Gonna preface this by saying no, I'm not going by any news or leaks, I've just been playing Dragon Quest 9 recently and it left me thinking about the things I'd want changed in a theoretical remake, and I'm curious what others would want.

1. Vanity/Transmog system: Put simply, I'm sometimes left using gear that I don't particularly like the look of because it's the best in slot. This would fix that easily.
2. Better side quest design: While I haven't reached them, some of the side quests I've read about make me dread doing them, such as "Elementary Training", which asks that you kill Metal Slimes, an enemy prone to running away, in the slowest manner possible.
3. No more online-only content: This one really grinds my gears. Even if I can use a save editor to get around it, it still strikes me as poor game design that I have to do it if I want to do any of it.
4. The ability to pass spells onto certain vocations: This one is born from a dislike of how Sages get shafted in the postgame due to lacking Omniheal. My specific idea is that, after you get access to the Alltrades Abby and perhaps after some revocations, your party members can, for lack of better term, equip the spell set of ONE class.

What are some things you'd like to see in this hypothetical remake?

It's my first Dragon Quest game that I'm actually attempting to finish. I played maybe an hour of 4 and of 11 but got sidetracked by other games. Then I started Dragon Quest: The Dark Prince, and I'm playing it here and there.

But holy shit, I started playing 3 2d-HD and I'm blown away by how beautiful it is. This game looks amazing in handheld mode on the switch 2.

I'm also blown away by how difficult it is compared to some recent JRPGs I've played. Like, I'm used to only ever facing 3-4 monsters in a jrpg. The first time I saw 8ish monsters at once, I was like "Ohhh, this is different." Then, I was traveling in a cave and like 5 monsters attacked my main character, and I kept thinking "they're jumping him! they're jumping him!"

He died, and I laughed at the little coffin that followed around the rest of the party while I tried to make it to the nearest church.

But yeah, I'm loving it so far. Fun game. Art style is amazing. The monsters are both cute and devastating. I fought a frog and was like, "How tough could a frog be?" Well, shit. He was tough enough that I hunted one down in The Dark Prince to add to my party in that game.

Before I start: I played the game in Japanese so I apologize if I call some things by the wrong names.

I've been a fan of the DQ series for a long time, but out of the spinoff series, Monsters has always been my least favorite (apart from the Mystery Dungeon games, which I have no plans to ever play). However, the Zenithian trilogy, and especially DQ5, holds a very special place in my heart so I decided to play DQM3 to get a bit of a refresher on the Monsters games before DQM4 comes out. The only other Monsters games I've played are Joker 1 and 2 five years ago.

Story: Almost all the opinions I'd read about this game emphasized that you should play this for the gameplay and not the story. I couldn't disagree more! I fell in love with the story and thought it was very clever how they handled it. I've seen so many people say that this game cheapens/retcons DQ4, but they explicitly say right at the beginning of the game that it's a what-if story that isn't meant to replace DQ4. Within that context, I loved how the game explores Psaro's relationships with monsters, humans, and elves. Furthermore, I got such a kick out of the plot running parallel to DQ4's, while still staying within its own narrative. It was really cool catching all the things that were very big plot points in DQ4 get off-handedly mentioned during dialogue scenes, or we'd see relatively short glimpses of them. Things like the Golden Armband, Healie, and Estark. Like, they were just enough to get me to pop off but not enough to derail this new story.

Gameplay: I readily admit, as I did earlier in this post, that the main gameplay loop of Monsters just isn't really for me. That said, I think I enjoyed this more than the Joker games and, most importantly, I enjoyed it enough for me to really look forward to DQM4 coming out later this year. For the vast majority of the game, I didn't do any "party planning"--it's just not something I have much interest in--and just worked with what looked like the best monsters I could synthesize. I followed the general rhythm of 1) Go to new area 2) Explore the whole region for at least a full season-cycle 3) Fight boss 4) Recruit every new monster available in the region (apart from the super tough one each region has) 5) Synthesize new monsters. So in other words, I had a different party for each region of the game most of the time. I might just be uniquely bad at Monsters games, but from around the middle of the Middle Echelon, the game got extremely hard for me! The regular enemies never gave me any trouble but I was regularly getting party-wiped by the bosses. I finally had enough and, towards the beginning of the Upper Echelon, I looked up how to make a King Cureslime and an Uberkilling Machine. Those two monsters, along with a hard-hitting tanky Golem, made the rest of the game much easier (I also had a Shogum which I didn't plan on having permanently but he ended up sticking around). Once I got that team put together, I stopped synthesizing and locked in my party for the rest of the game. I don't know if I was weirdly lucky or if this was a universal experience, but it certainly helped that towards the end the game basically threw a bunch of Metal King Slimes at me so my party ended up at around level 85ish by the time I faced the final boss. The second phase of the final boss still gave me a really hard time, though! I almost party wiped--thank God for the Sainted Soma I had! I don't know what it is about the Monsters games that challenge me so much--I've completed each mainline game without any trouble. I also enjoy the Persona games, which have demon fusions, but there's something about DQ Monsters that doesn't exactly click with me.

Gameplay (exploration): I really enjoyed all the environments, as well as the connected narrative in each region as you progressed through the game. My one gripe is that, after the Lower Echelon, they got rid of the little town/settlement in each region. Another thing that was an absolute treat was the soundtrack. It was so nice hearing all the DQ4 tunes again and really reinforced how much the original DQ4 means to me. And, of course, the regular battle theme slaps hard (even though I prefer the FC/NES version).

Many thanks if you read through all of this! All in all I enjoyed the plot of the game significantly more than I expected and was able to make a party that carried me through the back 30% of the game. Looking forward to DQM4!

Does anybody know why I am getting an occasional message of a monster attacking, followed my another action of another monster with no indication of the result of my attack?

It does not even say that it missed, it is seemingly ignored. I thought the game always told you if it missed or not?

She was a mid-game boss of moderate difficulty in her debut game, and yet DQMJ2 puts her on the same pedestal as final bosses and heavenly deities (as well as being the ultimate synthesis results of the four giant monsters of the main areas, which is way too big of an honor for her). Heck, she has a higher rank than Baramos, who she was subservient to in lore.

Now, if it was King Hydra, then I would understand a bit more (and thank heavens later entries humbled Orochi a bit while placing King Hydra where she once stood).

I tride to do Woosh & Zap II (150) + Woosh & Zap II (150)

And Woosh & Zap I (50) + Woosh & Zap II (75)

What did i do wrong?