With Pokémon considerably more niche than it was in its heyday of the late Nineties, you'd be forgiven for thinking that one monster "collect 'em all" franchise would be all Nintendo's evergreen handheld could support - but Square Enix have proven me wrong with the charming, pretty and plain old fun Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker.

For those who were living under a rock during Pokemania (and they should have been able to find some of the stone-based breeds there anyway, so that's no excuse) the concept of the game is to collect monsters and then pit them against each other in battle to win yet more critters and improve their statistics. The first Dragons Quest Monsters, released all the way back in 1998, was a fairly brazen rip off of this concept, and neither of the games have evolved much since those days. While it's true that this new version looks beautiful with its glorious cartoon visuals, the fundamental gameplay mechanics remain largely the same as older relatives in its family tree, and bear more than a coincidental resemblance to Nintendo's favourite monster-collecting franchise. The majority of the game therefore involves wandering around various islands, looking for monsters to battle and assimilate into your collection.

You're allowed up to three monsters in one team, meaning that you can embrace a certain degree of strategy and select monsters that compliment the members (my trusty healing slime never left my side, for example). The battles themselves are turn-based affairs, allowing you to order the monsters to attack specific foes in specific ways, or simply to use their own (generally smart) best judgement. It's easy, it's compulsive and it's fun - which is just as well, as there is an awful lot of level grinding to be done. Thankfully, because it's never hugely thought provoking, this doesn't feel like much of a strain, and the whole process is enjoyable, seldom requiring your full attention. DQM also has some neat tricks up its sleeve for those who want a little more involvement, like the ability to combine two of your pets into one using the synthesising machines - which leads to all kinds of freakish Frankenstein's monster style creations. This feels wholly optional though and it's quite possible to make your way through the game using just the bare minimum three monsters if you're willing to put enough time into raw grinding. For its twenty to thirty hours of gameplay time, this is the equivalent of really good easy listening music.

Another way the game attempts to distinguish itself from Pokémon (the equivalent of me putting on a pair of novelty moustache-glasses and claiming to be someone else) is how you actually recruit monsters to your team. While in Nintendo's cutesy franchise you use your limited supply of Pokéballs to capture monsters, here you have to 'scout' them - a process that involves your monsters flexing their collective muscles to the opposition, who register how impressed they are on a percentage scale. If they are 25% impressed then one out of four times the monster will join your posse, if they are 10% impressed then one out of ten times, and so forth. It's a nice system, because it means that in some instances where you resolutely fail to impress the monster (5% or less) you still stand a slim chance of pulling off a scalp and landing it for your team.

If there is one overriding concern about DQM's simplicity it is that it sometimes feels a little too straightforward. The dungeons are small, the islands are small and there's little in the way of side quests to distract you from the storyline, which itself is hardly rotund with action. As a result, variety is perhaps not the game's best suit, though its charm and inoffensiveness does make up for this in some ways. There are also some neat little puzzles to break up the level grinding and battling, though nothing too taxing for the casual market.

Unlike Pokémon Diamond and Pearl, which have big chunky touch screen keys that are ideal for touch-screen controls, it makes more sense to play DQM using the d-pad and face buttons. The game never really suffers for this, although the lack of analogue controls means that your character's movements around the 3D map feel slightly clunky. You can use the touch screen to control the battles, but the screen's buttons are relatively small and it feels like no big loss to use the conventional pad. In many respects it is quite refreshing to play a DS title that doesn't try to shoehorn unwieldy controls onto the system's touch screen and microphone, although one area that does exploit the DS's functionality is in the use of the dual screens. While not particularly original, using the bottom screen for an overhead map and team statistics acts as a perfect foil for the colourful top screen that shows the play area in glorious 3D technicolor.

The graphics in DQM are wholeheartedly some of the best I have seen the DS produce - well up there with Mario Kart and Mario Hoops (tellingly another Square Enix title.) The visuals are big, cartoony, vibrant and lovable, despite the frequent popup of monsters on the horizon, who also manage to ooze character and charm. My only previous experience with the Dragon Quest world is in the DS cult classic, Rocket Slime, but even with that limited knowledge, it gave me great pleasure to see a menagerie of Slimes, Platypunks and Mischievous Moles realised in 3D. The monsters look cute, colourful and feature unique characteristics, so it is a genuine pleasure to collect and name them individually.

The sound effects are a little sparse, although it's hard to know exactly how the developers could have filled the gaps. The music, on the other hand is bright, fun and catchy for the most part, with some of the ditties from other titles in the series re-emerging here. It's pleasing to hear a 'special reward' sound effect for levelling up, and while the aural delights aren't going to win any major accolades, they're inoffensive and don't leave you - like so many other DS titles - reaching for a screwdriver to surgically remove the volume control.

The multiplayer is limited to trading monsters and having battles with friends, locally and over Nintendo Wi-Fi. You can also have tournaments with a group of friends to see who is the best Pokémon trai… sorry, 'monster scout'. This is limited to single card only play, but it's hard to hold my usual contempt for publishers that do this, given the 'personal collection' feel of the game. Providing an option of single card play would simply result in bewilderment all round, so Square are forgiven. With that said, the initial bewilderment you feel upon entering the single player world is less forgivable; it was a good three hours into the proceedings before I felt I had a proper handle on what was going on and began to derive the compulsive pleasure that this game excels in. Perhaps a greater focus on advice and tutorial would help, if Square intend to aim at the casual market that the DS is becoming increasingly popular with.

Where Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker really surprises is in how different it manages to be to Pokémon whilst still maintaining the addictive gameplay mechanics that made the latter so damned popular in the first place. While fans of Pokémon are virtually guaranteed to find something here to their liking (even if it is just more of the same in glorious 3D), it's also telling that those who find Pokémon a total snore-fest may find the more relaxed, less complex approach of DQM to be a rewarding introduction to RPG-lite territory. It turns out that Touch-Screen Town really is big enough for the both of them.

Reviewed by Alan Martin for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).