(This is the 54th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)
We're a bit late into the 'Wonder Boy' series, as the Platformer / Action-Adventure 'Wonder Boy in Monster World', which released on October 25, 1991 for the Sega Genesis, is the fifth game in the Wonder Boy series already and only two more games release for this series from here on out in 1994 and, interestingly enough, 2018. The games preceding and succeeding this game I'm about to review also received remakes in the past decade, so the series has seen somewhat of a revival recently.
For its time, Wonder Boy in Monster World received positive reviews and currently carries a 7.5 Moby Score. Multiple magazines are quoted saying something to the tune of "Who needs Sonic, when you can have Wonder Boy", which I found funny to read in retrospect, but it should tell you that this isn't just some random character, but rather a relatively popular one. Some magazines weren't all too kind, like Sega Power's review saying that this is "one aimed at younger players, but I think that even they will find this very boring or repetitive." Who was right according to my taste? Well I'll start with this: I didn't beat the game.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 3/10
In this adventure of Wonder Boy, you play Wonder Boy, who needs to save Monster World, which is under attack by ... monsters? Where else did you think the monsters wanted to be at? The Wonder Boy by the way has a name, he is called Shion.
Shion gets the help of many residents of Monster World. He can use one girl's 'Ocarina', an instrument that unlocks door if the right melody is played. He can use Poseidon's trident to explore the underwater areas. He gets the assistant of a dwarven kid that unlocks the path to a cave filled with monsters.
There isn't a lot of dialogue here besides the generic few talks you will have with people who want you to help them, so that they agree to help you afterwards. You are thanked a lot for being a hero and on you go until you win the game. After you defeat the final boss, the end credits actually play immediately after, which is kind of anti-climactic, though there are post-credit scenes where the resolution of the story is quickly explained. Again, it's generic "the hero saved everyone, so that they can live on happily ever after, or until the sequel at least." talk.
As is usual for games that call themselves side-scrolling Action RPGs at this time, you discover towns and have a few people there that you can talk to (I wouldn't call this an RPG though). Though when I say a few, I do mean just a few, as there aren't many characters walking around.
This game is also another one of those that has you run around colorful worlds for most of it, only to have the final act be in some sort of futuristic looking area against a futuristic looking final boss. Why were so many end-game areas designed like this? The games often have no hint of sci-fi, but all of a sudden some rogue AI / robot from a distant planet wants to use his futuristic weaponry to destroy you, and you poor dude with just your sword are supposed to put an end to it. Well, you do in the end, but you know, it's getting hilarious at this point how this seems to be the resolution so often.
GAMEPLAY | 9/20
This is called a side-scrolling platformer / action adventure / RPG. The first genre is correct. The second as well. As far as RPG's go, this I wouldn't call one of them. There is no character progression in terms of stats or any decisions you can make, there is in general no choice you can make and the only stats that are there are for attack, defense and speed. Armor, weapons, shields and boots are what effect those stats. You get those by opening chests and going to stores, though you'll have to do a lot of grinding for gold to get many of those store items.
So yeah, it's not an RPG, you simply control Shion in this side-scrolling platformer. From the 3 hours I've played, there wasn't much exploration but rather convoluted level design that made you look around for where to go next. There isn't really any area or anything that opens up for optional exploration. There are some harder to reach chests in this game, some of which are tricky to find. I got to one by accident by pressing up randomly (you press up to enter rooms), and a room appearing in the middle of nowhere and leading me straight to a chest. That can hardly be called exploration though.
So you are equipped with a melee weapon and have to fight enemies, some of which can jump up, some of which can swoop down, some of which can throw stuff at you, rush you, guard with their own shields and all sorts. The problem is that the swinging animation of yours takes a few frames too long, so what happens way too often is that you try to time the swing right, but you are a split second too early and before you get a second swing off, you already get hit by an enemy rushing you. The tough part is that once you die, you are sent back to your last save, which will be at the previous inn. This can send you back many, many minutes, and there is often plenty of time between your last save and the boss fight for example.
