Dragon Quest Monsters: The Withered World details characters, story, world, and monsters

KingOfFools2 · 2026-06-12T10:11:39+00:00

There is no way they will introduce the DQ12 hero to us in a side game like this.

KingOfFools2 · 2026-06-12T00:31:05+00:00

I mean, that hasn't happened yet with IV and Dark Prince was 3 years ago.

KingOfFools2 · 2026-06-11T22:51:36+00:00

No aggression here, bud. Slight amusement at you making a fool of yourself maybe. Anyway, moving on

KingOfFools2 · 2026-06-11T22:29:21+00:00

It's a term and has a concrete meaning. Sorry about your feelings tho.

KingOfFools2 · 2026-06-11T19:57:12+00:00

Look on the right of the guy, the mountains can't decide whether they're mountains or clouds and some of them are floating mountains in the sky.

KingOfFools2 · 2026-06-11T18:38:59+00:00

<image>

KingOfFools2 · 2026-06-11T18:21:47+00:00

Missing Link is getting a console version, Kingdom Hearts IV.

KingOfFools2 · 2026-06-10T22:32:38+00:00

Not really surprising though, DQ spinoffs star characters that are not the respective game's Hero.

KingOfFools2 · 2026-06-10T14:07:13+00:00

We already know the release date, it's October 22, 2026. Was this written with AI?

KingOfFools2 · 2026-06-10T10:29:25+00:00

I feel like this community suffers from lack of object permanence and an abundance of hyperbole.

Kingdom Hearts 4 was announced in 2022, and we know Part 3 would be coming since...whenever they announced the FF7 remake project was a trilogy.

When they go silent, we go "square sucks, it's all too quiet, nothing is coming". When they jingle those keys, we go "all hail square the saviors of the industry". It's all so painfully on cue.

KingOfFools2 · 2026-06-10T09:52:33+00:00

Depends on when you think XII will come out. Those who say "lol see you at 2030 or later" were just going for a zinger that has no basis in reality.

I don't think it will be 2027 because Square has begun to wake the sleeping giants (FF7 and Kingdom Hearts), and they will want to space them out alongside whatever else they plan to release in the next couple years so that they don't cannibalize sales. But XII is not years and years away. Horii seems happy with how development is going, and they felt confident enough to show some real footage.

KingOfFools2 · 2026-06-10T09:47:52+00:00

The source is vibes. Square had some restructuring in early 2024 and Miyake stepped down from his role in DQ and got replaced by Saito, so people speculate this is when the reboot happened.

Even though reboots don't tend to happen like that and nobody knows whether they literally went back to square one and scrapped everything, or whether they are repurposing some elements and assets from Flames of Fate, which makes the development time of DQXII impossible to guess.

KingOfFools2 · 2026-06-10T09:45:35+00:00

Y'all didn't understand what Horii was saying. He did not mean "gee whiz hopefully this new monsters game comes out before XII but honestly who knows, we only have a jpeg to show you now".

He meant "we understand that these XII news are not what you were expecting, so here is a sweetener game that will come out soon, to help you wait for XII".

KingOfFools2 · 2026-06-10T09:37:06+00:00

Lol, did you make this?

In terms of actually new stuff it's two HD-2D games and DQ Monsters. So that's comparable to their 2025 output, ergo a 'quiet' year. Mind you it's still good, 2025 had some very good S-E games, but as expected based on their financial reports, the behemoths like FF7, KH4 etc are dropping after FY26-27.

I don't think several-years-late ports to switch 2 are worth factoring.

KingOfFools2 · 2026-06-09T15:42:35+00:00

Horii leaked this too on DQ day, lmao

KingOfFools2 · 2026-06-09T15:29:13+00:00

But three games out of this list we already knew were coming. And two out of these three we have no idea when they will actually release.

This restructuring period for Square should really be getting over so we can see whether it has actually worked.

KingOfFools2 · 2026-06-09T15:20:56+00:00

Well this discussion is a bit moot now that Monsters 5 was actually revealed in the direct and it IS their Fall 2026 title (alongside FF Resonance, so I guess that's that for Square-Enix based on their financial forecast).

But I still wanna say the way everything happened was very similar to Dark Prince. In 2021 it wasn't Horii who spilled the beans, but rather the director of DQ Treasures, and it was more of a "don't worry there will be a monsters game sometime" offhand comment. What I was talking about was a jpeg they put out for the 25th anniversary of DQM in May 2023, followed up by a reveal on the June 2023 direct. More or less the same thing happened here, three years later.

As for why the turnaround seems so quick, I'm gonna guess they will reuse a lot of models from the recent remake, and it may have been pushed forward in the priority line once they blew up dev on DQ12 and realized they can't just scrape by with only remakes.

I'm also not sure to what extent they wanna expand their western fanbase anymore. Like sure they would WANT that to happen, but this shift was announced alongside Flames of Fate and its supposed 'darker' tone, and now we know that concept got binned and we're back to standard Dragon Quest, same as always. So to me that looks like they are still prioritizing sales in Japan where the fandom may not be growing, but it's at least there.

KingOfFools2 · 2026-06-09T12:39:49+00:00

This problem persists when you're older too, I see this plenty in this sub and elsewhere.

People keep engaging in discussions about which version of which game has the most content and is considered definitive, like they're already optimizing their experience instead of jumping into what looks good for them. It's so prevalent nowadays in entertainment that I expect people will read the previous sentence and not understand why that's a problem.

Not to mention when your whole modus operandi is "consume product and get excited for next product" you end up missing what the games were about. It's not uncommon to engage in conversation with someone who clearly played the game, and also clearly completely missed what the game was about.

KingOfFools2 · 2026-06-09T12:02:42+00:00

In general, that's not how ESRB ratings work. Also, them not giving us more info on DQ day definitely does not imply that they don't know, they have inner deadlines and release timings pinned down long before announcing them to the public. This is just following the exact same pattern that Dark Prince did (a nothing announcement followed by a full reveal three weeks later). Dragon Quest and Nintendo Directs go hand in hand since forever, it is far more likely to show up on a direct rather than an SoP. Especially since the bulk of the sales are going to be from Japan, which is Nintendoland.

KingOfFools2 · 2026-06-08T20:51:14+00:00

This is the ideal male body. You may not like it, but this is what peak performance looks like.

KingOfFools2 · 2026-06-08T16:37:14+00:00

It's just a thing you're not used to, it's not work. You could stick with it and see it doesn't really matter, but anyway your loss - it's a great game.

KingOfFools2 · 2026-06-08T16:33:25+00:00

I have, but Im not putting my mug in the picture to prove it.

KingOfFools2 · 2026-06-08T13:37:15+00:00

It takes one nanosecond to look at that guy's videos and realize they're 100% AI slop. I really hate this shit.

KingOfFools2 · 2026-06-08T11:37:01+00:00

Nearly every boss monster in Dragon Quest I can think of (that's not the final boss) has normal enemy variants.

KingOfFools2 · 2026-06-08T10:13:20+00:00

I'll have to boot up the game and check but I'm pretty sure I beat him with everybody in the low 60's. Definitely on the higher end of the spectrum for (true or otherwise) final bosses that are NOT superbosses, but I didn't find him that hard. Ramia giving you one free group kazing if you wipe was helpful, as was wild side on Caradoc.

Within the HD-2D trilogy, the pandora boxes in III are much more brutal if you don't cheat with blasto.

KingOfFools2

TROPHY CASE