Review – Monster Tale

DreamRift rewards fans of their previous sleeper hit, Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure, with a room-crawling*, beat’em up, platforming adventure in Monster Tale.

* Since I’ve called a personal moratorium on the awful term “Metroidvania“, I’m going to define that type of game as a room-crawler.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_S-9q3aW38

Monster Tale is the story of a blue-haired girl named Ellie who randomly finds herself waking up in the bizarre Monster World. She quickly meets a tiny orange demon-like monster and names him Chomp. The moniker fits well as Chomp spends a good portion of his time chowing down on random treats dropped by fallen baddies. As Chomp grows, he helps Ellie on her quest to stop the Kid Kings, who appear to be kids from Ellie’s world that managed to come into Monster World and enslave the monster races.

Henry Hatsworth fans will feel right at home with the mix of shooting and melee found in Monster Tale. In fact, the game feels a bit too similar to Hatsworth in many ways, but luckily for us Hatsworth had a solid and fun combat system. For those who missed Henry Hatsworth, the game plays like a classic 2D side-scrolling platformer with shooting elements similar to MegaMan and a melee system that plays as a combination of Castlevania and GameBoy Advance Astro Boy or PSP Prinny. There are lengthy ground and air combos, and even a launcher move with a built-in jump to string hit upon hit and destroy even the biggest foes.

The game has numerous RPG elements for both Ellie and Chomp. As you build and nurture your monster pal, you can choose to evolve him into numerous forms — each with completely different behavior and elemental affinities — and also watch him mature from hatchling to teen to adult. Each maturity phase also opens up new evolution paths, so there is substantial variety in how you raise Chomp.

Chomp moves and fights autonomously, but travels back and forth from the top and bottom screens based on your commands. While with Ellie on the top screen, his stamina decreases over time and as he takes hits, so you will have to remember to send him down to his Pet Sanctuary to heal and feed on any dropped treats. Enemies also drop scrolls, books, and toys like cars, catapults, cannons, soccer balls, and frisbees, all of which Chomp can learn from or activate to assist you up on the top screen. There are also specialized enemies that sneak down to the Pet Sanctuary to attack Ellie from outside her reach. As long as you keep an eye on the bottom screen and rotate Chomp in and out regularly, they rarely present much of a challenge.

Monster Tale’s mechanics are pretty standard for the genre. Saving is done in special library rooms very similarly to how it’s handled in Castlevania. They are frequent and spaced well so you shouldn’t run into any issues where you die and lose a lot of progress. There are shops you encounter along the way but I played through without purchasing a single item. The items are so commonly found in combat that purchasing anything seems moot. I played through with 98% map completion in 8 hours.

The art direction in Monster Tale is charming and feels right out of the 16-bit era. The animations are very well done and add a smooth feel to the combat system. Lead by the art directors of Henry Hatsworth and highly-stylized The Red Star, each enemy reflects well crafted design and character. One thing I found odd was how many sprites I encountered in the first hour that looked like nods to various Nintendo characters. From the blonde, pink dress-wearing Kid Queen Priscilla, to the various colored Starfy look-alikes, to the flying mini-goombas; the similarities are numerous throughout the areas of Monster Tale. The difference is that you never got to do 56-hit relaunch combos on them before.

As much as I enjoyed Monster Tale, it was not without its issues. The platforming is solid but not perfect. You quickly get the hang of the nuances in jumping but occasionally miss an easy platform because of the slightly sluggish motion. It’s not Little Big Planet bad or anything, but it’s not as crisp and fluid as some other similar games in the genre.

Something that never bothered me in all the Castlevania games I played, but is painfully tedious in Monster Tale, is backtracking. The story serves as little more than a diversion from you having to go from one far end of the map to the other and back again just to collect orbs to expand on Ellie’s repertoire of attacks. The map size is fairly large, so without the ability to fast-travel around the map or run from point to point, it becomes a bit of a chore.

The difficulty of Monster Tale is very light in combat and boss fights, which would be fine if I could honestly say that the game was well-suited for kids. Instead, it seems to sit in a middle ground between what young kids could handle and what experienced players can feel accomplished completing. It does feel like an intro to Castlevania for a younger generation, so I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt.

One thing I would definitely like to have seen is a reward for landing lengthy technical combos on enemies. Aside from keeping myself entertained, there is no reason to hit any enemy more than a few times to kill them even though you can push upwards of 50+ hits in juggle loops and air/ground resets. As fun as the melee system is to explore, there’s no real reason to push its limits.

Monster Tale is a great game and sadly destined to be another sleeper in the same vein as Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure. There are some unfortunate pacing and backtracking issues, and occasionally sluggish platforming keeps Monster Tale from being perfect, but a fun combat system and charming art and animation are definite redeeming factors. Fans of room-crawler beat’em ups should not miss this little gem.