Dragon Quest Rivals

Dragon Quest Rivals Ace
Developer(s)	Tose
Publisher(s)	Square Enix
Artist(s)	Akira Toriyama
Series	Dragon Quest
Platform(s)	Android/iOS; Windows PC; Nintendo Switch
Release date(s)	JP November 2017;
Genre(s)	Collectible card game

Dragon Quest Rivals (ドラゴンクエストライバルズ, Doragon Kuesuto Raibaruzu, Dragon Quest Rivals) is a digital collectible card game published by Square Enix in November 2017 for Android and iOS. A PC version for Yahoo! Games Player was launched in 2018, while a version for the Nintendo Switch was released in February 2019. The PC version has been shutdown on June 11, 2020 due to the shutdown of the Yahoo! Games Player, which occurs on June 23, 2020.

A single-player mode, Solo Battle Adventure, was added to the game in August 2020, as well as renaming the app to Dragon Quest Rivals Ace. On April 2, 2021, Square Enix announced that all versions of the game would shut down on July 5th, 2021. Producer Tatsuhiro Futagi cited the continuing difficulties with competitive gaming, as well as other factors due to the pandemic of COVID-19 as factors for the game's shutdown. Players were no longer able to purchase gems as of April 2nd.

Gameplay

This mobile game lets players create a deck of cards featuring characters and monsters throughout the Dragon Quest franchise and battle it out in turn-based combat with a variety of different strategies. The gameplay has been described as similar to that of Blizzard Entertainment's card battling game, Hearthstone. Many of the characters that appear in the game have been fully voiced for the first time in the series.

The player selects a "leader" character to play as and faces off against an enemy leader by summoning monsters, casting spells, or equipping weapons to attack them from their MP pool. The goal is to reduce the other leader's HP to zero. At the beginning of combat, each side has 1 MP and it increases each turn by 1. The playable cards all have their own MP costs, and monster and weapon cards have an attack stat and an HP stat (uses for weapons). Additionally, a leader character can use 1 MP to Psyche Up and build Tension. Once a leader has 3 stacks of Tension, they can use their unique Coup de Grâce. Each leader character also has cards that can be used exclusively by them.