stay in. In The Withered World, the game will just straight up tell you the percentage chance you have to catch it. It doesn't feel as rewarding.
And that lack of reward pretty much sums up my experience playing this new Dragon Quest game. From the battle system to the exploration to the story cutscenes to the dialog, it all felt underwhelming. I wanted to skip the cutscenes because they were way too slow for my taste, and I just didn't care about the characters. I wasn't compelled to go around and collect every single monster I saw out on the field, and the world itself didn't feel that interesting to explore.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://gamerant.com/dragon-quest-monsters-the-withered-world-hands-on-preview-gamescom-2026/
