Dragon Warrior Monsters is far less story-oriented than its closest competitor, Pokemon. It begins with a young boy named Terry awakening in the middle of the night to find a monster dragging off his sister to another room. His sister is then pulled into a portal of some sort and warped to another world all together. Soon, though, another, more friendly creature pops through the same portal and informs Terry that there has been a terrible mistake. The only way for Terry to retrieve his sister is to become the ultimate monster master in his homeland (the kingdom of GreatTree) and win the tournament soon taking place there. If he is to win the tournament the rumor is that he will be granted one wish that will do whatever he pleases (obviously, he's looking to get his sister back).

Past this point, the game comes down to mostly wandering from dungeons inside the castle that contain monsters to be captured. By winning certain matches in the world's coliseum you can advance to reach the more powerful monsters that have the strength and power that can overcome the obstacles presented in the tournament.

Your main objective in the game, then, is to enter into the available dungeons and capture monsters. At the start all you're given is a simple slime monster that has little hit points (HP) and has no admirable features that make it a particularly strong fighter in any category. This little slime, however, will aid in discovering new creatures to add to your repertoire. Different from using Pokeballs to capture the monsters, you "tame" them by feeding them items like Pork Chops and Beef Jerky. Occasionally a creature will join your party regardless of if you have fed them or not, but the chances of them joining your side are greatly increased through the method of taming. There are tons and tons of creatures to be found, and all of them have characteristics that separate them from the others. It's always worth it to pick up a new monster as often as possible, even if it's only for the prospect of breeding them with another monster.

Mentioned in the previous paragraph is breeding, an idea that was not available in Pokemon Red, Blue or Yellow, but was only introduced later (after Dragon Warrior Monster's release) in the sequels, Pokemon Gold and Silver. What breeding allows you to do is combine two creatures so that they create a better, strong other monster. There are an almost infinite amount of combinations that can be created, and experimenting with different monsters to find out what creates the best type of monsters can be incredibly entertaining. It works like this: the initial monster that is chosen is labeled as the pedigree, and the offspring that will result will have more traits from that monster than the second one.

So, for example, if you have a weak in strength but powerful spell caster monster and you want to increase its strength, make the healer the pedigree (so that it retains the healing traits) and breed it with a more robust other monster. Sometimes things won't work out as well as planned, but if done correctly you can create some immensely awesome monsters. The only real downfall to breeding is that the two monsters used to create the new monster are released back into the wild after they conclude breeding. This forces you to pick monsters that you are OK with sacrificing to create another.

The monsters in Dragon Warrior Monsters are very cool, but they don't quite have the extra "omph" that the Pokemon creatures do. None of them really have that mass market-type appeal, and that's one of the main things holding the game back from being able to go head-to-head with Pokemon (although, a little more push in the advertising department from Eidos Interactive surely wouldn't have hurt the situation, either). The one advantage to this, though, is that none of the creatures are so super cutesy that they begin to get on your nerves.

Since battling is such an important aspect of any RPG, I was happy to find that Dragon Warrior Monsters' was so appealing and fun to do. Instead of only one character fighting at a time, Dragon Warrior Monsters has three creatures fighting it out on your team all at the same time. Your enemies won't always consist of trio parties, so at times you may have three of your monsters tackling one enemy at the same time.

Dragon Warrior Monsters is not a radical change from Pokemon, but I actually enjoyed Enix's effort more so than Nintendo's. I'm not sure if it was the fact that I could breed my characters, or that the ability to use three characters in battle at once made the main portion of the game more interesting, but I've logged much more time into Dragon Warrior Monsters comparatively to Pokemon. Definitely check this one out if you're interested in the genre, especially if you're having trouble waiting for Pokemon Gold and Silver's fall release.