Dragon Quest Treasures review

For an action role-playing game, Dragon Quest Treasures provides a robust amount of autonomy. You are free to run, glide, and dig into this imaginative world and largely follow your interests. But the real-time combat that doesn’t need your direction clouds Treasures entertainment value.

Treasure is ubiquitous in role-playing games. Whether it’s the pursuit of artifacts to advance the plot or the accumulation of gemstones to swap for essential supplies, nearly every entry in the genre incorporates some kind of material wealth. But habitually, it’s little more than a straightforward commodity that rarely serves as a foundation for reflection.

As its name implies, Dragon Quest Treasures explores the utility of fortune. For a dilapidated transit agency, treasure can help restore a rail system’s once-beautiful glory.  On a more personal level, the return of a seemingly lost artifact to an individual can produce elation. Sure, a game centered around the collection of affluence might sound like capitalistic fantasy. But writers Shungo Hirano and Fuminori Ishikawa frame the plot around restoration, whether it’s a public utility or a lapsed ambition. Unsurprisingly, healing the world is more rewarding than merely amassing large amounts of money.

Time to “Scale” Draconia

Like the mainline Dragon Quest games and spinoffs like this, there’s a fairy tale-esque atmosphere throughout. The game’s introductory cinematic reacquaints us with Erik and Mia, the siblings introduced in Dragon Quest XI. Set before the events of the Echoes of an Elusive Age, the orphaned pair live in servitude on a Viking ship. Following a brief escape sequence, the young pickpocketers fall into a portal that deposits them into a realm where rival factions pursue loot.

Although Erik and Mia’s adventures in Draconia might not earn a place in the Dragon Quest canon, the world itself is an imaginative creation with multiple nods to the famed franchise. Here, dragons once collected physical manifestations of the dreams, ambitions, and artifacts of people for safekeeping. But once the enormous creature died out, their physical bodies turned into a series of airborne islands, forming a charming origin story and an intriguing world to reconnoiter.

While it’s not always evident from your perspective on the ground, Treasures’ verticality offers the intermittent panorama of these lapsed behemoths. Franchise fans will appreciate how many of the game’s treasures are culled from other Dragon Quest titles. Sure, some of them reference Japan-only card battlers. But almost everyone will appreciate finding the series’ characteristic leather hat.

An Array of Fortes Is Essential

Given the game’s 37-year heritage, slimes are hardly the only time-honored creature you’ll find. Accompanying Erik and Mia are up to three franchise monsters who shadow you around.  Each type of creature has its own unique ‘forte’, providing indispensable navigational perks. From slimes that will catapult you toward hard-to-reach plateaus, others allow you to dig downward, glide across gaps, or race across long stretches of land. While Treasures provides waypoint indicators, traversing the rich environments can sporadically feel like solving a puzzle.

Remarkably, your fellow party members do most of the fighting for you. As you encounter subordinate foes lurking around the area, these enemies habitually attack when you draw near. To counter, you can issue a succession of melee dagger attacks or use a slingshot-like weapon to fire pellets. The latter injects an iota of strategy, as you might exploit elemental weaknesses for increased damage or launch healing pellets at your allies.

Adopting a hands-off approach to combat isn’t just possible, it’s often preferable. Treasures’ fights can be muddled, with allies battling sway foes you’re aiming at, causing a wayward dagger swing. Although you can jump into the thick of things, reading the struggle between darting enemies and CPU-controlled allies can be difficult. While it’s admirable that co-developers Square Enix and TOSE evaded traditional turn-based battles, the real-time encounters aren’t all that engaging.

Chasing Your Own Treasures

But Dragon Quest Treasures’ sense of freedom is energizing. While securing the game’s elusive dragonstones is your principal goal, many concurrent goals also compete for your attention. Unsurprisingly, NPCs offer an abundance of side-quests for you to pursue, which is easy as following the compass-like instructions of your magic dagger. However, when you are close, the indicator begins to go haywire. This is where your monster companions come into play, offering an illustrative ‘vision’ of the treasure’s location, complete with an “X” to mark the exact spot.  Cleverly, the game offers a distinct point-of-view of many of its iconic monsters. So, your Dracky companion will see a rather monochromatic world while Armorette’s perspective is viewed from behind a protective visor.

But along the way, you’ll likely to tempted to hunt for new monster companions, develop your home base, gather materials for crafting different types of slingshot ammo, or even tackle Treasures’ daily quests. Miraculously, the developers manage to keep things from feeling overwhelming. Instead, the game feels like a spacious playground where you’re largely free to follow whatever interests you. And while there are a few austere areas, Draconia is built with exploration in mind. Habitually, the game will pique your curiosity, coaxing you into finding out what is on the other side of the knoll that climbing. That said, the lack of any kind of weapon forging is slightly disappointing, given the insubstantial damage produced by your daggers.

A Missed Opportunity with the Two Leads

But beyond the uninvolved combat, Treasures makes one other transgression: Erik and Mia are functionally equal. You can pick your protagonist at your home base, while the other stays back to manage things. But each sibling controls the same way, lacking any distinct skills. Just as disappointing, there’s not much character development for the two. Given the events that transpire in Echoes of an Elusive Age, I would have liked to see more interaction between the two, with Treasures taking more time to define each character.

Following a slightly tedious introductory hour where Dragon Quest Treasures explains its mechanics, the game sets you free to hunt the treasures of your choosing. Exploring the wonderous islands of Draconia is largely a delight if you can get past a tragically uninvolved combat system. Undoubtedly, Treasures glistens but lacks the patina associated with an untarnished gem.

Dragon Quest Treasures was played on PC
with review code provided by the publisher.