First Impressions
Dragon Quest Monsters: The Withered World is a Charming Monster Collectathon
Pros
- Charming artstyle
- Huge roster of monsters
- In-depth synthesis system
Cons
- The field perspective won't be for everyone
2026 sees the legendary Dragon Quest series celebrate its 40th anniversary. During that time, we’ve had all manner of games, be it the excellent mainline games, the musou-inspired Dragon Quest Heroes, the building sim Dragon Quest Builders, and, of course, the Dragon Quest Monsters series, focused on collecting all of the fun monsters you can find throughout the series.
So, what better way to celebrate the anniversary than with a brand-new title in the Monsters series, Dragon Quest Monsters: The Withered World. As someone who has dabbled in this series, I was excited to get the opportunity to go hands-on with this latest entry and was left wanting more time to synthesize to my heart’s content.
Bianca and Nera travel to a new world to search for a cure for their father’s illness.
Bianca and Nera’s Whimsical Adventure
In The Withered World, you take control of Dragon Quest V’s Bianca and Nera at a younger age. Both girls, who have yet to meet when The Withered World takes place, find their fathers stricken with an illness and need a rare cure. After saying a prayer before bed, a door of light opens in each of their rooms, and they suddenly find themselves in a new world, one that appears to be, well, a bit withered.
After brief introductions, you’re introduced to Fluffy, the monster who brought you to this world and will explain a bit about how everything works. At this point, I got the ability to choose who I wanted to take control of: Bianca or Nera. Although the game tells you that you can change who you control later, there is a reason to control either of the girls, as they both have preferred monster families (I wasn’t able to check out how this is reflected in gameplay), and they have their own set of battle perks that they can use, such as Nera being more support-focused.
Finally, before I could set off and explore my surroundings, I was given my first monster, which was suggested based on a series of questions I answered about my personality. With my Wax Murderer in tow, I set off to explore this new land, beat up some Slimes, and meet the ruler.
The intro for The Withered World is represented in a gorgeous artstyle.
Each of the protagonists has gameplay benefits when you control them.
The Rolling Wilds
Perhaps the first thing I noticed during my time with The Withered World was how the perspective worked when exploring the world. As you travel forward, the screen rolls forward; perhaps the closest comparison would be like a rolling log, akin to something like Animal Crossing. This is a massive departure from traditional Dragon Quest, and I must admit, it took me a good five minutes or so to get used to it. Once I got my bearings, however, I grew to like this take on The Withered World’s approach and found it really adds to the game’s charm.
While exploring the world, there were on-screen monsters I could run into that would start an encounter, chests to pillage, and withered trees. I later learned that after obtaining a Watering Can, I could water and revitalize this plant life for some items, such as Seeds of Life and other goodies. There’s enough there, beyond just simply battling, that made me want to explore the environment.
The game will recommend which skills are useful against the monsters you’re fighting
Still, the monsters are what this series is all about, and the battle system plays out in a similar fashion to Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince. Each monster has a set of skills it can use, based on the points you spend in its Talent trees, and you can select which skill it should use in that combat round. The game will recommend which skills are useful against the monsters you’re fighting, something I’ve yet to see if you can switch off in the settings. Once you’ve chosen your tactics, press Fight and that combat round will play out.
The world rolls forward as you move on the fields, similar in style to Animal Crossing.
Use Show of Force to attempt to recruit monsters you battle.
Of course, this being a monster collecting game, there is a way for you to win monsters over to your side. Again, similar to The Dark Prince, you will have to use an ability, Show of Force, to impress the monster enough to join you. This will fill a gauge, and the closer to 100% it reaches, the better your chances of recruiting it. You can influence this further in your favor by inflicting it with debuffs and lowering its HP, and there’s a chance it may join automatically after battle (although this only happened to me once during my hands-on).
For the most part, though, battles were quick and snappy, allowing the gameplay loop of exploring and battling to flow nicely. Before my hands-on was up, however, I got to spend some time with the other core pillar of The Withered World, Synthesis.
Monster Mash
Synthesis was perhaps the part of my entire hands-on that grabbed me the most; I’m a sucker for creating the perfect monsters in games like these, and the options on offer here are excellent. We were told at the start of our hands-on that there were more than 500 monster types in The Withered World, and you could see that almost instantly in all of the options I was getting served up to me when using the system.
Perhaps the thing that most impressed me, however, was the reverse search system.
As you may expect, you need to select two parents to see a list of options for what monster you want from them. The game helpfully adds a red dot to any new monsters you’ve yet to acquire, and you’ll be able to choose which Talents you want the new monster to have. If you’re struggling to decide what will work, you can choose to have the game recommend, and you’ll also see which Talents may evolve.
Perhaps the thing that most impressed me, however, was the reverse search system. While lots of games with monster fusions have adopted this feature, the sheer number of options for you to tinker with to find a very specific monster is amazing, all the way down to every minute detail. There are also unique versions of monsters you can synthesize, such as synthesis-only and high-value plus monsters, which will create a monster with higher stats than normal. This is definitely an area of the game where I’ll be spending most of my time.
The game will let you know what skills are recommended in battle.
Synthesis is the real star of the show, though, offering a huge amount of options for creating the perfect monster.
Still, perhaps the best thing about synthesizing is just seeing how many different monsters the game features, and all of the charming designs. With just over an hour played of Dragon Quest Monsters: The Withered World, I’m intrigued to know how deep the monster collecting system goes, and if there is enough challenging content for me to put all of the hours I’m going to spend synthesizing to use.
Monster Wrangler
Dragon Quest Monsters: The Withered World seems to continue the series tradition of offering a fun way of collecting and battling all of your favorite monsters. The real star, however, is the incredibly robust synthesis system.
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