RELATED: Horror RPGs That Will Keep You Up At Night
Is this as good as Persona 5 or any of the games in the series? Reviews don’t seem to think so. Nevertheless, Monark has received plenty of positive feedback, giving it a moderate pulse in the aggregates. This game knows exactly what it is and achieves some success on a low budget. That said, some things could use some fixing in patches or a future sequel.
6 Best: A New Breed Of Tactics
Monark is not the first strategy RPG to implement a more fluid movement system. The biggest example of a game that created a wide area of freedom would be the Valkyria Chronicles series. However, Monark is more than a standard grid.
Every character that players place on the map has a fixed movement area. They can go forward, look around, and return if a move doesn’t seem right. Positioning is everything in this game from lining up areas of damage to performing back attacks. There are even assist combos. Monark is not the most original strategy RPG out there, but it is a solid one.
5 Worst: Traveling Around
When not in battle, players will be running around tight corridors or wide-open spaces on the campus of this cursed school. There is some form of fast travel but it is limited. Players can zip to the first floor of most buildings along with important rooms such as the group’s hideout and the infirmary. This makes traveling back from a dungeon easy.
RELATED: Best Turn-Based RPGs On The Nintendo Switch
It does not make getting to the dungeon quick though. If the player could run faster that would be one thing, but the movement speed is pretty slow. As there is a decent amount of backtracking in Monark, from getting to story areas to retreading old ground to find secrets, this makes the low run speed and the limited fast travel perplexing.
4 Best: The Characters
Monark’s story should feel familiar to fans of the Persona games: a silent hero is given an amazing power to stop evil from breaking out of his school. This protagonist then recruits fellow teens to aid in his fight against darkness. There is even an emphasis on the Ego and mind control. It is straight out of Persona 5.
While that may be the case, Monark’s narrative is still engaging thanks to the fun cast of characters. It is a bit unfortunate there isn’t more time to hang out with them though. It should also be mentioned that most of Monark is voiced and only one character’s voice stood out poorly in the English dub. Vanitas is a demonic rabbit that bestows the player with power. He can be a bit grating but otherwise, the cast and voice acting are good overall.
3 Worst: Yet Another Silent Protagonist
The main character doesn’t have a canonical name and he doesn’t have a voice. The year is 2022 and silent protagonists are somehow still a thing. It can make the game feel less engaging since the hero stares off like nothing is happening. A hero needs to react to something otherwise they can come off as creepy. Silent protagonists in the RPG genre had their time in the sun, but the trope feels dated now.
There are dialogue trees in the game that can affect stats, so at least players have some engagement with the main character. Nevertheless, it would have been nice to get a voice. It’s also odd that Monark will go into Game Over if the protagonist falls in battle even if all his comrades are still standing. That’s two questionable clichés for the price of one.
2 Best: The Leveling System
The leveling system in Monark can take some getting used to. Battles are not randomized and there aren’t even enemies running around dungeons. Every main floor covered in Mist will have a group of cellphones waiting that will prompt mini boss-like encounters.
RELATED: Best RPG Games Based On Anime
Defeat the enemies as quickly and as efficiently as possible and get rewarded with Spirit. This Spirit can be used to buy skills that then level characters up. Spirit is also the currency of this RPG to buy items like health potions. After these encounters, the numbers will be stored in the player’s phone so that they can try stages again to grind.
1 Worst: Graphically Dated
Monark is not the worst-looking game out there, but it’s like an RPG from the PS2 era that was remastered. Plenty of RPGs do this and look better than ever, with Shin Megami Tensei 3 being a recent example. Therefore, for Monark, it isn’t the graphics that make it feel old.
It is the design choices. From the corridors to the classrooms, the school setting consists of a lot of copy-and-paste designs. There is no flash to anything besides the characters and enemies, and even those things are limited. For example, the player’s automaton-like companions, the Vessels, are blank voids. They can be customized but not to a satisfying extent.
Monarkwas released on February 22, 2022 and is available on PC, PS4, PS5, and Switch.
MORE: Things Fans Didn’t Know Behind The Development Of The Persona Series
