Square Enix announced Sunday, Sept. 18 that it is developing "Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 3 Professional" for Nintendo 3DS during the Tokyo Game Show event, adding that the game will be released on Feb. 9, 2017. Square Enix is currently streaming an "image video" and trailer of the game.
Square-Enix released Dragon Quest Monsters Joker 3, the latest entry in the Dragon Quest Monsters series in Japan last March. Unfortunately, game stats gathered by Famitsu show that the game edition received a rather lukewarm reception, which clearly showed in sales, with only 630 000 units LTD sold while previous entries (except remakes) made it to over 1 million units for each edition.
On the fourth and last day of the Tokyo Game Show 2016, Square Enix announced that an improvement of the game through "Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 3 Professional" would be released in Japan early next year. Gamers are now eager to see if the new entry will fare better than the first version.
While similar to "Joker 3" installment, the Professional version will introduce a bit fresh content. Although the game will feature the appearance of many characters from the "Dragon Quest Monsters Joker" series, it will also feature original monsters -- such as Baramos, Bjorn, and Hargon. The game was also designed to allow players to transfer their saved games from the previous entry to the new one to retain the monsters that were already collected and discarding the need to start back from zero.
The original "Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 3" game went out on March 24 for the Nintendo 3DS. The game featured Nochōra, a silver-haired, "mysterious being". The game story happens in a "cyber" world with advanced science.
At present, it is unknown if Square Enix plans to localize "Joker 3 Professional" for the West. It can be seen on records that the first entries of the "Dragon Quest" game made a big hit in Japan, but never in North America.
The "Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 3 Professional" will be officially released in Japan on Feb. 9, 2017 at the suggested retail price of 5,250 yen.
