When I found out that Square-Enix was releasing another installment of Dragon Quest Monsters—formerly known as Dragon Warrior Monsters in the US due to issues of trademarks—was coming out, and on the DS, I was ecstatic. I remembered spending hours on end raising critters, breeding them into stronger critters and, finally, using my Gameshark to cheat like crazy after I beat the game (I’m not lying; merely altering the truth to the point of fabrication) and looked forward to Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker to arrive for the DS. This was only reinforced when I purchased Phantom Hourglass, played a bit, and then discovered that the people at Nintendo were too busy rubbing their bags of cash all over one another to notice that repetitious, obnoxious, and unnecessary tasks don’t equate to quality gaming. I’d strongly suggest taking a look at the Zero Punctuation review for a better idea.

Moving right along, I swooped down on DQM:J like a hawk on a gimped rabbit and, if this says anything about it, I proceeded to play it for almost twenty-four hours in a matter of two days. Two days. However, as much as it pains me to admit, it’s hardly a god-send of gaming like I had hoped it to be.