Nintendo Switch User Reviews

this is a really good game the combat is good the exploring is good its all good hasjhshaajabszhzhdhsdnsdjsjsjshdhdhshshssananjajsjsm sorry just had to get to the character count

Like a 3rd graders first attempt at a game. Battle gone wrong? No pause exit type of deal, restart the game or let the veereryyyy grindy battle end and try again.

Yes it is a good game, but the most annoying thing to me will be the repititive gameplay, inspite has a lot of different monsters, they uses almost the same atack moves. But in general, is a good game.

For years, I've seen Monster Sanctuary recommended to me as "Pokémon, but with everything done right that it gets wrong." Which was a good enough reason for me to play it, but not get around to it until now. I have to say that that description falls well short of what this little gem has to offer. It starts with the same idea, but the 3-on-3 battles, the unique skill trees for each monster, the fact that every single monster is completely viable throughout the game, the Metroidvania exploration, and the much deeper combat make it a very different beast than Poké-clones like Coromon and Nexomon. To all the critics who complained that the game is too hard, they're probably trying to play it like Pokémon, just focusing on damage and damage type advantages. That will get you through the early game, but no further. After that, you need to think about team composition and synergy; you can't just dummy or bully your way through, though there is an easier difficulty level (and a harder one). There's also a ton of replay value, with several challenge modes. I will say that presentation could be better. The small damage preview bars are handy but hard to see and not always accurate. The monster designs are an inconsistent hodgepodge. And some of the music is great, but some of the music you'll be hearing the most often, like the standard combat music, is really dull. Exploration could also be smoother; swapping between multiple monsters for movement options can get tedious. Overall, a really great game that I wish I'd looked into earlier. I recommend it for any RPG fans, not just people looking for a better Pokémon.

Starts very strong but gets tedious at the end. Too many layers were added making the later battles take forever. Difficulty curve gets obscene during the last bosses. Only a few monsters are viable during these battles so if you don't use guides to build your team you're going to have a bad time. Great concept but gets ruined by the tryhards. Don't waste your time on this one.

Anyone who loves monster battling / collecting games is sure to enjoy this one. The gameplay is challenging, without ever really feeling unfair. The story didn't feel too long or too short. Monsters have enough variety that there's plenty of replay value, and there are even built-in modes such as a randomizer to add further enjoyment. The only complaints I have are minor. Music and story, while decent, weren't anything to write home about. And once you've got the best gear towards the later parts of the game, exploring for treasure starts to feel pointless, which is a shame in a metroidvania style game.

Cuando Pokemon y castlevania tuvieron un hijo, este fue el resultado: un juego que aúna la dinámica de captura de monstruos, entrenamiento y evolución de Pokemon, con mecánicas de exploración tipo metroidvania de la vertiente castlevaniana. Basicamente la exploración del mundo es un metroid, como ya he indicado, donde la mayoria de nuevas habilidades las conseguimos capturando monstruos. Cada monstruo viene con una habilidad de campo que podremos usar una vez lo tengamos en nuestro equipo, permitiendonos desde iluminar habitaciones oscuras a activar diversos interruptores o desplazarnos libremente en el agua. El combate y entrenamiento tipo pokemon necesita más explicación ya que es muy diferente a la saga de Gamefreak. Luchas con tres de tus monstruos a la vez que ocupan tres posiciones (vanguardia, central y retaguardia), y la estrategia y dificultad de los combates esta MUY por encima de pokemon, especialmente si haces todos los retos opcionales contra los entrenadores y los entrenadores legendarios. No basta con tener el máximo nivel, si no que necesitas una estrategia y combinación adecuada de monstruos para ganar, obligandote a variar entre los de tu equipo. Por suerte, subir niveles no es un problema ya que puedes habilitar el nivel de los monstruos salvajes a un nivel próximo al tuyo, además de que cualquier monstruo capturado siempre esta solo un par de niveles por debajo del monstruo de menor nivel de tu equipo. Además, las habilidades que vamos desbloqueando en todos los monstruos se pueden resetear fácilmente para volver a distribuir los puntos en sus arboles de habilidades en cualquier momento. No es un juego perfecto, algunos combates pueden volverse repetitivos (especialmente al final del juego cuando todos los monstruos son de alto nivel) y los picos de dificultad pueden tirar para atrás. Pero sin duda, logra sorprendentemente bien fusionar ambos géneros tan dispares.

10/10 states exactly what it is, other than the mechanics of battle ahead of time so you know what you are getting into. The combat is 3v3 at once, that and other things make it a lot more refreshing. In the last 3-5years I have only completed a handful of games. I buy them like mad and then play halfway through and get bored. I 100% this game. Other games I have completed in last few years though not much relevant are Pokémon Scarlet, Pokémon Sword, Pokémon Brilliant Diamond, Pokémon Legends: Arceus, Rune Factory 4 Special, Metroid Dread, Dead Cells, Elden Ring & Dark Souls 3.

