Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker is the fourth installment of the Dragon Quest Monsters spinoff of the Dragon Quest series, released on the Nintendo DS in 2006 in Japan, 2007 in North America, and 2008 in Europe and Australia.
The game is set in the Green Bays, a chain of islands teeming with monsters and crystals called Darkonium that are composed of the dark matter that make up monster biology. As such, enthusiasts come from all over to recruit and train teams of monsters, and the Monster Scout Organization hosts the Monster Scout Challenge tournament as a competition between monster teams.
You play as the son of Warden Trump, the leader of a secret monster research organization called CELL. Unfortunately, there's bad blood between you and Dad, and he's had you locked up for trying to sneak out and join the Scout Challenge. But when he decides that CELL should infiltrate the tournament, he figures he could do worse than sending someone who wants to be there. Things get even more complicated when you run into a strange talking monster, who is none too fond of humans but needs help with some mission that it's on.
Joker is followed by direct sequels, Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 2 and Dragon Quest Monsters Joker 3.
Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker contains examples of:
- Actually Four Mooks: Only one monster appears on the map, but up to three appear in combat.
- Affably Evil: Dr. Snap, who is seen as a hard-working and great man, not to mention a brilliant scientist and superb monster scout himself. He even helps The Hero in training his monsters.
- Anti-Climax: The end of the Scout Challenge. You finally get to face Solitaire when the Incarnus hits her Berserk Button and she jump-kicks it in the face. She's immediately disqualified for hitting a monster and you're handed the title without a fight.
- Battle Aura: "Psyche Up" makes a return appearance from Dragon Quest VIII. As before, it drastically increases the numbers you put out, be it damage, healing, or scouting.
- Cap: All monsters have their own stat caps, and their level cap is based on how many "pluses" a monster has. (0-4, level 50; 5-9, level 75; 10+, level 100) The stat cap can be increased by getting stat bonus "skills", and there are even specific stat bonus skill trees you can take.
- Canis Major: The Hero partners with a Shapeshifter whose primary and original form is the "Wulfspade". This monster is actually the legendary Incarnus, and his One-Winged Angel and Super Mode forms are variants on the adult Wulfspade form.
- Defeat Means Friendship: The Scout system, which takes into account your physical damage capabilities vs the enemy's power, and gives you a percent change to capture them based on this.
- Dick Dastardly Stops to Cheat: A rather interesting case of this being meta: The early online tournaments for Joker were, of course, teaming with cheaters. Naturally, this means that the tournament scene would be littered with nothing but Gem/Darkonium/Metal King Slimes, (thus making the whole ordeal incredibly painful) right? Nope, you run into teams with three different forms of Incarnus, which absolutely sucks compared to the Metal Slimes. In the original Japanese release, Incarnus was marked as "guest", meaning he wasn't usable in the online tournament at all — and the Japanese tournament servers had better sanity checking code to prevent things like using 3 versions of him at once.
- Disc-One Nuke:
- Players with knowledge of how Slimes turn into King Slimesnote allows for an early game, powerful monster — using "Quadrilinear Synthesis" to fuse four Slimes together results in a King Slime with vastly improved stats and spells, jumping from Rank F to Rank C and skipping the first third of the game. In addition, King Slime is one of only two monsters (the other being a postgame exclusive dragon deity) that receives "Courage" (mistranslated as "Cleric" in the US version) as a skillset. Courage is based off the skillset of the Heroes from the main Dragon Quest games, which includes their iconic attack Gigaslash and several high end spells they commonly learn such as Kazap and Multiheal. This means that not only is making the King Slime a huge stat increase for the point in the game; it gains access to some of the franchise's strongest abilities. Say goodbye to most of the challenge until endgame and postgame content!
- You can simply breed monsters to get a similar monster of the same rank. Doing this enough times in the same rank will move you up a rank, no matter what — for example, breeding a Beast monster and continually choosing the Beast monster child will have you go through 1-3 "generic" beast monsters for that rank. Upon reaching the final generic monster of said rank, breeding again with almost anything will cause the resultant child to be a generic monster of the next highest rank, all the way up to Rank A (there are no generic rank S monsters). With enough time and effort, it's entirely possible to have an entire team of Rank A monsters the second you can breed monsters, trivializing the rest of the game.
