Heroic Greed! – Dragon Quest Treasures Review

Dragon Quest is possibly one of the most well-known game franchises around.  With iconic artwork from Akira Toriyama and a gaming history that spans all the way from the NES to present with millions of copies of the various titles available around the world, it’s hard not to at least have an idea what the series is about.  Dragon Quest is one of the most popular franchises ever to have been released in gaming and its following is absolutely tremendous.

But what many gamers may not know is that in addition to the remarkable number of fantastic main series games out (Dragon Quest XI was the most recent), there are a number of unique and interesting spin-off games.  Titles such as Dragon Quest Rocket Slime and Dragon Warrior: Torneko – The Last Hope break the traditional JRPG expectations of the series in a variety of interesting ways. It’s these spin-offs we’re concerned with today because it’s time to take a look at the latest one – Dragon Quest Treasures for the Nintendo Switch from legendary developer and publisher Square-Enix!

Dragon Quest Treasures is a sort of prequel game for Erik and his sister Mia, both of whom appear in Dragon Quest XI.  Before they met up with the cast of DQXI however, they were treasure hunters together and this is their story.  As orphans, Erik and Mia are trying to become treasure hunters, survive, and thrive.  Unfortunately, it’s a difficult road for them and when they meet up with a flying cat and pig, they jump ship (quite literally) and head for the islands of Draconia and the scent of adventure…and treasure!

It just so happen that Draconia is absolutely rife with treasure and treasure hunters and Erik and Mia will soon find themselves recruiting a host of familiar monsters from various Dragon Quest games in order to build their reputations as treasure hunters.  It’s not a complex story but there is a fair amount of dialogue here and there and a bit of plot that keeps things moving along.   There’s so much going on in Dragon Quest Treasures though that you might not even notice how thin the story is.

You see, once you learn the mechanics of the game, your job is to go out and hunt treasure, bringing it back to your hoard in order to raise your status as a treasure hunter and adventurer.  It sounds pretty boring but don’t worry, it’s definitely not.  After things settle down and you have a grasp on what to do, you can choose between Mia and Erik at will.  They’re basically the same character with a different skin so this is purely a cosmetic choice and there’s no distinct benefit to either character.

Heading out into Draconia, you’ll encounter a variety of monsters.  Defeating them earns you gold and items, all of which you’ll definitely need later.  Accompanying you at first are two Slimes and a Dracky, all iconic characters from the Dragon Quest series.  Each monster on your team also provides an ability called a Forte.  Slimes help you jump up to various places you can’t reach on your own, acting as a springboard.   The Dracky lets you float gently down from heights, saving you from fall damage and allowing you to access otherwise inaccessible areas.  There are several more Fortes as well, including a Stealth one and a Sprint one, both of which you’ll definitely end up using!

Your monsters also attack for you.  In fact, they’re your primary combat in this game and the AI is pretty good with them.  Erik and Mia serve as support in combat, using a slingshot with a variety of pellets to help out in battle and winnow down enemy hit points from a distance.  You’ll have pebbles to do extra damage, healing pellets to keep your monsters’ HP up, and even buddy pellets that raise the chance that monsters you fight will be ‘scouted’.  Scouting means that when you head back to your gang’s base (mine was called Metal Slimes), the monsters will be waiting for you to recruit!  Once you pay their recruiting costs, they can join your gang and you can include them on your roster or be used as a backup team to independently hunt down extra treasure.  There are absolutely tons of monsters to recruit too, so the combinations are endless!

You can participate in battles by shooting monsters with pellets, running right in and attacking with your magic dagger, or teaming up with a monster in your party to perform a massive Dragon attack.  Each monster has a different Dragon attack and they can be pretty destructive in addition to looking cool.  You can even use your character’s Forte, powering up temporarily like a Super Saiyan from Dragonball Z (irony, right?) to blast your way through enemies in rapid succession with wildly overpowered attacks.  As you travel the lands of Draconia, you’ll scout more and more monsters, adding them to your roster and making it easier to fight stronger and stronger enemies.  Combat is more of a healing/support affair for the most part but it’s still remarkably entertaining!

The goal is or course, gathering treasure.  As you wander around the islands, you can hit L and B to search for treasure.  Your monsters also have an innate treasure sense and as you get closer, they’ll start to call out.  Once their exclamations turn red you can do another search and you’ll see the location of the treasure through each of their eyes.  This is fascinating because the monsters are treated as fundamentally non-human and some see in infrared while others see in black and white.  Some see in normal color as well but you’ll have to decipher three viewpoints to pinpoint the treasure.  There are two types of treasure boxes as well, gold and silver ones.  Gold are the valuable treasures and silver are the bric-a-brac, lesser treasures that still pad the hoard.  You’ll need plenty of both to fulfill the variety of quests you get and watch your hoard grow quickly into the millions of coins as your gang swells in rank.

That isn’t nearly all there is to do in Dragon Quest Treasures though.  There’s a wide world of quests out there waiting for you in addition to just treasure hunting!  To get your base up to snuff, you’ll have to enlist some help, and to do that, you’ll need to find all the monsters that will work for you.  Once you get everyone back to the base, you’ll be able to buy pellets, ingredients, and even cooked meals.  Those items allow you to enlist stronger and stronger monsters, further enhancing your parties and making you unstoppable.  Getting noticeably stronger takes a bit of time but it’s a pretty steady power creep as you play.

