I’m reckoning today with the fact that I was exponentially more excited to hear a new Dragon Quest Monsters game was on its way than I was to finally see real visual proof that Dragon Quest XII actually exists and is still coming (…at some point).
That loud sound you heard in your soul was me here in New Jersey screaming "MOOOOOOONSTEEEEEEEEEERS!!!"
— VegettoEX (@vegettoex.bsky.social) May 27, 2026 at 9:12 AM
So here I am, your personal DQMeister, to provide a little background on these games, why they’re cool, and what is likely on the horizon for this new entry.
SIDE NOTE: I am not an expert on the Monsters sub-series, but I sure like it a lot!
What is “Dragon Quest Monsters”…?
Dragon Quest Monsters is a spin-off series from the mainline Dragon Quest games with a focus on collecting and (perhaps more importantly) synthesizing monsters into bigger, badder, stronger versions up the food chain — you can start with a regular ol’ Slime, and work your way up to a real badass.
The series began in 1998 with a humble Game Boy game, itself technically a prequel to Dragon Quest IV (more on that in a bit). Since then, we’ve seen various entries and offshoots (Caravan Heart, Treasures, the Joker sub-sub-franchise), all the way up through the 2023 release of Dragon Quest Monsters 3 (released as “The Dark Prince” internationally) on Switch and PC.
If you’ve read all that and think “Pokemon? Digimon?”… yeah, no-one would blame you. To get technically correct about it (the best kind of correct), monster recruiting in Dragon Quest began with the series’ fifth mainline entry on the Super Famicom in 1992 — that’s four years before “Pocket Monsters” hit domestically, but the Dragon Quest Monsters series proooooobably doesn’t exist without those other little game freaks.
I first poked at the Monsters games with a loose cart of the original Game Boy game I bought on clearance at GameStop a million years ago, and have since played to completion Joker 2 on Nintendo DS, a fan-translation of a remake of the first game on Nintendo 3DS, and The Dark Prince on Steam Deck. Beyond that, I’m actually slogging my way through an English fan translation of 2002’s Caravan Heart on the Game Boy Advance right now.
While I haven’t played all of them, I have a heck of a time with every whirl through a Monsters game. I love the mix between the recruiting and synthesizing, participating in the kingdom tournaments, and mostly just letting these everyday monsters get the spotlight they deserve — I love spending time with the Killer Machines and Slime Knights and their ilk.
SIDE NOTE: I’m on record as saying that I enjoyed The Dark Prince more than a certain HD-2D remake of a legendary beloved game that same year…!
What universe is this…?
The Monsters games take place in a variety of settings: sometimes they’re in their own bespoke world and you take portals that may transport you back to the setting of a mainline game…
…and sometimes they’re a full-on story prequel to an actual mainline game.
You generally don’t “need” to know any of this, but obviously there are going to be some pretty significant call-backs and cameos that will mean a lot more if you’re already familiar with the respective mainline game(s).
Why’s that important to “The Withered World”…?
Supporting characters from prior games acting as the protagonists in a Dragon Quest Monsters game is tradition — there are some exceptions (notably over in the Jokers sub-sub-series), but you should generally expect to see some familiar faces. For example, Terry from Dragon Quest VI (which didn’t originally come out in America at all!) stars in the original Dragon Quest Monsters, Kiefer from Dragon Quest VII stars in Caravan Heart, Erik from Dragon Quest XI stars in Treasures (a spin-off-Monsters game in all but title), and Psaro from Dragon Quest IV stars in The Dark Prince.
SIDE NOTE: This tradition of supporting characters going on to star in other games was really solidified with Torneko Taloon from Dragon Quest IV kick-starting the Mystery Dungeon series with Torneko’s Great Adventure in 1993… but that’s a story for another day!
The two characters we saw in the short announcement teaser for The Withered World are almost certainly Bianca and Nera (“Flora” in its original Japanese), characters from 1992’s Dragon Quest V.