- Disqualification-Induced Victory: Solitaire gets themselves thrown out of the Scout Challenge for hitting a monster after losing their temper, giving you a free win.
- Excuse Plot: In Joker, the framing (i.e. the Monster Scout Challenge) is simply "go catch some monsters".
- Expy: Warden Trump is totally not Gendo Ikari; he even does the memetic Gendo Pose. Compounded by the NERV / CELL connection, and the fact that his quiet son has four friends who have a strong connection to heavenly beings.
- Fire, Ice, Lightning: Played with here. Lightning and Darkness are used in some of the strongest spells and skills. Wind is a better fit for the "typical element trio" than either of those.
- Forced Level-Grinding: When you have to deal with quadrilinear synthesis in order to Catch em' All, you'll have to do a ton of grinding to raise and synthesize the ridiculous requirements, many of which require high end metallic slimes (which in turn require you to get a lot of the very difficult and annoying to get lower end Metal Slimes).
- Fusion Dance: This game takes the Creature-Breeding Mechanic found in prior games and presents it as "synthesis" instead. It uses "Plus and Minus" instead of "Male and Female" (possibly because "Hermaphrodite" and "Neuter" are also options), but G-Rated Sex is very much there.
- Gotta Catch 'Em All: You get bonuses for it. Although some people just pick one or two families until the post-game.
- Grande Dame: Madame Rhonda Rummy, the tournament's financial sponsor. One of the islands that function as "levels" in the game, Palaish Isle, is entirely owned by her.
- Green Hill Zone: Joker starts with Infant Isle, a literal green hill that's home to many weak, easy to defeat enemies. Also the terrifying Gigantes.
- Guide Dang It!:
- Breeding any monster above a rank A. Most are references to Dragon Quest mythos (breeding 2 "Dragons" to make a Big Bad is common) but others are from left field.
- "Quadrilinear" synthesis combos are especially bad about this, with nearly all of them requiring ridiculous and nonsensical combinations.
- Infinity -1 Sword: Rank A monsters are the most powerful ones you can get without synthesizing.
- Infinity +1 Sword: Any of the S+ rank monsters. Especially the X rank monsters. These are all Big Bads and "Dragons" of previous games, and require an extreme amount of postgame work to acquire.
- Initialism Title: The game's logo presents it as "DQM", with "Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker" in much smaller text below.
- Leaked Experience: Monsters in your back row will gain experience, meaning it makes sense to bring them along. Monsters in storage will also gain experience, but at a vastly slower rate.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Solitaire suddenly goes all meta right before the championship fight:But this game ain't big enough for the both of us, kiddo, even with two screens!
- Level Grinding: It's a Dragon Quest and a Mons game, 'nuff said. Part of the level grinding will come naturally, as you attempt, for the Four Hundred Billionth Time, to get a certain monster you need for a combination to join you.
- Luck-Based Mission: To gain brief access to the Metal Menagerie (a place consisting entirely of metal slimes), without buying a pricey and one holdable at a time Metal Ticket, the player has to complete Madame Rummy's "Slime Challenge" (where you have to defeat a certain number of Slimes in her garden before time runs out). Clearing the challenge, though, is a tedious process that requires luck to win; the spawning locations aren't consistent, the amount of Slimes in each encounter is random (usually it's the max amount of 3, but it can randomly be less), and the Slimes will randomly use the spell "Clang"note , a first strike move which makes them impervious to anything thrown at them that turn (essentially it wastes time, when you're on a time limit). So to win the challenge, you have to hope the Slimes spawn favorably, you don't get individuals or groups of two when you encounter them, and that they don't use Clang too much.
- Luke, I Am Your Father: Inverted. Nobody outside of CELL ever finds out that you're the son of Warden Trump of CELL... or even that either the man or the organization are active. Well, Solitaire figures it out from something her mother told her,
though how Madame Rummy got that information is a mystery. And one NPC does remark the resemblance. - Metal Slime: An entire sub-family of them, starting with the humble Metal Slime and going all the way up to Metal Kaizer Slime, a Metal Slime with a face right out of Dragon Ball, or the returning Gem Slime, which is more or less a Super Saiyan Slime.
