While meeting with Square Enix at the start of PAX West this year, I had a chance to check out three separate demos. One of those was for the next entry in the now long-running spinoff series, Dragon Quest Monsters: The Withered World. Having finished my first Dragon Quest Monsters game earlier this summer, Joker 2, I came into the session with a decent knowledge of the mechanics and loop. Although my time with The Withered World was short, its visual glow-up combined with classic RPG battles and monster catching made for a definite impression on me.

Playing on a base model PS5, the first half of my session led me through the game’s beginning cutscene and introduction to the kingdom of Witherwood. The two protagonists are young versions of Nera and Bianca, who come from the fifth mainline Dragon Quest (my personal favorite), Hand of the Heavenly Bride. Deborah also shows up to inject some levity into the trio’s quest for the Leaves of Life, a plant that can restore their ailing father to health, but one Deborah is seeking out herself for its merits as a beauty product also. Upon meeting the pair of heroines, you can choose which one you want to control initially, with each one giving a buff to certain types of monsters, in addition to having their own unique abilities that can trigger in battle. I went with Nera for her affinity for slime monsters, which ended up being the first creature I was given after a brief personality-type quiz.

After some tutorials about catching and battling, I entered the castle and spoke to the king of Witherwood, who tasked me with restoring his kingdom to prominence from its currently arid and decayed state. To that end, he entrusts you with a watering can that has a few different uses. First, you can sprinkle water on certain dead-looking trees to bring them back to life, and then they become both fast-travel points and healing spots to restore your party’s HP and MP. Second, you can pour water on certain buds to have them flourish into a stat-boosting seed. Third, you can dowse enemies with water from behind and scare them into both running away and sometimes leaving behind a helpful item in their wake.

The second part of the demo allowed me to experiment with the synthesis system and the battle system, as it took me to a small tropical island where exploration was limited. Like other entries in the Dragon Quest Monsters series, you need to wait until a monster is at least level 10 before you can combine it with another to form either a completely new creature or one you’ve already encountered. I found the process here a little more newcomer and user-friendly overall, with a better sense of what was going to happen when I performed the synthesis and which combinations were going to be more rare or worthwhile. Like Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince, you can have four active party members and up to four in reserve, with fast-forward and auto-battle options speeding up the proceedings when necessary. I would have liked to see one more higher setting for the fast-forward, but it was great to have transparency about the chances of success when trying to scout/capture monsters for your team. This was an element I struggled against with Joker 2 and even the second Dragon Warrior Monsters game on Game Boy Color, but it felt more intuitive in The Withered World.

My affinity for Dragon Quest has only grown as I’ve gotten older, and the HD-2D remakes of Dragon Quest 1 through 3 provided hours and hours of RPG goodness. Sometimes, though, you just want to collect a stable of monsters and watch them duke it out for a while. Dragon Quest Monsters: The Withered World looks to be taking the series’ familiar mechanics and splashing on a modern aesthetic, while offering a somewhat lighter narrative than those aforementioned mainline titles. Constantly refreshing your party through synthesis and reaping the rewards of skills, stats, and abilities earned when creating a new monster is a thoroughly entertaining gameplay loop, and I’m eager to grab my watering can next year to start filling my monster stable and bringing life back to this world.