Decided to try this game on a whim based on the huge appeal of a monster-collecting Metroidvania, where your creatures' abilities are needed to traverse the world. I thought the exploration was going to be the main draw, and the battles an afterthought. However, everything else about the game soon became outdone by the intricacy and challenging nature of its battle mechanics.

Presentation-wise, the game has fairly simple but effective pixel art. The humans are nondescript little pixel people, but the monsters look great and are animated well even in their small overworld form, which is important not only for battle but because every single one can follow you around. The monster journal provides some gorgeous pixel portraits that give you a more detailed look at what each creature really looks like. As for the music, it ranges from passable to rather good. I got pretty tired of the basic battle theme, which all too often interrupted the atmospheric songs of certain areas.

The main story is pretty basic, including a twist that was really easy to see coming if you're paying attention (although I would rather a twist be predictable than come out of nowhere with absolutely no way to figure it out), but this game shines more in the background worldbuilding it establishes, including a ton of detail on each monster, its behavior and its history with humans in the sanctuary. Speaking of which, the creature designs are in general very cute and charming, and it's tempting to just use a team full of your absolute favorites like you could get away with doing in Pokemon, but that may not be an option because if you're not putting thought into team composition, this game will kick your butt.

So let's talk about that. Battles always consist of three monsters vs. three monsters (with keeper duels featuring a full team of six, a backup mon swapping in when one of the active three is defeated). The interplay of abilities in your current grouping of three will be vital to victory. Each monster has a detailed skill tree, and you get to choose a new skill every time you level up (but there is a level cap so you can never grind so much that you just fill out the entire tree). These include not only new attacks, but plenty of passive effects. Buffs, debuffs, shielding, healing- all of these considerations are important, because this game is NOT easy, and throws a lot of opponents at you who actually have good strategies, and will wipe the floor with you if you aren't thinking through your own team synergy and actions carefully. In fact, the vast majority of damage done on a given turn (at least in my case) comes about "off-turn" at the start of your opponents' movement via debuffs like poison, bleed, burn, the chill-congeal combo, etc.

If it sounds complicated... well, there's even more that goes into the stats. Each monster also has a weapon slot and three additional equipment slots, all of which can be improved via crafting, you can feed your monsters to give them small boosts, past a certain point you can change your monsters into one of two color-shifted forms which confer different advantages... there's a LOT to keep track of. That's what makes this game so interesting, but if you're just looking for a mindless fun time unwinding with cute creatures (no shame in that!) this may not be for you. When I was stuck on a certain battle near the end, I changed to "casual" mode out of curiosity and didn't find it to be much easier, since the opponent's team strategy was still good enough to compensate for having less health in this difficulty setting.

That said, if you DO find a team comp that works well for you, a lot of this game can end up being kind of a slog, as you don't really need to switch up your team and you can get through most battles using the same strategy. And then suddenly the game throws a curveball of a boss battle at you, and you feel the need to totally re-evaluate. Still, unless you're playing on the highest difficulty level, don't believe anyone who says you absolutely must follow a certain team comp or strategy to get through. I used plenty of early or mid-game mons that I liked and managed to win without constantly resetting my skill trees to min-max or creating an entirely new team just to deal with one boss, or anything like that. I saw some people get turned off of this game by difficulty spikes, but there are lots of ways to get through a tough battle, you just have to find one that works.

As for the Metroidvania aspects, it does feel good to move around the world, and it's neat that sometimes the game gates you by a required ability and you're left to find the appropriate monster(s) by looking at the monster journal and figuring out which ability could help you. A couple times there were story gates with hints that you needed a different monster, but mostly it's up to you to figure out how to solve a problem, or if you're even able to at that point or might need to revisit with a later-game companion. Unfortunately, while some creatures do cool movement-related stuff, a lot of monster abilities boil down to simply activating elemental orbs, and most of the world's puzzles are based on... pulling levers to open gates in the correct order. WOW I got tired of seeing those levers.

To sum it up, this game is a very interesting combo of genres, and they might not always mesh together smoothly. Certain parts can start to feel tedious or like a slog, as developing too good of a team might have you suffering from success as you grind through repetitive battles. But if you're looking for a challenging RPG experience that makes you think, with some charming creature designs into the bargain, this game could become your new obsession.