While
spending the extra $20 that was somehow cut off of Reckoning’s price
tag, I ended up purchasing Monster Tale, a game that I entered with the
notion that it was a SNES-like, metroidvania title, made by the same
team that created Henry Hatsworth, while all of these are true, that doesn’t answer whether or not it is worth the $11 I spent on it.
Monster Tale Review
Platform: DS
Release Date: 22/3/2011
Price I Paid: ~$11
The
game opens up with some insanely depressing music that feels extremely
off. This is a light hearted platformer, where you raise a monster by
having it eat cookies, read books, fiddle with boxing gloves, or
transform into a drill to turn enemies into coins. Why would you begin
the into with a melody that only deepened the nook of depression that I
inadvertently dug myself prior to playing it?
But
if you get past the story, which basically boils down to kids enter the
monster world, you are the only one nice to their monster, and one kid
wants to take over the world with their monster partner. It is fairly
reminiscent of Pokemon due to the morals, and D due to the premise, but
is fairly forgettable and is devoid of any real adversary other than an
obnoxious Princess. It is presented well, but the characters suffer
from a lack of complexity and development, the other children are your
rivals for a bit, but are basically never heard from again. It just
lack charm, or memorable stupidity, and instead aims to be the kind of
story that you almost completely forget less than a month after hearing.
But
onto the actual gameplay. You traverse a surprisingly linear world
made up of a few areas that I can hardly recall despite the amount of
backtracking that is done to advance the plot. There are secret
littered around, but they are few and far between. There are no secret
passages and abilities are mostly used to progress, such as one of the
countless variations on shooting, which I barely used outside of boss
battles that went on for way to long, namely all five of them. Or
abilities like dash, which requires you to double tap the D-Pad, which
can only be comfortably done while you are not fighting enemies. The
game lacks the sense of growth found in every 2D Castlevania title since Symphony of the Night, nearly every Metroid game, Shadow Complex, Megaman X And
every game that does a good job at conveying the sense of evolving. It
may seem harsh to compare the quality of the game’s design when the
budgets are so different, but I have every right to complain about
growth in a game where you are raising and evolving a technicolored
monster.
Speaking
of which, said monster, Who is referred to as Chomp, has a very poorly
optimised leveling system that requires you to constantly switch between
forms in hopes to level them up and find enemies that drop the items
needed to unlock more forms and minor stat bonuses. And to make it
worse, there are about 10-12 forms in 3 trees, but the variations are
minor at best. With the 3 trees signifying the base model that is used
for every form, and the only major visual difference is the colors.
Chomp can be either red, blue, green, which signifies which element it
is strong and weak to, which anyone who ever played Pokemon will pick up
in 5 seconds. The individual forms also lack any sense of identity,
you will most likely raise them up to level 10 and then forget about
them, since every form has a unique ability that is made available to
every one once that form reaches level 10. But the abilities don’t
matter much, since you only need Drill ‘Em Mister, Healing, Mega Bomb,
and some decent grass ability, if there is one in this game.
I suppose that the visuals are this game’s finest point, which look cleaner than Henry Hatsworth,
but also a bit blander as a result. It may just be due to the fact
that I have been spoiled by some great sprite animations since early
2010, but there just is not a lot that is particularly appealing to look
at. Not to say that the game looks bad, it looks like a polished GBA
title, but nothing stands out and there are an abundance of recolors.
There
are also other problems that I cannot ignore, like how a single heart
takes two hearts to fill up, since they’re the only thing that will
restore your health other than save rooms. The four or so instances
where you need to fight through half a dozen or so enemies who keep
sending in their mates after you whacked them off the with the main
character’s handbag. Or how the purchasable upgrades for the main
character are over priced and amount to what feels like nothing.
Even
with fairly broken mechanics, a game comes down to two points: Did I
have fun, and was said fund worth X(in this case 11) dollars? And the
answer to both of those is a pronounced definitely. Maybe it’s because
I’m the kind of social reject who enjoys a bit of grinding in my games,
but I had fun unlocking new forms and abilities, and the sound effects
and animations made fighting the regular enemies satisfying throughout
the 11 hours I spent on this title. I genuinely believe the majority of
this game’s problems are sue to it’s overly complex nature. You do not
need to add enough stats to support an RPG into your SNES thrown-back
of a DS game.
All
in all, I would say that Monster Tale is just an fairly fun title that
is worth playing if you want a mix of Pokemon and more linear GBA
Metroidvania game.
But it is hampered by a useless set of upgrades, an overly complex
evolution system that can often take you hours if you want to unlock a
specific form. The gameplay is pretty standard, despite the ability to
summon a colorful monster to do one of two set attacks, most of which as
useless. The visuals are that of a very polished GBA title, but it
seems a tad bland. The plot is forgettable, as is the majority of the
experience. It’s a decent romp that does try to do something new, but
everything just feels above average, only sometimes being what I would
call good, but very rarely bad.
26/30
Above Average
There
is promise in the title, but the execution is lacking in nearly every
way. The premise may be generic, or aspects unbalanced in quality, it
is not bad, but is not going to win any awards anytime soon.
