Dragon Warrior Monsters 2: Tara’s Adventure is one of those classic Game Boy Color gems where you start off as a kid just trying to deal with a village bully—until, of course, he accidentally rips open a hole to the monster world and suddenly you’re the only one dumb (or brave) enough to go fix it. The setup’s simple, but the monster collecting? That’s where it gets addictive.

You’ll be recruiting monsters left and right, building a team of three to fight with you while the rest chill on your farm back home. The breeding system is weirdly deep—mixing monsters to hatch stronger ones feels like solving a puzzle, and half the fun is seeing what bizarre combos you can come up with. At first, I just grabbed whatever looked cool, but after a few hours, I was obsessively planning out bloodlines like some kind of monster eugenics enthusiast.

Battles are turn-based but snappy, and swapping monsters in and out keeps things from getting stale. Plus, the pixel art has that classic Dragon Quest charm—even the weirdest creatures somehow look endearing. If you ever played the first one, this is more of that, but with just enough tweaks to feel fresh. It’s the kind of game where you tell yourself “just one more battle” and suddenly it’s 2 AM.