Purplestahli

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.

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.

Ive had crashes that lost me large chunks of progress, and the controls feel clunky and unintuitive. Platforming in this game is a nightmare, you have maybe 1 in 4 chance of ledge grabbing when you're smack against a ledge. Jumps are both precise and imprecise at the same time leading to frustrating platforming challenges on geometry where its not obvious where you can and cannot land. Combat is satisfying but is just a 1:1 transfer over from AC, so no real points for anything unique but its serviceable. If you really liked BOTW for its puzzle dungeons then this game will let you down every single time. The overworld exploration is passable but the dungeons which are required for upgrades and gear are boring at best, and mindnumbingly frustrating at their worst. Theres no charm to them. Its either just a puzzle about timing and platforming, or putting thing A on to spot B. If these were spaced out more then I'd have less of an issue but these rifts are everywhere and constitute a large chunk of the game. Its a shame this game tried to bite BOTWs gameplay loop because everything that it did to copy BOTW failed miserably. A lot of its own charm and mechanics work fairly well. Its an ubisoft open world at its core and those games are fine on their own if not a bit samey and predictable. Predictable, but never inherently bad. Its when Ubisoft tried to leech off the success of a more competent studio that they fell flat on their face. Everything the copied from BOTW is just worse, some times horrifically so. Also microtransactions.

It's a fun game, there's a lot of good things to say about it in theory. But in practice, I've found it to be much more stressful than fun. I only REALLY enjoy maybe 1 out of every 8 games I play. That's not to say I only win 1 out of 8, or even that the other 7 are miserable, but when I step back and think about how I felt after playing for 2 hours straight... I realize i only spent a small fraction of that time having actual fun. I mean, I can win a game thats a complete 1 sided stomp in the favor of my team. but is that really all that fun? I'm sure this game is a lot more fun for people who can consistently have 5 friends online who all are in discord or skype coordinating and making it happen together as a team. But for anyone trying to go at it solo, you are at the mercy of a horrible MM system to decide whether or not you're worthy **** that either doesn't end in a complete one sided stomp.