The Dark Prince’ iOS Review – Much Better Than Switch, but Lacking in Two Ways – TouchArcade
Back in December, I reviewed Square Enix’s monster collecting RPG Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince on Switch. I loved my time with it despite its many technical issues. I expected it to hit PC like Dragon Quest Treasures, another Nintendo Switch exclusive, but I didn’t expect a mobile release. Square Enix’s newest release of Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince on iOS, Android, and Steam brings all prior paid DLC into the game at a lower entry point, but removes one feature. This is the online real-time multiplayer battles. Beyond that, Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince on Steam and mobile is already a massively better experience just on value with its lower price point and the content included, but is the game worth your time in this crowded release period and with its premium price? That’s what I aim to answer with my Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince mobile review also covering the game on Steam Deck.
If you aren’t familiar with Dragon Quest Monsters itself, it is a spin-off series of the main Dragon Quest games featuring turn-based combat, but instead of the main player fighting, you capture, breed, and raise monsters to fight for you. When I played Dragon Quest Treasures, I enjoyed it, but was told that it is a “Monsters-lite” game so when Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince was announced for Switch, I was excited to play it. I ended up loving it as you can see from my review linked above, but I think it is a very strong monster collecting RPG with turn-based combat regardless of if you like Dragon Quest or not. What made Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince more interesting, is in how it feels like a side story and prequel to Dragon Quest IV. Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince also had a seasonal feature where the monsters changed depending on the season and area you’re in.
When it comes to the story, Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince, the bits from IV already made it more interesting than the usual spin-off, but I found myself focusing more on getting my own dream monster party rather than worrying about the narrative. I’m super pleased with how well thought out the mechanics are and how the large zones, hundreds of monsters, and combat made me want to keep playing it more even on Switch when I first beat it let alone now on iPhone, iPad, and Steam Deck. Beyond the normal turn-based battles and recruiting new monsters, Synthesis in Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince is like Shin Megami Tensei’s fusion, and there is just so much you can do with skills here. The seasons here don’t just change monsters, but also areas you can explore with map changes. This means a water body that you can’t cross will be frozen in one season letting you access a new secret.
Combat in games like this can get monotonous so I’m glad to see the many quality of life features here like the tactics menu that plays out similar to the original Persona 3, direct commands, and more. You aren’t here to just defeat enemies, but also scout them to bring to your party and become stronger. I didn’t end up testing the online multiplayer on Switch much, so I can’t comment on how big a loss that is here, but it is a game mode being cut nonetheless. If you did play it on Switch, keep that in mind as it is the only area the mobile and Steam versions are lacking compared to Switch.
Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince already shipped with a lot of content, but the DLC only elevated the experience. This DLC was sold in the Digital Deluxe Edition or as standalone DLC for the base game. Just the DLC was over $25 on Switch, so having the full base game with all DLC included for $24 on mobile makes it an amazing deal, but I’ll get to that in a bit. This DLC included The Mole Hole, Coach Joe’s Dungeon Gym, and Treasure Trunks. The Mole Hole was a dungeon that lets you scout (recruit) monsters you’ve fought before and it made min-maxing a lot easier during the game. The DLC was also good to speed things up since you could also easily scout monsters who only appear during a specific season or through synthesis.
The Coach Joe’s Dungeon Gym DLC has randomly generated maps and they are meant to be postgame challenges rather than experienced while playing the game. The final DLC is just a chest that can be opened once an hour with 10 items in total. This is like a cheat DLC if you may. I didn’t think it was good to have useful game modes or content in paid DLC, but that isn’t a problem anymore with all of it included on iOS, Androidl, and Steam in the base asking price.
Now let’s get to the mobile port features. With Square Enix, you can never be sure what features will make it into the final game. Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince does not have controller support. This is beyond disappointing since the game is literally a console title ported to mobile. I tried 6 different controllers without any luck to be sure. Aside from controller support, Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince on iOS has cloud saves and a few graphics options. The cloud saves work well.
