The regular 2-10 cards of each suit are classic sprite images of original Dragon Quest monsters, complete with their stats at the bottom: HP, strength, magic, experience points, and gold. The lower numbers are generally weaker monsters, while the higher numbers are stronger monsters! Pretty cool, huh. The jack, queen, and king of each suit are also interesting. Jack is a random shot of your character out in the field somewhere or talking to somebody, while the queen is literally dialogue from the queen in the game, and king is you talking to the king.
But what's on the ace?! oh, oh god whatisontheace
Of course, it could be no other than the enemy the series is most famous for, the delightful slime. The black suits feature the standard slime, while the red suits feature (surprise!) the red slime. Sometimes I like to prop up the little slime cards and then swing at them with a toothpick and then go "bkksshhh" like the sound of me hitting them. Then I'll go "breeee!" and pretend I got the experience points. Sometimes I cry when I do it.
When making playing cards, you can't make them with only a front. You also have to add a back to the cards, otherwise they are front-only playing cards, which are illegal in Japan. Luckily, the backs of these cards are pretty neat too. Oh, and hey the joker is actually that goddamned Dragonlord!
I think the best part of these cards is that they focus specifically on one game that is exceedingly well regarded and has a lot of lasting characters and visual appeal. Some sets focus on a whole series or franchise, and while the theming on those (like the recent dot-Mario set) is pretty cool, it lacks the sort of coherence that I think this set benefits from. It might be my favorite trump set! I'm gonna bring it to the harbor today to watch fireworks, and if anyone says something bad about it, I'm just going to lose it.