This game is awful. The J-pop music is pretty good though.
This might actually be the worst game I’ve ever played
Monark? more like SHITMARK AYO LMAO XD.
Full video review: https://youtu.be/wRoXRy2AfcY
Overview and Game Loop
So the entire thing plays as a very structured turn-based JRPG. You’re thrown into this mysterious school setting with a main character that has amnesia and a “mist” that causes other students to go insane. The general game loop is extremely linear and follows the same pattern all the way through. You get some story dialogue, search a floor of some building within the school for a phone call, answer that phone call to engage in a battle in another realm, another story dialogue to close out that section, and then repeat this process over and over.
That’s the entirety of Monark and honestly, it’s a bit too structured for my tastes. I don’t have anything against linear games, but I also like JRPGs that don’t just recycle the same pattern to completion.
Exploration and Puzzles
In Monark, the most exploration you get is maybe entering a classroom and picking up a healing item before moving to your actual objective. That’s it. Otherwise, you simply need to solve a small puzzle to find the source of the mist for that given floor.
And I say puzzle, but that’s pushing it a bit given that most of the time you just need to memorize a small number or word sequence and enter it elsewhere - like the combination for a safe that you find on a sticky note in another room. The vast majority of the “puzzles” feel more like obstacles than something I enjoy doing.
Combat
None of the combat actually takes place in the school setting, instead being set entirely in this “other realm” that you have to dial into. Upon doing so, you select which units to deploy, where to deploy them, and then go at it in a neat mashup of different combat systems. It’s turn-based, but you have freedom of movement and can shuffle around your units as you please. Positioning is key as there are things like back attacks and assisting other units based on their proximity to a given enemy.
I liked the overall approach here. It’s not as strict as your regular turn-based JRPG, but still stays true to that experience without going full action-based. And there’s a good bit of depth too. You get entire skill trees per unit, the ability to outright defer your turn to any other unit, a full slate of status effects, buffs, and debuffs, and this cool madness and ascension system on top of it. These mechanics build on each other in cool ways, allowing you to set up combos with a bunch of assists flying everywhere or even situations where it becomes beneficial to let a unit go mad.
Ultimately though, this all comes with one major flaw: you hardly ever need or get to use these mechanics. About 90% of fights you can finish simply by using basic attacks and a lot of the time, you have to go out of your way to actually use the more complex mechanics. Boss fights are really the only time I ever got to see units go mad, use ascension, or ever felt the need to inflict status effects and debuffs.
Difficulty and Grinding
There are two difficulties: normal and casual, with the latter simply reducing damage taken by 30% in exchange for a decreased item drop rate. Both difficulties, however, are subject to the game’s absolutely insane difficulty spikes. I thought I was doing completely fine up until the second boss, which one-shot me numerous times until I dropped the difficulty to casual, which simply made it a two-shot instead.
Monark is a game that purposely keeps you underleveled and I found myself repeatedly grinding the optional fights over and over just to stay up to par with the bosses - there are no "normal" encounters. In most JRPGs, you can get by by simply fighting all encounters you run into or even dropping the difficulty if you want to play more leisurely, but Monark throws out both of those options. What you are left with is an incredibly grindy, repetitive, and unfulfilling game loop. And the fact that skeletons are the only enemies you fight does not help either.
Story
I feel it’s important to note that the dialogue and cutscenes take up probably about 50% of the game’s playtime, so it’s pretty beefy in that regard. That unfortunately doesn’t make it good though, and that’s ultimately the impression I got here. Mainly, I couldn’t shake this feeling that the story was trying to be too much and lacked focus.
I understand what is going on, but not what the writers are trying to convey with the story. It’s like a mess of ideas all cobbled together that sounds cool on paper, but lack the depth and direction to really work. The entire first act, for example, works like a series of short stories about individual student’s psychological problems and a slight dive into each of their backgrounds. Each gets expanded on later, but I should note that the first act alone is like 15 hours of gameplay so you will be waiting a while for the story to really kick into gear.
And it’s incredibly tropey too - to the point where it was hard to tell if I was playing a parody, but no, the game is actually taking itself seriously. This is the kind of anime story I would expect to appeal to 13 or 14 year olds, with so much edge I am surprised my controller didn’t cut me.
