KrazyKopter

The original Monster World IV is considered the black sheep of the Wonder Boy series. Despite that, it's still a great entry in the series and this remake, Asha in Monster World, is an improvement in many ways. The story is simple and easy to jump into even if you never played a Wonder Boy game. The text is alright and it's interesting to see what the townsfolk have to say as you keep progressing, though there are moments where it's missing words or has spacing issues. The Japanese voice acting is pretty good, especially since it's done by just three people. The game is pretty comparable to Zelda II: Link's Adventure. Asha can swing a sword in multiple directions, block attacks with a shield, and either walk or dash across areas. It's fairly simple to grasp and pretty fun, especially if you can pull off tricks like using a downwards slash to pogo off numerous enemies. The remake adds the Magical Hit mechanic, which can make some encounters easy but it also comes in handy if you're in a pinch. You can get coins and buy items from merchants in the hub world of Rapadanga. Swords increase your attack, the type of shield can determine what element is easier to block, and the armor upgrades your heath. You can also buy healing items and trade any gold bars you find to an NPC in exchange for more coins. Another way of extending your health is by finding ten Life Drops, of which there are many. They are often hidden in chests, around areas, and sometimes enemies can drop them. There are also items that pertain to dungeon puzzles, and the remake helpfully makes it so that you simply have to interact with something as long as you have the required item instead of having to open the inventory. One huge improvement is that before, carrying too much items would prevent Asha from collecting more, and would have to discard an item to get another. Now the herbs and gold bars stack on each other, giving you way more space to collect items. Once Pepelegoo joins her, she can use him to glide, double jump, and serve as a means to hit switches or become a platform for her to jump upon. It serves to emphasize platforming and exploration and makes the levels more enjoyable. If things get tough you can also call the Lamp Spirit to whisk you back to town to recover, although you'll have to travel all the way back to where you were afterwards. Another thing unlike most Wonder Boys is that's it's largely linear. After the beginning, you search around the town and palace finding the medallion to open the entrance to one of the four dungeons, then go through a short path followed by the dungeon itself. The remake redesigns some of the areas in 2.5D, which makes exploring the kingdom and dungeons less of a hassle than before One issue the original had is that you couldn't backtrack to previous stages after you cleared them. The remake fixes this somewhat by leaving the portals to the levels open so you can revisit them. However, you'll still locked out of the first few levels and later on you're unable to fully explore most of the other areas. I feel like this could have worked better. That said the only content lost are gold bars and life drops, the latter of which there are more than enough of in the remake to max out your health and only changes some text at the end otherwise. In MW4, you could only save if you talk to an old man that appears often. In the remake, you can save wherever, though you have to manually save. The lack of an autosave is a valid criticism, but as long as you remember to save before a tight spot it shouldn't be too big a deal. The dungeons can be pretty lengthy and maze-like like the Water Temple and Ice Pyramid, and early on the enemies can easily kill you. But it never gets brutal, the platforming is some of the best in the series, and the bosses put up a pretty good fight without feeling too hard. The overall look is that of a 100,1 Nights fairy tale compared to the medieval style seen in other Wonder Boy titles. The presentation is colorful and cartoon-like, and the characters can range from pretty cute like Asha and Pepelegoo to surreal like the bosses. The music is lovingly rearranged here by a new team with main series composer Shinichi Sakamoto, who also wrote a new ending piece for this remake. With a cheat code, you can unlock the original Mega Drive music as well. Most of the tracks are based off a reoccurring leitmotif which could get repetitive to some, but to me it stands as a very good soundtrack with both the old and new versions, with some exceptions like the Sky Castle theme. The Switch version has moments of slowdown, especially on the save and load screen, but is perfectly playable and a good choice way to play this game on the go. The physical release even comes with the original game! There's a few spots that could have been touched up better, but this is definitive way to play Asha and Pepelegoo's amazing journey through Monster World!