Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince

Journey into a fantastical world on a quest for revenge in DRAGON QUEST MONSTERS: The Dark Prince. Psaro is cursed and is unable to harm anything with monster blood. Now, he must become a Monster Wrangler to…

74 1 December 2023

Adventure Role-playing (RPG) Fantasy Open world

Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince is an adventure developed by Square Enix Creative Business Unit II, released 1 December 2023 on Nintendo Switch, Android, iOS and PC (Microsoft Windows).

Verified 1 Oct 2026 Sources: IGDB , Steam

What Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince is

Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince is an adventure game developed by Square Enix Creative Business Unit II and released in 2023. It was published by Square Enix. It is available on Nintendo Switch, Android, iOS and PC (Microsoft Windows).

The premise, in the publisher's words

Psaro is cursed and is unable to harm anything with monster blood. Now, he must become a Monster Wrangler to create an army for battle. The hunt for high-ranked monsters takes Psaro through the ever-changing seasons of Nadiria and its unique environments, with rivers of bubbling lava, mysterious ancient ruins, and soaring towers of cake. Along the way, Psaro meets the kind-hearted elf, Rose, who joins his adventure to seek out ever-stronger monsters. The key to Psaro's success lies with synthesis: the ability to combine two monsters and create a stronger offspring. Each new creation brings Psaro one step closer to his goal of becoming the Master of Monsterkind.

Description from the publisher · source

How it plays

It is played from a third person perspective. Its themes are fantasy and open world. It is a single-player game with no multiplayer component.

Where it sits in the Dragon Quest series

Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince is the 106th of 122 entries we hold in the Dragon Quest series. The next entry was Dragon Quest X: Mirai he no Tobira to Madoromi no Shoujo Online in 2024. Its critic score of 74 is almost exactly the series average of 73. The highest-rated entry is Dragon Quest VII Reimagined at 92.

See all 122 Dragon Quest games in release order →

How it was received

Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince holds a critic score of 74 out of 100. That places it above 47% of the 7,527 rated adventure games in our database, which average 72. Games released in 2023 averaged 76, so it scored 2 points below the year average.

What it launched against

Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince launched on 1 December 2023, within three weeks of Ready or Not, The Finals, Against the Storm and The Exit 8. All of them reviewed better. It arrived 6 years into the Nintendo Switch's life, so it was built for hardware developers already knew well.

Released around the same time: Ready or Not, The Finals, Against the Storm, The Exit 8.

Cheats and codes

We have not confirmed any working cheat codes for Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince yet. Rather than reprint a list we have not tested, this section stays empty until one is verified.

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