Graphics and Music
Monark looks about what I would expect from an early PS4 or late PS3 JRPG. It’s not outright terrible, but not good either - just bland. The music though might be my second favorite thing under the combat. The vocal tracks that play during boss fights absolutely slap and the regular background music isn’t that bad either.
PC Port
You get a small set of graphical options to change and the game ran flawlessly at 1440p, 60 fps on my 1070 Ti so I guess I can’t complain. I had no issues with the controls on controller and the default keyboard and mouse layout isn’t that bad either. You do not get a cursor on screen though, so the mouse is just used for its buttons.
Overall
Monark is a bit of a mess of ideas - some good, some bad, but most leaning a bit towards the latter. You get some nice combat, but coupled with some very grindy progression and lackluster gameplay outside of that combat. You get a story with some nice themes, but little coherence between all of these themes and filled with so many anime tropes that it’s hard to take seriously. A disappointment overall as a big JRPG fan.
Overview and Game Loop
So the entire thing plays as a very structured turn-based JRPG. You’re thrown into this mysterious school setting with a main character that has amnesia and a “mist” that causes other students to go insane. The general game loop is extremely linear and follows the same pattern all the way through. You get some story dialogue, search a floor of some building within the school for a phone call, answer that phone call to engage in a battle in another realm, another story dialogue to close out that section, and then repeat this process over and over.
That’s the entirety of Monark and honestly, it’s a bit too structured for my tastes. I don’t have anything against linear games, but I also like JRPGs that don’t just recycle the same pattern to completion.
Exploration and Puzzles
In Monark, the most exploration you get is maybe entering a classroom and picking up a healing item before moving to your actual objective. That’s it. Otherwise, you simply need to solve a small puzzle to find the source of the mist for that given floor.
And I say puzzle, but that’s pushing it a bit given that most of the time you just need to memorize a small number or word sequence and enter it elsewhere - like the combination for a safe that you find on a sticky note in another room. The vast majority of the “puzzles” feel more like obstacles than something I enjoy doing.
Combat
None of the combat actually takes place in the school setting, instead being set entirely in this “other realm” that you have to dial into. Upon doing so, you select which units to deploy, where to deploy them, and then go at it in a neat mashup of different combat systems. It’s turn-based, but you have freedom of movement and can shuffle around your units as you please. Positioning is key as there are things like back attacks and assisting other units based on their proximity to a given enemy.
I liked the overall approach here. It’s not as strict as your regular turn-based JRPG, but still stays true to that experience without going full action-based. And there’s a good bit of depth too. You get entire skill trees per unit, the ability to outright defer your turn to any other unit, a full slate of status effects, buffs, and debuffs, and this cool madness and ascension system on top of it. These mechanics build on each other in cool ways, allowing you to set up combos with a bunch of assists flying everywhere or even situations where it becomes beneficial to let a unit go mad.
Ultimately though, this all comes with one major flaw: you hardly ever need or get to use these mechanics. About 90% of fights you can finish simply by using basic attacks and a lot of the time, you have to go out of your way to actually use the more complex mechanics. Boss fights are really the only time I ever got to see units go mad, use ascension, or ever felt the need to inflict status effects and debuffs.
Difficulty and Grinding
There are two difficulties: normal and casual, with the latter simply reducing damage taken by 30% in exchange for a decreased item drop rate. Both difficulties, however, are subject to the game’s absolutely insane difficulty spikes. I thought I was doing completely fine up until the second boss, which one-shot me numerous times until I dropped the difficulty to casual, which simply made it a two-shot instead.
Monark is a game that purposely keeps you underleveled and I found myself repeatedly grinding the optional fights over and over just to stay up to par with the bosses - there are no "normal" encounters. In most JRPGs, you can get by by simply fighting all encounters you run into or even dropping the difficulty if you want to play more leisurely, but Monark throws out both of those options. What you are left with is an incredibly grindy, repetitive, and unfulfilling game loop. And the fact that skeletons are the only enemies you fight does not help either.
Story
I feel it’s important to note that the dialogue and cutscenes take up probably about 50% of the game’s playtime, so it’s pretty beefy in that regard. That unfortunately doesn’t make it good though, and that’s ultimately the impression I got here. Mainly, I couldn’t shake this feeling that the story was trying to be too much and lacked focus.
