Early in the game Torneko passes the rights off to Yangus who is 12 in this game, but to begin Yangus' father Yampa, who is a thief, brings home a strange jug and tells Yangus to keep away from it. You know what happens next, Yangus has to check it out and is sucked into the bottle and into the land inside the bottle.

As in previous dungeon games (not all dungeons are dungeons, some are forest areas) you make your way to the end and defeat the boss that is there and your level starts out at 1 every time you enter a dungeon. To get out of the jug you need to explore lots of mysterious dungeons.

Battles take place on the map like previous dungeon games, but to mix it up a bit they have added the Tension command like DQ VIII introduced. You can build up Tension multiple times as long as you don't move. So a good combat technique is to use a sleep inducing item and then power up while the monster is knocked out.

After some time in the game you can earn your own jug to capture monsters with.