I decided to play this game after seeing the great reviews it was getting at launch, and I'm definitely glad I did, as I was craving a good creature-collector and this feels like a good in-between of the simplicity of pokemon and the complexity of something like SMT.
The game has you in an open world, with progression to certain parts of the map barred by getting upgrades to your movement by capturing certain monsters in each zone. These include simple things such as swimming in water, to more advanced tools like a magnetism field, that can pull certain objects to you, and pull you to others. The way I found these tools felt natural, and I never felt like it was going to take me ages to unlock a new tool to get where I needed.
Before I talk about more I want to quickly praise the combat. The game has the standard formula of types with resistances and weaknesses, but instead of affecting damage, the game gives you buffs and debuffs. For example, hitting a water monster with a fire attack creates steam around the water monster, increasing their evasion. However, hitting them with a grass attack gives you a health leech at the end of their moves. The game has an incredibly large amount of status effects you can achieve through this, leading to a lot of strategy. This is increased due to always having a partner with you, allowing a lot of experimentation with combos. You can also build a meter to fuse with your partner in battle, combining your two monsters into one for a power boost.
There are two main things you'll be searching for in the world. One are the ranger captains, 16 people that serve as the sort of 'gym leaders' for this game. You'll find them in the overworld, and instead of being focused on a type they each have their own playstyle you have to work around. Some of these were pretty hard to work around, with them abusing some strategies that can be really strong.
The other main quest are the archangel boss fights. These are more traditional bosses with large health pools, and usually with some sort of gimmick that you have to work around. While the fights themselves are fun, I would especially like to commend the designs for the archangels, with each one being done in a different artstyle, from a mish-mash of collage images to a realistic-looking puppet, they all looked great and I often looked forward to seeing the new design more than the actual fight.
It's also worth noting that, as far as I could tell, these fights scale to the current level of the player to an extent. This alleviates the issue of finding a boss in a beginner area that you missed and steamrolling it, which is really nice to see.
You travel through the game with a companion, of which you have six. You unlock them throughout the game by completing a side-quest for them, and can swap them at the main hub. They also all have their own social-link style friendship system, which unlocks new conversations with and a boost to your fusion power with them each level. While this is a nice system to have, and the characters are all charming, the conversations you get are pretty short, and it would've been nice to see more development through them.
I'd also like to shout out the games music. It has a variety of vocal tracks which naturally fade in and out of instrumental tracks. Most of these kick in during battle when you fuse, but there's one that plays in the hub town which is definitely the standout for the game.
Overall, a really fun game! I enjoyed pretty much everything about it, with my only main gripe being the lack of extra development that I would've loved to see your party receive. I haven't played many creature-collecting games outside of pokemon, but if more are up to this standard, I'll definitely be trying them.
The game has you in an open world, with progression to certain parts of the map barred by getting upgrades to your movement by capturing certain monsters in each zone. These include simple things such as swimming in water, to more advanced tools like a magnetism field, that can pull certain objects to you, and pull you to others. The way I found these tools felt natural, and I never felt like it was going to take me ages to unlock a new tool to get where I needed.
Before I talk about more I want to quickly praise the combat. The game has the standard formula of types with resistances and weaknesses, but instead of affecting damage, the game gives you buffs and debuffs. For example, hitting a water monster with a fire attack creates steam around the water monster, increasing their evasion. However, hitting them with a grass attack gives you a health leech at the end of their moves. The game has an incredibly large amount of status effects you can achieve through this, leading to a lot of strategy. This is increased due to always having a partner with you, allowing a lot of experimentation with combos. You can also build a meter to fuse with your partner in battle, combining your two monsters into one for a power boost.
There are two main things you'll be searching for in the world. One are the ranger captains, 16 people that serve as the sort of 'gym leaders' for this game. You'll find them in the overworld, and instead of being focused on a type they each have their own playstyle you have to work around. Some of these were pretty hard to work around, with them abusing some strategies that can be really strong.
The other main quest are the archangel boss fights. These are more traditional bosses with large health pools, and usually with some sort of gimmick that you have to work around. While the fights themselves are fun, I would especially like to commend the designs for the archangels, with each one being done in a different artstyle, from a mish-mash of collage images to a realistic-looking puppet, they all looked great and I often looked forward to seeing the new design more than the actual fight.
It's also worth noting that, as far as I could tell, these fights scale to the current level of the player to an extent. This alleviates the issue of finding a boss in a beginner area that you missed and steamrolling it, which is really nice to see.
You travel through the game with a companion, of which you have six. You unlock them throughout the game by completing a side-quest for them, and can swap them at the main hub. They also all have their own social-link style friendship system, which unlocks new conversations with and a boost to your fusion power with them each level. While this is a nice system to have, and the characters are all charming, the conversations you get are pretty short, and it would've been nice to see more development through them.
I'd also like to shout out the games music. It has a variety of vocal tracks which naturally fade in and out of instrumental tracks. Most of these kick in during battle when you fuse, but there's one that plays in the hub town which is definitely the standout for the game.
Overall, a really fun game! I enjoyed pretty much everything about it, with my only main gripe being the lack of extra development that I would've loved to see your party receive. I haven't played many creature-collecting games outside of pokemon, but if more are up to this standard, I'll definitely be trying them.