Dragon quest is an excellent game although I highly don't recommend it to ones who don't take video gaming too seriously
Not much new battle mechanics are introduce, although the tactics did get a name change or have been different some how. Although I find the way to gain a skill for a monster is better. Selecting it from the parents of an offspring and gaining skill points to enhance it gives more of a modern RPG feeling. Now you can equip monsters with weapons making them even more effective and theres a wide variety of weapons each with it's own good uses. Monsters gets a wide variety of traits that allows each (actually some monsters have the same traits sometimes) monsters to be unique in combat.
Tired of throwing away wasted food to catch a monster? then this newly improved catching feature is introduce in this game. It is scouting, it allows our monsters to impress stray monsters into joining your party. A percentage scale shows the chance of you impressing the monster. I find this a better way so we can get our hopes up even if we saw a low percentage such as ten.
The story is not so great as it will get lame somehow. Though, the main course of the game is synthesize, fight, and level grind with your monsters. You will even get a chance to duke it out with people around the world if you got access to wi-fi. This game contains the great elements what made it's predecessors so great to play.
I recommend this to RPG fanatics and all those who adore dragon quest monsters series.