TrueHorse

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 such a good local multiplayer game. It requires you to work together, while not making you yourself feel powerless, but able to compensate for your not so good teammate(s) and help them and also gives you the ability to just be a troll some times. This starts in the costume selection, because one player will have a different item then the other two, so you have to communicate who grabs which item, so he con equip the right costume for his “role”. Every item always is useful, if only because every item can, in some form, be used in combat, but to get through the parts of the stage, solve the puzzles and kill the bosses, you need the combined use of both items in some way. This in combination with costumes, that make your sword stronger or make you be able to attack in the water and you being able to literally carry your team, has the effect, that you can have a lot of impact, while still having to work with your team. Being able to carry team mates and the fact, that all items also interact with the player characters in some way also gives the players the ability to troll each other, but also to “fight” the troll, for example by catching them with the boomerang and carrying them to the goal. This can lead to some funny moments, that can ease up the atmosphere a little bit before tryharding again. The game can still be frustrating some times when you die over and over again, especially when that happens in a boss fight and, after using up your fairies, you have to start the stage over again, but it can also feel great to plan out a new strategy of who does what when. Also, when you try again, you can agree to change who has which item, so the better player has the more important item, which has the nice side effect, that the stage fells a little different. The costume system also feels great. The anticipation of discovering new costumes, making them and then being able to select them in a stage is a great motivator for getting through the stages and worlds. Choosing which one to use in a given stage is fun and interesting and a lot of them are feeling impactful and fun to use as well. The only little flaw is, that one of the three materials at the end of each stage is a different one than the other two and all three materials are in separate opaque chests, so a player can’t let an other player a material, because they already have it. This was kind of fixed with a patched costume, which lets you see through chests. It doesn’t feel great to use your costume slot for it, but I can’t come up with a better solution and it does it job. As for the other modes: The single player mode is there, which is more than in some other multiplayer focused games and it is actually okay for trying out a stage or playing, when you have no one to play with at the moment, but not more. But that is fine, because this isn’t meant as a single player game. I can’t comment on the online multiplayer, because I only played it ones and can’t remember much from it. The versus mode can be pretty fun, but because it is against, not with, to me it felt very different from the rest of the game and kind of wrong. Three other things to mention are: 1. The music is awesome. The woodland theme is stuck in my head since weeks. 2. There is a little minigame in the hub room, where you have to keep a ball in the air and during that time it plays Zelda music from different games. We spend more than a little time on that. The ball also appears in every stage, although without the music, but with a ruby and heart reward, which also helps with easing up the gameplay. 3. Because on it focus on team work, while still being a “normal” game, this game contributed to me becoming a more social human being, which I am very grateful for.