Despite my apparent (shameful) lack of Dragon Quest trivia, Nintendo ordered us to their offices in downtown San Francisco to tell us a little something about the latest DS entry into one of the most popular videogame series on the planet. The game I'm talking about is, of course, Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 2.

 

In DQMJ2 you control a young boy who unwillingly air-shipwrecks on a mysterious island. And what do you do when you find yourself in such an unfortunate set of circumstances? You begin scouting the island for monsters, so you can become a master monster scout! At least that's probably what most Japanese High-Schoolers would do, and rightfully so.

DQMJ2 doesn't seem to deviate too much from its predecessor, taking the tried and true turn based battle system gameplay foundation and improving upon it in the details where necessary. As a result, DQMJ2 seems to be more of a natural step up the evolutionary ladder, refining the already excellent DQMJ, and not so much rewriting any of the previously established rules.

Featuring over 300 monsters, of which you get to carry around up to 100 at all times, DQMJ2 is a significantly larger game. But what's perhaps even more impressive, is that positive and negative monsters (called male and female in the Japanese version – don't ask) can be "synthesized" to create new, more powerful types. When creating a new breed, players get to choose which combination of positive or negative attributes to assign their toddler, resulting in an enormous number of unique monsters, each with their very own attributes and special abilities.

 

The inclusion of weather and day time effects is another important improvement, forcing players to take into account that rain may attract certain powerful monsters to a specific region in the game. For instance, Captain Crow randomly shows up challenging you to a duel. However, he only appears when it's raining, so as long as the sun is up, you won't have to anticipate his unwanted arrival.

But the heart of DQMJ2 is once again monster scouting. In order to do so, players must try to impress wild creatures in battle. Depending on how well they perform in those, the monsters then decide to join them in their party – or not. Scouting is also a major part of the multiplayer. Whether locally connecting to a friend's DS or battling a stranger over Wi-Fi, players can scout each other's monsters. But scouting someone's monster won't make it disappear from his or her own roster, a conscious decision made to avoid some major frustrations over losing that special baby of yours you've been wasting your entire senior year leveling to perfection.

Owners of the previous games will be happy to note that even monsters from some of the earlier titles can be scouted via ad-hoc. This way certain more advanced monsters can be acquired quite a bit earlier than would otherwise be possible in the game.

Despite my inexperience with the series, it didn't take me long to find appreciation in the sheer number of little, but eloquent improvements promised. DQMJ2 seems incredibly well thought through, and little nods to the community such as a weekly international tournament supported by Nintendo impressively demonstrate the first party support that stands behind the franchise. Unless they mess up the localization, which is done in-house by Square Enix and therefore unlikely, I don't see why anyone even remotely interested in the series shouldn't be incredibly excited for the game. Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 2 is due for release September 19 in North America, and October 7 in Europe.