PixlBit

I preordered DQ Treasures from my favorite indy game store (Gamebox Video Games in Topsham, Maine, because they deserve a shoutout) last fall shortly after it was announced. Dragon Quest is probably my favorite JRPG franchise, and Erik was my favorite character in DQ XI, so this was pretty much a no brainer for me. December rolled around and... I realized it wasn't going to be the game I wanted it to be. But that's OK, because I had fun with it anyway. Which is a first for most of the DQ spin-offs for me (with the exception of Rocket Slime, just because I know Cary will say something if I don't put this in, it's his favorite DQ title).

Basically, DQ Treasures is about traveling around to various islands, fighting and recruiting monsters, and digging up treasure. There's sort of a story and main storyline here, but not much of one. Child versions of Erik and Mia are slaves to the viking/pirate/raider/whatever mean people they are. One day, the viking/pirate/raider/whatevers capture two tiny winged critters, a small green pig and a small pink cat. Erik and Mia free them and magically get transported to an alternate realm made up of floating sky islands. Their main quest is acquire the Dragon Stones to, heck I've forgotten already. Save the world, probably. I did warn you that it was a very weak main storyline. Half the time I didn't even remember that I was supposed to be following a main quest, to be honest. At the beginning, you have to play one mission as Erik and one mission as Mia, but then it's up to you who you want to play as, and you can swap back and forth as much as you want. There's no difference either way, so I happily left Mia back at the base and ventured forth as Erik throughout the whole game.

Side quests are available, there's a couple of fetch quests that made life easier in the long run but were a pain in the butt to complete because they involved recruiting certain monsters, one of which is only found in one tiny location in the whole game. Many of the others add to your treasure vault by awarding you statues of the quest givers. By far the most important side quest in the whole game I wouldn't even consider a side quest and more a part of the main quest, because without it, finishing the game is far more difficult. It's getting al the train stations on each island up and running, and trust me, you're going to want those once you start exploring the areas further away from the main train station on each island. Chimaera Wings are few and far between in DQ Treasures until you complete the main story, so the only other mode of fast travel between you and your base will be those train stations.

Combat was also very simplistic. Some basic hack and slash with a button press and some pretty impressive specials that your party members could pull off once they filled their combat meters. You only get two weapons, the Divine Dagger for melee and the catapult, which is really a slingshot, for ranged attacks. Other than special pellets for boss battles, healing pellets for party members, and buddy pellets for monster recruitment, I found the catapult to be fairly useless in battle, but I'm more a charge in and beat the crap out of everything or get killed trying kind of player. Supposedly there are combos, but since you have no control over your party members, those are random and mostly a matter of luck. Since I care more about exploration and collecting things than I do about combat, this actually worked well for me, especially since I generally prefer turn-based combat over action combat.

At the start of the game after the tutorial and introductory levels, you gain an island for your base. It contains a below ground dungeon, a vault for your treasure, a reception desk to access some basic services, and a concierge to send out treasure hunting parties with monsters you've recruited but are not currently in your party. The only things you get to personalize are the name of your base and what treasures are on display. As you progress, you can access deeper levels in the dungeon, add more displayed treasures in your vault, and upgrade the extremely basic services to merely basic services through sidequests. There is also a simple online component where you can send a monster out with one of your favorite treasures to show off to other random players and hide one of your treasures on your island for other players to find, and you can have monsters visit with one of their treasures. The actual treasure stays in your vault, the other player gets a replica. You can keep it in inventory or sell it. Since what few items are available for sale can be pricey, I chose to sell them, for the most part.

Exploration and collecting stuff, both treasures and monsters, is where DQ Treasures excels. There are five islands to explore, each with its own environment - desert, volcanic, perpetual icy winter, sweeping, grassy plains, and one with kind of a generic "this is a nice little island" vibe. Lots of hidden goodies and a few side quests are there for the adventurous explorer to find. I found a small hidden cave system behind a waterfall on one island by happy accident, a hidden mine on another island, and a ton of nooks and crannies with goodies galore.

DQ Treasures is a collector's dream. All monsters in the game, with the exception of bosses, can be recruited, if your level is high enough and you have Better Buddy pellets for your catapult. Once recruited, monsters become your party members and acquire experience and level up just like you. All monsters have one of five different abilities, called fortes. Launch gets you up to high places you otherwise couldn't reach, Glide is self-explanatory, Sprint allows you to move quickly and negates fall damage, Stealth allows you to move underground and sometimes sneak past an enemy, and Scan locates treasures, resources, and slingshot targets and highlights them. Every monster has a special combat attack that can deal a massive amount of damage, and is one of the few things you can actually control in terms of your party members' actions. I will say that the AI is pretty decent and your monsters will actually protect you while you're digging up a treasure or getting the snot beat out of you. Monsters are also your treasure detectors, and each monster has certain classes of treasure that they're good at finding. The types of treasure available on each island change, so swapping out party members is important if you want a good haul on a particular island. Monsters are also your sherpas and carry your treasure for you. Each monster can carry a set number of treasures and has a percentage on what the chances are that they can be made to drop it in combat. Beware of lugging around too much treasure for too long before returning to your base, though, because you will, once again, attract the attention of rival treasure-hunting gangs and they will attack you while you are out and about.

Treasure! It's what the game is all about! It comes in a couple of varieties. There's the good stuff, and then there's the bric-a-brac. The more treasure you find, the more valuable your vault becomes, and the more services and quests you have access to. It also brings the attention of rival treasure hunting gangs that will try and raid your island and steal one of your prized possessions that you have on display. Almost of the treasures are nods to items, weapons and armor, and characters from previous DQ games. The good treasure chests are gold, and the bric-a-brac ones are silver. Gold ones are obviously more valuable for your vault, but other than that, not a huge difference. You can also find treasure maps that cause the location of treasure dungeons to show up on your map. The monster levels in these are scaled and even at a maxed out level of 99, I was still getting my butt handed to me in a few of them. They're randomly generated, by the way, so if at first you don't succeed, you can try again and you might get easier enemies the second time around.

Once you finish the main story, such as it is, you can continue to hunt for treasure, the on-map treasure chests hidden all over the island, and whatever monsters you didn't manage to recruit.

One major disappointment, as far as I'm concerned, was the lack of any real merchandise in your shop. A few of the more common resources, some recipes for dishes to feed your monsters and make pellets, and that was pretty much it. As for feeding your monsters, it didn't seem to make much of a difference if I fed them or not, so I really didn't use that mechanic much, unless it was one of the daily quests and I needed to complete all the quests to score a couple of chimaera wings for fast travel.

In conclusion, it's not the greatest game I've ever played, but it was a lot of fun for what it was. I managed to recruit one of every recruitable monster and found most of the treasures and the chests scattered around the islands before it got to feeling too repetitive.  I wish my base had been more customizable and that I could have switched out party members without having to drop everything and return to my base, but those are minor quibbles. And I got to play as Erik, so there's that. If I had to give this game a rating, I'd probably give it a 7/10.