Dragon Quest Monsters The Dark Prince Demo Title
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Surprise demo for Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince is out now

Like encountering a Metal Slime

Okay, today’s Nintendo Direct was pretty cool, but the fun isn’t over for RPG fans. And on a day that saw an update for the Super Mario RPG remake and a Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door announcement, that’s saying something. Square Enix has released a demo for the upcoming Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince for Nintendo Switch, which you can download right now on the eShop.

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Funnily enough, this appears to have had no English announcement of any kind. It just kind of appeared, with the assumption that RPG turbo nerds like me would just notice regardless. And I mean… I guess I am writing this, so that worked.

While you can import your demo save data over to the full version of Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince, this one comes with a few catches. While monsters you capture/synthesize will carry over, their levels and stats won’t. Perhaps this is to prevent people from over-leveling in the demo and trivializing the full game, we can’t say for sure. On the plus side, the demo will still allow you to explore and capture monsters after you clear the available story content. That’s a nice touch for those who just want to dive into the mechanics here.

I have so many good memories of playing Dragon Warrior Monsters on Game Boy. The Dragon Quest Monsters subseries has been dormant for Western audiences for a while now, so I’m hoping this one will deliver. At the very least, a demo will give us a good indication of how this one is shaping up.

Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince will launch on Nintendo Switch on December 1, 2023,


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Timothy Monbleau
Guide Editor - Timothy started writing community blogs for Destructoid in 2012. He liked it so much he decided to write articles for the site professionally. His love for RPGs and the Ys series will endure forever.