When it comes to controls, I was surprised at how well Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince felt with touch controls. It uses a floating joystick on the left for movement and a jump button mainly while exploring. The one minor issue you might run into is some touch targets being a bit small on the non Plus/Max phones. These aren’t an issue on iPads at all though. The controls feel good, but Square Enix should’ve left full controller support in since this is a console game ported to mobile after all.
One of my only real issues with Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince on Switch was on the technical side. The frame rate was rough at launch with visuals not being great either. The former got addressed to some degree unlike Pokemon Scarlet & Violet, but the latter never got fixed. On iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 12, and even iPad Pro, I had no major issues with the visuals or performance. There are some hiccups on iPhone 15 Pro when running at the highest graphics quality setting and moving through some locations, but it isn’t remotely as bad as on Switch. The game feels massively better to play on iOS. Check out the comparison below for the low and high graphics options on iPhone 15 Pro:
There aren’t specific visual or frame rate settings on mobile outside of the resolution option in display settings. This lets you play at low, medium, or high graphical quality options. These presets also affect other settings like the frame rate limit and post-processing. This setting can only be changed from the title screen on mobile while you can adjust it on the fly on PC. I stuck to the high setting on all my iPhones. Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince sadly has some minor performance issues even on iPhone 15 Pro as I mentioned above. The low setting seems unusable with how blurry it gets. On my 2020 iPad Pro, the high preset has more regular frame drops than iPhone, and it also seems to be running with some tweaked settings. Overall, even the older iPad Pro runs it well, but not as good as iPhone 15 Pro as expected. Every device I tested on including the iPhone 12 ran it a lot better than Nintendo Switch.
Visually, it looks a lot cleaner than Switch even on older iOS devices when played at high. Square Enix didn’t just do a bare-bones port here. It has fullscreen support during gameplay on my iPhone 15 Pro, and even has a pattern or artwork to fill the screen during areas with pre-rendered or static 16:9 elements. This pattern or artwork is mainly used on my iPad Pro since it doesn’t support fullscreen there for gameplay. This also applies to Steam Deck to make up for that aspect ratio in parts. I’m glad to see Square Enix put in the work here to make sure it still looks good regardless of aspect ratio.
Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince Steam Deck impressions
On Steam Deck, regardless of my settings, I couldn’t get Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince to run at a locked 90fps even at the low preset when played at 800p. I decided to opt for a 60fps target, and that was a lot easier to achieve. One oddity is the game not letting you adjust resolution when playing on Steam Deck normally. You can do this by forcing the resolution from the game’s properties before launching it. Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince on PC lets you adjust graphical quality (low, medium, high), anti-aliasing (off, low, medium, high), maximum frame rate (30 to uncapped), toggle v-sync, and adjust display mode (windowed, fullscreen, borderless). If you play at 60fps, I recommend setting your Steam Deck OLED refresh rate to 60 to avoid jitter as well.
Having now played Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince on iOS, iPadOS, Steam Deck, Switch OLED, and Switch Lite, there’s no doubt that the Switch version is the worst of the lot despite the online mode being removed from mobile and Steam. The massive increase in performance and better visuals with all DLC included at a much lower asking price only makes it better. One thing to note is that the game is marked as Steam Deck Playable and not Verified because Valve says some in-game text is small and may be difficult to read. I didn’t have any issues with this, and I feel like Valve has marked games with smaller text as Verified before. Either way, you can safely buy this one to play on Steam Deck.
If you skipped Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince on Switch, the new mobile and Steam ports are the way to go. While the mobile version lacking controller support is disappointing, it is still a game I see myself playing regularly with its improvements over switch and fantastic core gameplay loop. Having all the DLC included means you will have enough content to last you even longer. If you do value controller support in a game like this, the Steam Deck is the way to go. Hopefully we see Square Enix keep bringing more Dragon Quest games to mobile in the future. Right now, the iOS version of Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince is easily one of the best mobile releases of the year.