The game's fun but I don't like it. Your trainer battles are too **** difficult. I should not have to be an expert to get by.

Sorry for fr om and hav ing. I get a 404 without that. Monster Sanctuary is a very solid game with a lot of content (took me about 50 hours to complete the story), an awesome skill system for your monsters and a decent amount of challenge, which I would recommend to everybody, who likes Pokemon, but wants something that requires more strategy to beat, to try out. Unfortunately it doesn’t do a good job at giving you the right expectations to enjoy the challenging parts immediately. At the start, the game teaches you, how the combat system works and then leaves you alone with your monsters and their skill trees, which I enjoyed a lot. Reading the skills always makes you think: “Oh, that sounds useful and combos well with that other thing. I want that.”, which makes every level up exciting. The same thing is true for new monsters, which have even more new abilities for you to get excited about. Of cause, this can’t go on for ever, since there are only so many abilities. So strategy and challenge have to take over, but the way they did was not very enjoyable. It was basically one fight, which was a big difficulty spike. Of cause I thought a bit about my team before, but losing this fight multiple times (which there is no punishment for), while I beat everything before in the first few tries made me question, if my team was bad. Or maybe I was just getting unlucky, maybe my level was to low. I just didn’t know and that didn’t feel good. Through out the next fights I slowly got into the right mindset of expecting to lose the first attempts and using them to find out, what my opponents monsters are doing, so I knew what monsters to take out first etc. the next times. That way I was able to beat the later fights (exempt the finale) in 1-10 tries while being underleveled, so I don’t thing the game is to difficult, the difficulty curve is just bad, but I can’t think **** way to fix it either, without hav ing a bad new player experience. An other weak point of the game are the characters and the world. Part of that could be, because I took a longer break fr om playing the game in the middle of the story, but the characters always felt a little flat to me and the areas didn’t quite feel like a connected world and not very immersive. But that could also just be me. I don’t know. In any case, apart fr om those two issues the game is great. There are a lot of monsters, that all feel different and capable, a lot of interesting abilities to discover and use and only one music track, that in my opinion was not in between good and awesome. There is also a new game+, that I haven't tried yet, that even has a build in randomizer and perma death option, which they released in a free update, they definitely could have charged money for. So, as I sad, if you are a Pokemon fan, I recommend you giving this a try. Just don’t expect Pokemon levels of difficulty.

This is exactly the kind of game I wish pokemon was. It's fun, strategic, and beautiful. Hatch those monsters baybeeeee

I hate pixel art but I love this game so much Solid Monster Team battle, so much monster, items and skills... Far better than Pokemon Good job

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

A very enjoyable game. There is a lot of depth to the customization possibilities and skill trees. But then again the game on normal difficulty is not very punishing for "wrong" choices. I could play whatever I found fun and only in the very end the battles were so challenging that I had to tinker around which skills to take to beat it. It's not triple A but it is fun to pickup every time and I could play for only a couple minutes if time was short and I still felt I made progress. The blend between the "Pokemon style" monster fights and collection and a jump and run platformer worked surprisingly well and was very satisfying.

Monster Sanctuary was on its way to being a favorite of mine, as it combined the two genres I tend to enjoy the most and it felt pretty fresh. I love the idea that monsters grant you the metroidvania abilities, I love the art in your "dex" with long entries on each monster, I love the art style even though the environments were fairly uninspired, and I love that the combat feels completely separate from Pokemon. The music isn't very good, so I had the volume off for most of my time playing. The story is weak, but that doesn't matter too much in this sort of game. My problem comes in where the Metroidvania aspects seem to be tacked on to expand off the combat system. I feel like the developers made the monster combat and polished up how that system works and then said "waaaaait, let's put it in a Metroid map". That's just what it feels like from my perspective. Maybe if they had mixed up the gameplay where some battles are Metroidvania style where your abilities for battle are based on the monsters you choose. There is no catching mechanic, so obtaining a new monster relies on RNG drops (in your favor, it seems, this never gave me issues). Most monsters do not evolve, only a select few use random items that you give to a tree. I suppose this was to differentiate from Pokemon, but if that's the reason than why only give this to a few monsters? Maybe that should have given me a clue that the game doesn't care if you like your monsters or not, it expects you to consider a min-max team. I did not beat the game, because the monsters I had at the final fight were not enough to win and I preferred to walk away with a pleasant experience than look up the meta. I'm not sure why they decided to slap a difficulty curve at the climax of the game. Maybe they forgot the Elite Four isn't leveled to 100 so their lvl 40 cap that the last fights match is fine? Anyway, in a monster collector game I would prefer to win with the monsters I've bonded with along the way, not dump them at the last second. I have no doubt Pokemon haters will praise this game to no end and ignore the mediocrity, they can find a way to glorify an old potato if someone claims it's like Pokemon. One last issue, it's disappointing that you get to pick between two white dudes at the start and there's no character customization whatsoever. If I'm not really supposed to care for the monsters, then at least give me some options for my own look (or at least a female character). In the end, I would still recommend giving this game a try. It's a good game with some design flaws here and there that leave it middle of the road in the end. It's still going to be more interesting than most of the big releases.

