You’ll encounter him fairly early on, but I was shocked to find that he won’t join your party until you best him in the arena, meaning that you have to clear the Rank S challenge. If you’ve played DQVIII before, you may remember Morrie as the flamboyant owner and operator of the monster battling arena. Red the bandit queen will join your team automatically after a plot event, but Morrie requires a lot more effort to recruit. Fortunately, everyone gets the same amount of experience whether they’re actively battling or not, so once they join, you can choose the party composition you like and stick with it.

Both characters will enter your game at level 35, regardless of how high or low the rest of your team is, so it can be hard for the newcomers to keep pace with the rest of the party.

Both characters had roles to play in the original version of DQVIII, but the four main characters are well balanced even without the additions. What surprised me most was just how late into the game each of them is recruited. It may be considered a spoiler (though it’s featured pretty heavily in Nintendo’s marketing) that there are two new playable characters in the 3DS version.