Much like prior games, we’re seeing — again, not yet confirmed, but c’mon — child versions of them here, so when you consider what we know about past Monsters games and what we know about Dragon Quest V (where we’ve already seen some child versions of characters…), it’s pretty safe to say we’re looking at another prequel here.
The extent to which it’s going to be interconnected story-wise remains to be seen — it could be inconsequential like most of them, or more tightly intertwined like The Dark Prince was.
I’m kinda hoping for the latter! I thought the team behind The Dark Prince did a great job of threading the various plot points and characters into a game that felt like a standalone Monsters game while also feeling like a “true” Dragon Quest game. Sure, it still felt like a “throw the junior team members on this” kind of project, but it wasn’t that far off! That water temple really needed a second pass, though, my dudes.
What’s with the title?
The game we know in English as Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince was actually known as Dragon Quest Monsters 3: The Demon Prince and the Elf’s Journey (ドラゴンクエストモンスターズ３ 魔族の王子とエルフの旅) in Japanese.
Adjustments to game subtitles is nothing new coming from Japanese to English (sometimes going for alliteration), but this was notable for dropping the actual number in the title. If I had to guess, part of this decision was driven by the fact that we did not get some of the prior Monsters games officially in English (notably Joker 3 and the couple remakes on 3DS), along with the fact that “2” was actually a set of two companion games aaalllll the way back on the Game Boy Color! Dropping numbers from titles can be used as a way to communicate the lack of a need for prior familiarity; meanwhile, I can imagine a scenario where the Japanese team wanted to bring back a “3” for that title as a way of communicating the exact opposite of: hey, no, this is a REAL entry again!
That all said, Dragon Quest Monsters: The Withered World seems to actually be called Dragon Quest Monsters 4: Bianca and Flora of the Land of Withered Trees (ドラゴンクエストモンスターズ4 枯れ木の国のビアンカ・フローラ) in Japanese.
There’s something pretty significant about a Monsters game being set in the world of Dragon Quest V, back where it all began and spun-out of. Dragon Quest V is absolutely beloved (in particular for its generations-spanning story), and served as the basis for the 2019 theatrical film Dragon Quest: Your Story — it’s a pretty important game, not just in the chronology of Dragon Quest, but in the medium of gaming as a whole!
So now what?
All we know right now is that the plan is to get The Withered World out before Dragon Quest XII… but we don’t actually know a release window for that one, either. The game seems set for release across pretty much every platform (Switch, Switch 2, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and Steam), and unlike The Dark Prince, hopefully we can get a simultaneous release for this bad boy worldwide and across every platform.
So here all the way at the end, I’m mostly left wondering why I have more excitement for a new Monsters entry than I do a mainline entry. After all, it’s probably going to be close to a decade since Dragon Quest XI came out by the time we see XII, and won’t this be the last chance for a Toriyama-designed protagonist?
That’s actually what scares me a little bit. I didn’t jive with what I saw of that new protagonist at all, and the deep-down conspiracy theorist in me thinks that maybe what we see isn’t actually Toriyama’s vision — knowing the game development has been rebooted, there’s more than a significant possibility that this is an updated or even completely overhauled design from what Toriyama might have himself contributed many years back.
There’s also the question of what extent Sugiyama’s “work” might be in here — is there some old, unused overworld theme kicking around, and is it going to be even worse than XI‘s was? This could have been a great opportunity for a mainline game to really strike out on its own without the shadow of Sugiyama’s hate-machine trailing behind it.
All of that remains to be seen, and that’s probably the problem: we really didn’t learn anything substantial about XII today. While I’m sure it’s “real” and probably coming sooner than we think, it still feels like a big ol’ question mark to me. When you toss in remnants of Sugiyama’s influence, the unknown of Toriyama’s involvement, and the weirdo nonsense outta Horii lately talking up AI and translation bullshit…
I dunno, man. Just gimme Monsters (for now).
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