I understand what is going on, but not what the writers are trying to convey with the story. It’s like a mess of ideas all cobbled together that sounds cool on paper, but lack the depth and direction to really work. The entire first act, for example, works like a series of short stories about individual student’s psychological problems and a slight dive into each of their backgrounds. Each gets expanded on later, but I should note that the first act alone is like 15 hours of gameplay so you will be waiting a while for the story to really kick into gear.
And it’s incredibly tropey too - to the point where it was hard to tell if I was playing a parody, but no, the game is actually taking itself seriously. This is the kind of anime story I would expect to appeal to 13 or 14 year olds, with so much edge I am surprised my controller didn’t cut me.
Graphics and Music
Monark looks about what I would expect from an early PS4 or late PS3 JRPG. It’s not outright terrible, but not good either - just bland. The music though might be my second favorite thing under the combat. The vocal tracks that play during boss fights absolutely slap and the regular background music isn’t that bad either.
PC Port
You get a small set of graphical options to change and the game ran flawlessly at 1440p, 60 fps on my 1070 Ti so I guess I can’t complain. I had no issues with the controls on controller and the default keyboard and mouse layout isn’t that bad either. You do not get a cursor on screen though, so the mouse is just used for its buttons.
Overall
Monark is a bit of a mess of ideas - some good, some bad, but most leaning a bit towards the latter. You get some nice combat, but coupled with some very grindy progression and lackluster gameplay outside of that combat. You get a story with some nice themes, but little coherence between all of these themes and filled with so many anime tropes that it’s hard to take seriously. A disappointment overall as a big JRPG fan.
nazista fdp mereceu sair do flow
o galera eu queria fazer esse vídeo pra só pedir desculpa mesmo eu errei a verdade é essa eu tava muito bêbado e eu fui defender uma ideia que é uma ideia que acontece em outros lugares do mundo no estados unidos por exemplo mas eu fui defender essa ideia de uma ideia de um jeito muito burro eu tava bêbado eu falei de uma forma muito insensível com a comunidade ju-judaica eee ee porra eu peço perdão ta ligado pela minha insensibilidadade mas eu peço também um pouco de compreensão são quatro horas de conversa a gente eu tava bêbado fui insensível sim errei na forma com que eu eu fui me expressei da a entender que eu tô defendendo coisas abomináveis é uma merda errei pra caralho eu não sei eu peço peço compreensão ai de vocês e peço desculpas a toda a comunidade judaica desculpa mesmo não queria ser insensível não foi a minha intenção e eu convido inclusive os maiores representantes dessa comunidade pra virem conversar comigo pra me explicarem mais sobre toda a história obrigado.
Damn it has pretty good writing even with predictable plot. Character designs, music, everything is good.
But gameplay is awful. Same people made Lost Dimension (pls play this gem) with 11 unique characters with unique abilities and with many possible builds. Also LD had good map design. Meanwhile in monark you fight on the same shit dimension map with a few walls and annoying gimmicks.
Leveling system is pure garbage, get your cheat engine on or grind for hours. Example: you get lvl 1 character and fight lvl 25 enemies. (WHY?? )
But gameplay is awful. Same people made Lost Dimension (pls play this gem) with 11 unique characters with unique abilities and with many possible builds. Also LD had good map design. Meanwhile in monark you fight on the same shit dimension map with a few walls and annoying gimmicks.
Leveling system is pure garbage, get your cheat engine on or grind for hours. Example: you get lvl 1 character and fight lvl 25 enemies. (WHY?? )
Easily has one of the best, well-balanced, and actually challenging combat systems I've seen in a Furyu-produced title. Very solid instrumental OST by Tsukasa Masuko paired with really epic vocal tracks by the people at Kamitsubaki Studio. All of these topped off with an emotionally-moving cast of characters and a story that really kept me going despite the game's length and slightly questionable gameplay-related pacing issues.
A game that went pretty much the exact opposite of everything I expected from it but still ended up being a great time for me overall. Definitely check it out if you're interested. Ryotaro best.
A game that went pretty much the exact opposite of everything I expected from it but still ended up being a great time for me overall. Definitely check it out if you're interested. Ryotaro best.