Many JRPGs have slow openings, taking their time to establish the story and familiarize the player with the mechanics before letting them loose into the world. I figured that was the case after playing an hour of Dragon Quest Treasures, so I said to myself, “It’ll get good soon!” I said it again two hours in, three hours in, and five hours in, until eventually, I was forced to accept that this was as good as the game would get. Dragon Quest Treasures is never short on charm or style, but simple, sub-par combat and loot-hunting mechanics had me scraping the bottom of the treasure chest in hopes there was something I’d missed.
Players of Dragon Quest XI will recognize protagonists Mia and Erik, though they’re much younger in this game. Dragon Quest Treasures is technically a prequel to XI, but there’s hardly any overlap, and the vast majority takes place after the twins jump through a portal into the mysterious world of Draconia. After getting their bearings and making a few friends, they start a treasure-hunting gang and decide to find all seven Dragonstone, magical relics from Draconia’s origin. While the start of the game is story-heavy, most of my 25 hours of play were self-driven, which I appreciated. The plot isn’t particularly interesting or engaging, but I didn’t need it to be; it’s mainly a vehicle to get the player to explore the islands around them.
The bulk of Dragon Quest Treasures involves exploring open-world islands to hunt for valuables, which can be found buried in glowing spots on the ground. Mia and Erik track it down by using magic Dragon Daggers to see “treasure visions,” glimpses of the landscape near the burial site seen through the eyes of the monsters in your party. You can use these images to triangulate the position of the buried chest and claim it as your own. It’s not a terrible mechanic, but it isn’t complex or engaging enough to base the whole game around. I also encountered multiple instances of items spawning in the same areas upon revisiting an island, which suggests that there’s a finite amount of treasure locations to find.