Phenomenal game. It has lots of great RPG elements like unique skill trees for each monster, a very diverse cast of monsters, lots of different items to equip etc. The story is well written. The areas are fun to explore. The battles are awesome. This game does not disappoint. Amazing value for the price.

This is a fun game. It’s like Pokémon with skill trees. You don’t have to worry about making the wrong decisions when picking skills because you can reset them for cheap.

The obvious comparison here is Pokemon. There are a lot of similarities, and a lot of things done way differently. The one thing this game has head and shoulders above pokemon is difficulty and depth of combat. The game isn't exactly "Hard" but it has nice spikes in difficulty and I found myself having to rework strategies and grind up in sections which is something that can never be said for todays generations of pokemon where your hand is held every step of the way. One other thing this game has over pokemon is the sheer amount of fun and viable team compositions. The game is balanced very well so that you can generally pick whatever your most appealing playstyle and it should get the job done in most scenarios. Im about 20 hours in and im having to run around like crazy trying to level and gear up something like 30 monsters which I want to use in various compositions that ive thought up. I should qualify this statement a little further, obviously Pokemon has "More" viable Pokemon, but thats merely a consequence of them having 900+ individual pokemon. Monster Sanctuary has a little over 100 (Each monster having 2 additional forms so more like 300 unique play styles) but out of that number FAR more are usable and enjoyable in terms of percentages. Think back to RBY and the original 151. How many of those wound up being strong in the late game? Maybe 25%? The talent trees are all unique and have a ton of depth to them, or at least plenty enough depth to keep me thinking and invested in trying new things. What this game lacks in a story or exploration it makes up for with its core gameplay loop. The gameplay is what I WISH Pokemon could have evolved into.

Have been playing this game since its early access release, and it's honestly one of the best games i have played this year. The platforming is easy but fun. The skill tree and battles have so many ways to approach it. The game let's you experiment around, because skill resetters are very cheap. Game is also very balanced even tho there are 101 monsters that are all usable (generation 1 Pokémon only had like 50 usable pokémon). I really hope that with the recent downfall of Pokémon, people pick this game up and give it a try and it gets the attention that it deserves. If you are thinking about buying this game, just do it. You will not regret it.

Just a better "pokemon" game if you want a deeper combat system but not overwhelimg + lots of QOL that those games should have got long ago. Would definitely recommend if you like turn-based combat, monsters and "on the go game" as you can save anytime. Just don't expect it to be a "grand world design". just don't expect it to be on a big scale, the story is very simple.

Excelente mistura de pokémon com metroidvania, um RPG de turno que a tempo não me encanta tanto, belo jogo.

Overrated. If we don't grade this game on a curve for being an indie, the story is barebones and not particularly engaging. The entire overworld mechanic of using monsters to unlock and move through different areas is overstated. It's only a mild annoyance and a way to wall off areas instead of being integrated into a platforming challenge. The real meat of the game and what draws people in is the gameplay. While it's interesting at first to build different teams to try for 5 staring fight, it eventually gets stale. Instead of scaling everything and properly balancing the game, the metroidvania mechanics have you cake walking through old areas with no good way to track what is where. Monster Sanctuary has the beginnings of some good ideas but doesn't blend any of them together particularly well. The only interesting fights you'll find are in new areas, and usually only champion fights. New fights can be longer but really they're more tedious than challenging. It's definitely a different flavor of game than pokemon or some other monster collectors, but different isn't always fun or good.

I must say right away that I'm not a big fan of games in monster hatching genre. But I decided to give it a try and bought this one. And to my great surprise, I realized that it turns out I love games about growing monsters! I liked almost everything! Graphics are cute pixel, everything is very nice, the only remark I would like more animations of the environment, such as the movement of grass, trees, animation in the background. Music - is nothing to write home about, after a couple of hours of playing it became particularly annoying. Gameplay is all almost without remarks, but the boss battles were a little ruffled (more precisely, not the battles, but the bosses themselves, somehow they did not impress, not by sight, not by force, maybe I played a little and there will be more difficult obstacles). Overall, I liked the game, it's not perfect, but very good. My mark 9 Blobs from 10!

Starts strong, and has a lot of good ideas, which ultimately arent perfectly thought-through and executed, though: Repetitive gameplay, lots of repeating world-abilities, very unspectacular "boss-fights" (which you simply need to beat to proceed, but dont add any new mechanics), annoying and disturbing puzzles, a boring level-design, and the lack of comfort disturb the experience the longer you play, and the further you get, and hinder the game from being great. It still is a nice addition to the monster-collecting genre, and not a bad game, but didnt fulfill my personal expectations...

Amazing game. Amazingly deep and so fun. What I wish Pokémon was more like. Controls great, the battle system is amazing and the exploration is fun as well. Pixel art looks fantastic as well.