Released in Japan only, Dragon Quest Monsters: Caravan Heart was developed by TOSE Co., Ltd. and published by Enix in 2003 for the Game Boy Advance. It is the third game in the Dragon Quest Monsters series. A fan translation into English was released in 2008, making the game playable to non-Japanese speakers.

Compared to the previous two Dragon Warrior Monsters games, this third instalment is very different and centres around organising a party of caravans, carrying humans that are guarded by friendly monsters. In fact, Caravan Heart is confusing initially, and it takes a while to figure out what you’re supposed to do, because there’s no monster capture and combat doesn’t happen in the same way as it did in previous games.

The story sees you leading a caravan of adventurers through hostile lands, but you’re not a player character as such. Instead, you guide all the important decisions for the benefit of the group as a whole.

You begin with just one caravan, but can have up to three in your party in total (the additional two come later, at specific points in the story). Each caravan has a “guard monster” that sits up front, and up to four human ‘allies’ travelling inside it. The guard monster leads battle – with your orchestration – and the allies provide extra skills in battle, but fight automatically. Each ally has a weight (shown as a number on the ‘Wagon’ screen), and each caravan has a weight limit, so you have to rearrange them to fit within the weight restrictions. Later in the game, you meet someone who can increase the weight limit of your wagons, which is a very useful feature and makes arranging your allies easier.

The guard monsters are vital for a caravan’s survival, and they are the ones who have Hit Points (HP) and Magic Points (MP), and can die in battle. The human allies don’t have any of that and can’t be killed in battle. However, if your guard monster dies, the entire caravan is lost.

Your troupe has a camp where you can rest in-between excursions. Travelling through the overworld uses food rations, and this is an important mechanic to understand. These rations cost money (usually one gold piece per ration), and can be bought in camp, or in shops in towns or castles. If you’re travelling and run out of rations, your guard monster will start to lose health rapidly, so accruing money to keep rations topped-up is vitally important. At the start of the game this can be a challenge, and also confusing to understand, but the best way to deal with it is to stay close to your camp and only make relatively short trips out – before returning to camp to rest and resupply. Defeating monsters in battle, and selling found items, should provide enough money to keep going, so long as you don’t over-extend yourself. It’s also worth remembering that your rations are used up more quickly when you’re travelling over rough terrain (hilly areas), or deserts, so it’s worth sticking to the flatter plains and wooded areas – at least initially. As you explore more and more, your caravan increases in level, which gradually allows you to carry more rations. You can also move your camp to a new location, but travelling with it uses rations more quickly, so should be done carefully.

As well as random battles – which take the form of menu-driven, turn-based fights (in true Dragon Quest fashion) – there are also random events, some of which are good and some of which are bad. Good events, for example, might be meeting a travelling mage who will offer to immediately return you to camp for free (which is very useful on occasion), or finding an apple tree and using picked apples from it to top up your rations. Bad events might be thieves stealing some of your money, or wild monsters stealing some of your rations. There are a number of different random events, and what you get depends on the area or terrain that you’re travelling on (some are specific to deserts, for example, or certain parts of the world map).

Another important feature of Dragon Quest Monsters: Caravan Heart – that doesn’t come into play until you’re a good few hours into the game – is the process of ‘Reformation’. This is the ability to change the species of your guard monsters, and it basically replaces monster breeding, as seen in previous games. Basically, each guard monster has a “growth limit” (ie. a level cap), and when you reach it you must then take them to the reformation tent in your camp and combine them with captured hearts from defeated monsters. This resets their level back to one, but increases their level cap, and also allows them to learn special abilities from other monsters.

Graphically, Dragon Quest Monsters: Caravan Heart is a mixed bag. Some bits are great, but other bits are not so great. The monsters themselves; the scrolling exterior landscapes, and the interiors, are excellent, but some of the still screens I thought were quite bland. The music in the game is very good and combines a number of recognisable Dragon Quest themes, as well as plenty of new tunes.

Initially I didn’t much like Caravan Heart and was confused by it, but after a few hours of play it began to grow on me. By the time I reached the first reformation of my guard monsters, and had three wagons in my party, I was hooked. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed it and found it hard to put down. While I don’t think that it’s as well-designed as Dragon Warrior Monsters 2, I do think that it has some original ideas in it and is unlike any other JRPG I’ve ever seen. Which is worth some kudos. If you like unusual JRPGs then I highly recommend it, but you might need to be patient with it because the opening few hours of gameplay are a little strange.

Dragon Quest Monsters: Caravan Heart was the last game released under the Enix name, as the merger between Square and Enix was completed just a few days after its release.

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