Monday, June 2, 2014

Monster Monpiece Review

First off, I'm not a professional reviewer, I'm just a player who happens to like Japan's perviest games.  I was motivated to write this review because Monster Monpiece is pretty damn good.  I haven't finished it yet -- just playing through the middle / latter chapters, but it's a game that actually inspires me to want to make a clone of it.

Here's where it's good and not-so-good:

1.) Battle System.

Note this may be my first card battle game (since I generally avoid mobile F2P microtransaction games) though I did try out the PSN version of Magic: The Gathering.  But the battle system reminds me more of a combination of Tower Defense and Capybara's puzzle battle take on Heroes of Might and Magic.

I have never, ever, looked forward to battling in a Compile Heart game before (known for the tedious monotonous battles such as found in the Agarest series).  But this game is different.  Clearly, it seems as if there was actual game design put into this, and it shows.

There are several classes of units:
- tank/sword
- range/bow and arrow
- buffer/spellcaster
- healer/mana replenisher

(In a more professional review I would have included screenshots, but right now I'm kinda writing in the midst of inspiration and I haven't yet set up to transfer screenshots from my PS Vita system.  So please bear with me.)

The battles occur on a 3x7 grid.  The 9 squares to the left are for placing your units.  The 9 squares to the right are for the enemy units.  Once summoned the units will advance each turn towards the opposing team's fortress -- if they reach the end, they can take out your castle causing a game over.  For each turn, you have a choice of 5 or 6 random cards from your deck to summon (your deck can hold 40 cards total). If you run out of cards it's game over.  It takes more mana to summon the more powerful units so you can either pass your turn or use a healing unit to replenish mana.  You can also use items.

Now where it gets interesting is the built-in stat-changing abilities of the cards.  Not only are there innate abilities that can change the tide of battle, but these cards are also color-coded, so if you summon 3 of the same color in sequential turns, your ATK and other stats shoot up tremendously.  Not only that, but cards also have races and you can summon a same-race card to fuse on top of a unit that's already deployed, to make it even stronger!

Once you have a fused tank unit advancing on the enemy side, backed up with both a healer and spellcaster that continually replenish it each turn, it's practically impossible for the opposing team to put a stop to it.  If you have three rows of these you already know you've won.  That is why battles are either utter losses or ultimate victory-- I get an immediate S or SS Rank!  It takes actual effort to maintain a balanced battle of attrition.

2.) Rubbing System

This is where it gets really interesting.  You collect cards of monster girls by journeying on the world map, winning battles, or buying them at a store.  You get Rubbing Points after winning each battle, which you can spend to level up your cards.  Naturally more powerful cards use more rubbing points.  You use the right analog stick to pan around the picture and use your fingers to tap at the cards "weak spots".  If the card really likes it, it squeals and you then have to vigorously rub the front touchscreen and the PS Vita back panel at the same time.  You have a time limit and if successful, the card graphic sheds some clothes and levels up.  A card's stats don't always all go up... sometimes some stats go down though to compensate for the stat that does increase.

You're really encouraged to level up your cards as often as you can.  Sometimes a +1 version of the same card appears, which is basically the same card but with higher base stats.  Since you are limited to 40 cards to a deck anyway, it doesn't make sense to hold onto a card if there's too many copies of it, so I end up selling them back to the store.  Once you've rubbed a card to its max, its graphic is saved to the Gallery.

It turns out that your card inventory and Rubbing Points use a different persistent auto-save.  So even if I reload a game, I cannot undo what I've done to my cards!

Now as for censorship, so far I've encountered 5 of the cards whose Stage 3 graphic is the same as the Stage 2 graphic.  Some I had no idea why they censored... it's relative to the card on a case by case basis.  It bothered me a little that there's no reward in the gallery for the additional unlock, but then it is not a game-changer for me.  I still recommend people -- especially those who like pervy anime games -- to buy this game.

3.) Overall story

This game contains no males whatsoever (well except for a mention of someone's father).  The story involves a bunch of human girls with their monster girl sidekicks running around the world map -- with place names that are pronounced the same as modern day Japan e.g. Tokio -- running after a particular Lost, a possessed individual who steals some magic crystals (that powers the world) or whatever.

Frankly, the story is non-descript.  And the girls blabber for way too long, this is generally how they talk in Compile Heart games.  But they sure pass the Bechdel Test with flying colors!  It's funny that in Agarest I loathed going through battles just to get to the pretty pictures in the story mode, while here it's just the opposite.

So anyways, it's pretty telling that while everyone else is playing Drakengard 3, it's still on my backlog while I am utterly addicted to this game.  You can get it for your PS Vita for $29.99 only on the Playstation Network.  Even with the censoring, it's still worth it.  If the censoring issue still bothers you, tell you want, I really am contemplating making a full-blown hentai game -- a strip card battle -- then we can put the issue to rest.  This is a console game so obviously there's going to be a limit to how far the dev can go.

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