Right away Dragon Quest Treasures reels me in with one of my favorite characters from Dragon Quest XI, Erik when he was a child and his sister Mia is with him too. This is long before the events of Dragon Quest XI and has nothing to do with that story, but as spinoffs go the game is well done with a lighthearted and joyful adventure with the twins. The story starts with Erik and Mia on a Viking marauder ship talking about how they're going to find their own legendary treasure. Erik and Mia find a captured talking flying pig and flying cat on the ship and free them. Things happen and Erik and Mia fall through a portal to another dimension with their new friends and that's when their adventure truly begins.
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| Erik and Mia ready for adventure! |
The world of Draconia is colorful, vast, and a lot of fun to explore. Draconia is a world where dragons turned peoples memories and hopes into treasures. The dragons are long gone, but their bodies make up the various floating islands of Draconia. It's actually pretty cool and the various regions are beautiful with places like green meadows with mountains or a Winter wonderland. You can play as Erik or Mia in the game and it doesn't matter who you choose, they have the same fight style and magic. I personally went with Mia. The main goal is to find the seven legendary Dragon Stones, but it's not the only thing to do. One of the other major things to do is to build your own treasure base to store all the loot you find on your adventure. This also helps fund restoring the magical trains that allow you to travel to the different islands.
Of course the twins need help doing this and this introduces a mechanic in the game that I really enjoyed, recruiting monsters to join your treasure hunting team. Luckily, there are tons of monsters in each region ready to be recruited. It's pretty simple with an item called the Buddy Bullet which you fire at them with a slingshot weapon called a catapult. Sometimes it takes a few tries with the Buddy Bullet, but once it succeeds the monster joins you. When you get back to your base you talk to an NPC there and they will show you a list of potential recruits of monsters who want to join you. You have to pay the monster's hiring fee which can range from a certain amount of money to a specific item. Once you do that, the monsters are happy to join and help you on your treasure hunting journey.
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| A monster joins the team! |
Each monster has different abilities that help you explore the areas. You can get to hard to reach heights with a flying monster or slip under small entrances with stealth with different monsters. The monsters also help you battle enemies with their skills. It makes exploring and boss battles a good time as you try out different monster team setups.
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| Monsters can do lots of things. |
You can have three monsters in your party so I liked getting to try out different team setups and seeing what worked for me best with each area. There are also monster medals which can be equipped like armor because the medals have different stat boosts like higher defense, more magic points, or stronger attack abilities. There are mini quests you can do as well which reward you with special items, treasure, and sometimes story related items. The user interface menu is easy to use which makes things easier to navigate.
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| Nicely laid out menu and team. |
All the treasure you find on your travels gets appraised the moment you return to your base. The treasures get stored in your base and there are plinths that you can display your treasures on. This leads to those displayed treasures sometimes getting polished which increases their monetary value. Some treasures are more valuable than others with things like priceless treasures which increases the overall quality of your treasure vault and base.
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| Treasure appraisal done! |
Your treasure isn't always safe however with other treasure gangs coming for you out in the wilds or to your base directly. When they come to your base this plays out like a capture the flag minigame. You battle the other team and when you defeat them this also increases the value of your treasure vault and also levels up the strength of your entire team. The battles aren't terribly challenging, but they're a lot of fun.
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| Victory! |
Overall the story in Dragon Quest Treasures isn't terribly serious and is very much a fun romp in a different dimension giving Erik and Mia a good story that is charming because of the way they're written as well as the myriad of interesting characters they meet along the way. It's a cute fairy tale that celebrates just having a great time and the spirit of adventure. I really enjoyed the game because of all that charm and the story itself is well done which made for a fantastic time.
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| What a fun adventure! |
*Dragon Quest Treasures is available to play on the Nintendo Switch
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