Monark doesn’t hold back on its psychologically dark content. It asks some hard hitting moral questions and you’ll have to deal with rather shady characters throughout the game as you try to find out just what the heck is going on at Shin Mikado Academy.
If you’ve played games from Furyu Corporation and Lancarse before, you might sort of expect what Monark has to offer. If not, this is extremely similar to Atlus’ Shin Megami Tensei and Persona series games. You’ll interact with your fellow classmates, get sucked into a mystery and it’s up to you to save the day. Standard fare for any self-respecting JRPG. Where Monark sets itself apart though lies with its strategic gameplay. This is an SRPG at its core and one that will keep you busy for dozens of hours. It’s quite similar to The Caligula Effect: Overdose too but with a much darker aesthetic.
Players in Monark will take on the role of a high school student at Shin Mikado Academy. Right at the start of the game you’ll be sucked into a battle and once you get through this, the real drama begins. Players will slowly be introduced to the game’s colourful cast of main characters and discover that there’s a horrible mist plaguing the academy. You’re essentially trapped here and unfortunately, everything is not as it seems with some fellow students seemingly gone mad.
Monark slowly builds up the story by drip feeding you information via in-game conversations with other characters. Thankfully these conversations are fully voiced and the voice acting is decent in both English and Japanese with some familiar names lending their talents to the game’s cast. You’ll encounter a stuffed animal in the shape of a black rabbit named Vanitas who grants you the ability to use the “Authority of Vanity”. This is where things really get intriguing since you effectively become able to control monsters or “fiends” in battle against other otherworldly enemies.
Players will have to explore Shin Mikado Academy and interact with the environment to progress. You have a madness gauge though which will start to fill as long as you are exposed to the mist. If you go mad, you’ll end up at the nurse’s office and have to retrace your steps throughout the academy. Battles in Monark take place in the Otherworld, a horrifying alternate dimension where you’ll control your playable character, your party members and fiends.
Fiends have their own special abilities and their gear can be customised throughout the game by equipping various items onto them. You can also change their appearance somewhat and since you’ll be seeing them for hours on end as you grind through battles to level up, this is a nice touch.
When it comes to the actual battles in Monark, players will control their characters in a turn-based manner. You will move your characters across a chessboard-like environment in the Otherworld and engage with enemy characters. Your own characters have a set range to move and attack in so positioning is essential to victory. Players will therefore have to carefully consider their movements when enemies are within range. Strategy is essential and you really need to think about using the right Arts or Authority abilities because of your limited range.
Players can phone themselves into the Otherworld and effectively grind out levels for their fiends and characters. However, some enemies can be quite high level. It’s best to not take on foes that are too tough and to instead focus on weaker ones until you’ve unlocked more of the game’s skill tree. Enemies in the Otherworld will wipe you out quite easily if you underestimate them.
The game’s skilltree does allow for some freedom in that you can re-skill (at a cost of spirit) but it’s best to focus on your strengths and stick to them once you’ve got the hang of the game’s mechanics. Characters in battles in Monark also have a “Mad” and “Awake” percentage which needs to be paid attention to. Once these gauges reach 100%, your character will either enter an uncontrollable berserk mode or will be able to pull off a special attack depending on whether or not they are human or fiend. You need to pay careful attention to these gauges as you play out your turns against foes in the Otherworld. Resonance (effectively skill sharing) and Enlightenment (combining 100% Mad and Awake statuses) complicate battles further.
A small mishap could cost you dearly in battle, especially against tougher boss opponents. It’s also game over if your main playable character ends up dying. Much like how a King is the most important piece in a game of chess, your main character is the most important character in Monark and you have to do everything in your power to keep them alive in battles.
Monark’s battles are both the game’s best feature and its downfall. The battles take quite long to play out and doing them over and over again to level up becomes a monotonous grind. Unfortunately levelling up is also necessary in order to progress further in the game because some of the bosses you need to defeat are quite powerful. The character interactions in the academy do help break up some of the monotony of grinding out battles but this could have been expanded upon a bit more.
It also doesn’t help that graphically, the academy is rather bland with not much detail on offer here. For a modern day game, the environment of Shin Mikado Academy looks extremely lacklustre and so too do the lifelessly stiff character models. The game’s visual novel aspects and artwork are in stark contrast to this. They are so well done in comparison to the in-game models. The game’s opening cinematic also has absolutely fantastic visuals and it’s a shame that the game itself doesn’t.
Graphically, battles are a tad disappointing and the game could definitely have used a lot more visual flair or variation here. Animations in battles are fine but do become repetitive over time once you’ve seen them a dozen times already. Thankfully there is a “Quick” mechanic which you can use in battles that speeds up the animations a bit. The soundtrack of Monark is excellent with a lot of electronic rock music and catchy themes that play throughout the game.
Overall Monark is still a captivating title that makes use of rather refreshing battle mechanics. The implementation of Resonance, Awakening, Madness and Enlightenment aspects in battles is great. The tactics and strategy required to beat enemies is a solid part of the game’s addictive nature but the unfortunate grind required before you really start getting anywhere makes it suffer somewhat. Monark is probably best played in bite sized chunks over time instead of long gameplay sessions purely because the turn-based battle fatigue sets in fast. If you’re a fan of JRPGs and SRPGs, Monark will appeal to you. If not, we suggest looking elsewhere for your gaming fix.
Developers: Lancarse, FuRyu
Publishers: FuRyu, Nippon Ichi Software, NIS America
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 5
Reviewed on PC
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