In addition to modifying your base, you’ll need to build additional buildings to support your growing gang, and explore the Snarl below the base to find out what’s going on and get hints of the treasure that will help your flying cat and pig friends to fulfill their mission as well.  Along the way, once you get strong enough, rival gangs will start heading to your island to steal your loot as word gets out how successful of a treasure hunter you are.  By the time your gang reaches level 4 or so, rival gangs will be chasing you down and trying to steal your treasure while you’re out in the world exploring.  It can be rather frustrating to have gangs just come after you while you’re casually exploring the world, but for the most part, they’re balanced pretty well and not outrageously difficult to defeat.  Sometimes they’ll attack your home base, trying to steal your banner like some weird single player capture the flag game.  Eventually, you’ll even get the opportunity to attack back, steal their banners, and take the whole gang out!

There are other missions too, some related to the main quest, some daily ones, and a bunch that include activating all the railways in Draconia.  Once you do, you can ship to specific areas and you don’t have to worry about wandering for hours across the land to get to where you need to be.  You can always use a Chimera Wing to haul your treasure back but unless you’re completing every Daily Quest every time, Chimera Wings are a rare commodity and definitely not to be wasted.  You can warp back to base from anywhere in the game as well, but you’ll lose your treasure from that run.

There’s also a sort of online compatibility baked into Dragon Quest Treasures.  Once you’ve reached the appropriate level, you’ll be introduced to a weird robot named AL4N that tells you that you can basically play a strange game of hide-and-seek with other members of the Dragon Quest Treasures community.  Talking to the robot allows you to hide treasure that other players can find and vice versa.   Hiding treasure allows other players to find a replica of it and as more players find it, your treasure rises in value.  You can also find other people’s treasure and sell the replicas for cold hard cash.  There’s even a monster swap function that lets you send your monsters to other servers to show off your loot, collecting likes in exchange in an odd parody of social media.  The whole thing is a bit strange but not at all bad, especially since you don’t need to subscribe to Switch Online in order to access the online functionality here.

Starting to sound complex yet?  There’s definitely a lot going on in Dragon Quest Treasures and it feels like you can’t possibly do it all at once.  For an open world Dragon Quest game, it’s definitely got a phenomenal amount of content included.  With special jewelled and metal monsters, strange hidden treasures, an assorted cornucopia of online activities, and a ton of land to explore, there’s a lot going on here for a game that’s basically just a side story.  While the plot definitely isn’t up to the standards set by the absolutely phenomenal Dragon Quest XI, this is a bit more than the simple beginner’s action game it appears to be, with a wide range of strategies and approaches to combat available and a fair degree of menu management to consider.

That being said, the difficulty isn’t all that high in Dragon Quest Treasures either.  As your monster army starts to grow, you’ll find it easier and easier to conquer Draconia and the game ends up being about 20 or so hours long.  For those of you with children who are wondering how well it’s suited to younger audiences, Dragon Quest Treasures is definitely an all ages game.  My son is 7 and a good reader and he’s absolutely hooked on the gameplay loop.  He’ll probably get triple the time I will out of it as well, since he’s way more focused on exploration and there’s just a lot of fun stuff to do.  But for adults, once the difficulty drops, the appeal of the gameplay loop might stagnate a bit as well.  The length of the game reflects this and by the finish line, you’ll have had a good time but you’ll also be pretty much finished unless you’re a particularly hardcore Dragon Quest aficionado.

A game like Dragon Quest also has to look and sound good and that’s an area where the series has never faltered.  With Toriyama’s designs and the beautiful cel-shaded style of Dragon Quest XI, Dragon Quest Treasures looks utterly gorgeous.  There are few glitches and problems aside from the occasional camera issue in tight spaces and the vistas that you look out across during the game are both varied and majestic.  The user interface is smooth and easy to understand and the game feels polished to a bright shine in every aspect.  That also includes the sound and the classic strains of Dragon Quest themes are like coming home after a long trip away.  There’s never been any doubt about the quality of musical compositions in the series and Dragon Quest Treasures won’t let you down.

That goes double for the technical aspects of the game as well. Controls are intuitive and easy to use, helpful reminders and onscreen menus pop up as needed, the map helps you find things, and even the load times are surprisingly minimal for the scope of the levels you’ll be exploring!   This is a technically exceptional game with no noticeable problems and it’s clear that Square-Enix spent a heck of a lot of time in development to make Dragon Quest Treasures run this silky smooth.

Dragon Quest Treasures is quite simply an excellent game.  At a full $60 AAA price point, it’s a bit more money than some gamers might want to spend and it’s not the epic JRPG some players were hoping for, but you’re definitely getting your money’s worth here and there’s no question that the fun factor is high.  There’s something remarkably satisfying about hunting down treasure, digging it up and holding it up for all the world to see that never gets old and with beautiful art and music, it’s almost impossible not to enjoy yourself.  If you’re on the fence, maybe wait and see if there’s a sale but if you’re a fan like some of us, Dragon Quest Treasures is a remarkably good time and well worth picking up!

This review was based on a digital copy of Dragon Quest Treasures provided by the publisher.  It was played on a Nintendo Switch in both docked and undocked modes and played equally well in both.  Dragon Quest Treasures is a Nintendo Switch exclusive title.