From the start it’s apparent that this is no Pokémon and to claim they’re exactly alike would be a disservice to both games. Unfortunately, there are also some striking similarities between the two and hence it's equally as easy to compare them. In plot, both games challenge the player to travel the world finding a set number of items (ten pieces of darkonium being the equivalent to Pokémon’s eight badges) before entering a final challenge to become the master trainer.

Both games also fill their worlds with cute monsters, and challenge the player to catch them, building stronger and stronger teams, but it is here where the difference between the two lies. Pokémon, with its “gotta catch ‘em all” raison d’être and the strengthening of teams through sheer grinding is far removed from the gameplay on offer in Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker. Here, monsters are caught and then synthesised together to create a stronger monster. These can be further and further synthesised until they’re more powerful at level five than the original monsters would have been at level fifty.

It’s in this difference where the main problem can be found. By encouraging the player to repeatedly combine pairs of monsters and sacrificing both original creatures in the process, it takes the emphasis away from collecting. There’s no bond formed between the player and their monsters because no sooner have they conquered a dungeon together, they must be sacrificed for a stronger monster to conquer the next. With no attachment to the monsters being used all that’s left is to create more and more powerful monsters, and catching new types soon feels like a chore - pointless, because they won’t be around long enough to ‘get to know them’, as it were. It’s a shame because the monster design here is without equal in the RPG genre, only without that draw of catching them all, many of them will be simply overlooked and the game is shortened drastically.

To judge it as an RPG rather than a Pokémon clone is to be much kinder. The world-saving sub-plot is much more interesting than the item-hunting one. Upon finding a strange monster injured in a cave, you’re charged with escorting it to a number of shrines to gather enough power to avert an impending catastrophe. As the one monster that’s with you throughout the game it’s a lot easier to care what happens to him over the rest of the cast of creatures.

The shrines form the game's dungeons, though the islands on which the game is set are effective as dungeons in their own right. Green Bays is made up of a number of islands, each more puntastic than the last (Infant Isle, anyone?), and there’s no world map between them - to get from one to the other a jet ski must be taken. Each of the seven islands forms its own self-contained unique environment, and with each one being vastly different from the last travelling them rarely gets boring. It’s fun further due to the company you have as you walk around. Monsters run, jump and slide around the scenery with you, each one as fantastically designed as the last. If you’ve any experience of previous Dragon Quest games you’ll recognise the usual suspects, and know that such care has gone into every monster that each one feels like it has its own personality and they have charm by the bucket load.

Encountering monsters on the field whisks you into a battle with up to three foes. A decision is then faced – to fight or to scout (or run away, if you’re a big chicken). Fighting plays out simply, as in previous Dragon Quest titles, and winning nets the monsters experience to get stronger. At certain levels skill points are earned which can be spent learning skills or on stat boosts. When choosing to scout, though, your monsters lay down their weapons and instead attempt to impress the enemy with a show of force. A gauge measures how impressed the victim is as a percentage taking into account its strength, and your monsters'. If your monsters are strong enough and suitably impress the enemy they’ll concede and join the cause. It’s possible to scout a powerful monster that’s only 1% impressed, if you’re lucky, which is satisfying. Of course, at 1% you're much more likely to fail, causing the enemy get angry and launch a powerful counterattack, as if to mock you for even thinking you were worthy of asking it to join up. Successful scouts can be stored (storing monsters still nets them experience, albeit at a much lower rate) or added to the team instantly.

When a monster reaches level 10, the synthesis can begin. Take a negatively charged monster, a positive one, add a little salt and wait for the magic to happen. After selecting which monster you’d like to create (usually from a choice of three) the original two monsters will disappear, replaced with their offspring. Up to three skill sets can be carried over from the parents, with half of the skill points already spent by the parents in those skills also carried over. By synthesising monsters that have a skill set maxed out, it may be upgraded when the child is born, and before long the monsters encountered on the field will be fleeing in terror.

The synthesis system is very well done, and adds a compulsion where collecting fails. Watching as your once lowly slime becomes a powerful King Cureslime via a Dark Slime Knight could almost feel like watching a child growing up. It’s not without issue though. To maximise the benefit of earned skill points they need to be allocated before synthesis, and the game only allows this if the monster is in your party at the time, meaning constant inventory management is necessary to get the best results and any collection of monsters in double figures quickly becomes difficult to manage.

As a monster-collecting game, Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker isn’t in the same league as Pokémon. As an RPG however, it’s a big success. Travelling the beautifully crafted world creating stronger and stronger monsters while trying to unravel the mysteries your companion provides is as addictive as the collecting could have been – and if only it wasn’t over so quickly it would come much more highly recommended.