Our hero - a young Monster Scout desperate to take part in the championship - hopes to compete in the Monster Scout Challenge for the honour of becoming world champion. So the hero stows away on the Albatross, an airship bound for the Monster Arena. Unfortunately fate has other plans for the ship. It's pulled off course by a terrific storm to crash on an unknown island. The island is a dangerous place, full of exotic, never-before-seen monsters ripe for scouting. More importantly though, the Albatross’ passengers have been scattered across the island - there’s nothing for our hero to do but take charge, track them down and find a way to escape the enigmatic island.

Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 2 is a monster-recruiting role-playing game very much in the vein of its predecessor. Our hero encounters monsters in the field and engages them in turn-based battles with his own monsters, to either defeat or recruit them. He can change each monsters abilities from various skill trees, and combine them to birth new monsters with their own abilities.

The player can also take their team into battle with other players, either locally or online, and scout monsters using Tag mode from other players of this game as well as Dragon Quest IX and VI.