Surprise! Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 2 is headed overseas on August 28th. Joker 2 is a Pokémon-esque game, in case you haven’t heard of it before. You scout and collect monsters, and build up a team to do battle with enemies.

When your party encounters a monster in battle, a metre on the Nintendo DS top screen indicates that you can scout them. The higher the number on the metre, the higher the chance that the monster will join you. There are over 300 monsters available to scout and synthesize.

Yes, you can synthesize them, too. Your monsters can also be customized using skill trees. Square Enix say there are over 240 of these in the game. Some monsters are from previous Dragon Quest titles, while others are new.

Additionally, if you have a friend who owns a copy of Dragon Quest VI or Dragon Quest IX for the Nintendo DS, you’ll be able to scout monsters from both those games. You’ll also be able to battle against other players via local wireless or online over Wi-Fi.