- Missing Secret: Robbin' Hood. It can't be found in-game, synthesized, OR won online. The only way to get one in-game was to complete both the Monster and Skill libraries... Which would've required a Robbin' Hood in the first place. Leopold, Empyrea and Trode became these once the wi-fi tournaments for Joker stopped. Empyrea and Trode required ALL monsters (including them) and Leopold required a complete skill library (including a skillset that only Leopold had).
- Mons: The game has 210 monsters to collect.
- Mon Tech: Monster Scouts use Scout Rings embedded with a jewel made of Baryon. This can empower Monsters to neutralize Darkonium in wild Monsters and tame them enough to join the party.
- Original Generation: Several original monsters, most notably the final boss and the Superboss, and other monsters like Darknoium Slimes, Dessert Demons, and Drakularges, were created by Akira Toriyama exclusively for this game. They eventually would go on to appear in other games, while Darknoium Slimes and Drakularges would reappear in Dragon Quest IX and Dragon Quest X, with the Dessert Demon appearing as a rarefied monster in the latter.
- Palette Swap: A few examples, mostly from Dragon Quest history (Green Dragon -> Red/Dread Dragon, Slime -> She-Slime, etc).
- Playing Card Motifs: Everything is named after a card game term. The Hero's Canon Name is Joker, The Rival is Solitaire, and other major characters include Warden Trump, Dr. Snap, and Madame Rummy (nicknamed "the Old Maid"). Minor named NPCs aren't left out, either; with Black Jacques, Shuffles, Canasta Croupier, Igor Folds, Bluff, and Suit. And then the main monster has different forms based on suits (Wulfspade, Hawkhart, Cluboon, Diamagon) with stronger Ace versions of each...
- Power Nullifier: There are multiple status effects that cause people to be unable to hit, cast, or do anything at all. And there are multiple counters to this.
- Punny Name: All of the islands in the Green Bays are "Isle" puns: Domus Isle (domicile), Infant Isle (infantile), Xeroph Isle (xerophilenote ), Palaish Isle (palatial), Infern Isle (infernal), Celeste Isle (celestial), and Fert Isle (fertile).
- Rank Inflation: Monsters go from F (Com Mons) to A (usually something from the The Very Definitely Final Dungeon), to S ("Dragons"), and finally X (Big Bad and beyond).
- Schizo Tech: The setting in Joker is medievalesque, but the main character uses a jet-ski to reach new islands.
- Start of Darkness: It's suggested that dark matter, the Life Energy of monsters, doubles as The Corruption for human beings. So Dr. Snap, who was indubitably evil from the start, may have gone mad after he took an interest.
- Starter Mon: When Warden Trump sends you out, he gives you a choice of a Dracky, a Platypunk, and a Mischevious Mole. You'd think the Incarnus would fill this role — he's a special, powerful, ???-type partner who can change his form and is central to the story — but he doesn't actually join you until midway through the second island.
- Treachery Cover Up: Dr. Snap's villainy is given this treatment in the post game, as the truth would probably cause a panic.
- Useless Useful Spell: Averted. All the buffs and debuffs work on the bosses, meaning that it actually makes sense to bring along someone with the ability to increase or decrease attack, defense, etc.
- Utopia Justifies the Means: Dr. Snap wanted to make a paradise for monsters. Overlaps with Dystopia Justifies the Means, as he was quite willing to wipe out humanity to do this.
- Villain with Good Publicity: Dr. Snap. To the point where everyone thinks that he was the one who saved the world, and people continue to believe that he was the good guy long after you beat the game.
- Visionary Villain: Dr. Snap wants to make a paradise for monsters by eliminating humans, ala Elpizo.note
- Well-Intentioned Extremist:
- Snap thinks he's one, but he's much closer to a Card-Carrying Villain with a god complex.
- Your dad and his "evil" organization might actually be one, since they seek to wipe out all the monsters. You know, the ones that constantly attack and kill humans, and those demons who keep trying to destroy the world.
- What Measure Is a Non-Human?: You can't kill Dr. Snap because he's human. Then he is transformed into a monster. Immediately afterwards you're told it's okay to kill him now.Incarnus: Come, Player, attack! This... THING has ceased to be human... It no longer deserves our mercy!