Boss fights represent ridiculous difficulty spikes here. Until the first boss for example, apart from those swing animation issues, you won't have any problems. And then you reach the boss and it just jumps on top of you constantly whilst throwing up tiny minions that hurt you when they run into you. So you got 4-5 minions coming after you from both sides, the boss coming from the top and until you take a looong time to figure out how to beat this thing, you'll, well, lose a loooot of time, and it doesn't really fell satisfying either. This the case for a lot of boss fights where it feels like the enemy attack patterns are way too wild and random. The main thing this game does with boss fights is just throw a bunch of stuff at you at once, which makes it hard to dodge, but even harder to find an opening to strike. Not fun.
The worst issue comes a few hours in however, when you are supposed to use Poseidon's trident to go underwater and find Poseidon. Multiple times I found myself thinking "where the hell do you want me to go and why are you making it this so convoluted?" I looked up the solution for a while and you know it's not a good sign when you see the actual path and think to yourself that this is way too unnecessary.
In the end, the save system and repetitively annoying gameplay made me abandon this one a few hours before completion. It's not even like this is a game where it being so hard is the point. It's not necessarily even that hard in terms of combat, bosses excluded, but finding your path and having to go all the way back to inns due to the lack of save points just makes the game annoying to play.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 7/10
No voice acting. The soundtrack ranges from meh to really good. The intro track sets a good tone for a game this is both child-friendly and one that will kick your butt repeatedly, and while few tracks combine these themes, you'll have tracks do a pretty good job of using either one to give off a relaxing vibe or one that captures the tension well. However there are some true stinkers here as well, like Village Theme 1, not to be mistaken with Village Theme 2.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 7/10
This game has good looking graphics thanks to its use of a wide color palette and attention to detail in the scrolling backgrounds. One interesting thing the game does in its villages is a visual transition effect when you enter a house, which makes the inside of the house become visible.
The sprite work, enemy design and animation here is not great, but the devs created a cozy and inviting world here, at least graphically, though it kinda starts falling apart a bitonce you hit some rough patches when it comes to hard enemies/bosses or not knowing where to go.
ATMOSPHERE | 5/10
Welcome to monster world, a world called after monsters that is in turmoil as it gets invaded by monsters. The game uses all the tropes you'd expect from a platformer of the early 90s, so unless this was one of the few games you played over and over at the time, you will notice that it doesn't offer anything new and doesn't really pull you in like plenty of other games manage to do. The world that is created here in its basic form, thanks to its soundtrack and graphical presentation, is inviting overall though, however you'll be stuck at very hard bosses and puzzles multiple times, so more likely than not it's only inviting until a certain point, where you likely will find yourself stuck, especially if you were a kid in the 90s playing this.
CONTENT | 6/10
Enough content here for an Action Adventure like this. You got many boss fights, many different enemy types, different types of equipment, plenty of puzzles and hidden stuff too boot. Not all of this is good content, but you'll be busy for a good 10 hours if you decide to play it to the end.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 4/10
Most of the time, where you need to go is straightforward. Then there are times where you will keep running around in circles, unless you figure out that you need to go to X first or press Y, which unlocks a new path. That sort of environmental puzzle is pretty enjoyable. But most of the time when things aren't straightforward, you're meant to go to some place that is only described very imprecisely, and it's a lot of time away and makes it very easy to get lost with no positive impact on fun factor or satisfaction from figuring out the way. Add to that that if you die on your way there, you're sent back all the way to the last inn you saved at, and you can see where you'd get easily frustrated.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 2/10
Nothing new on offer here, it's a mix of features and a focus on themes and a theme for its world that you have seen in a lot of different games before. There isn't even a specific thing this game tries to focus on more than on other areas, the game is meh to alright in every area, which makes for a meh game overall. It's got average world building, basic gameplay, convoluted level design, a middle-of-the-pack soundtrack, frustrating boss fights, slow pace and a boring set of one-dimensional characters. I'm sure the series has done better than this, but this game isn't doing anything above-average unfortunately.
REPLAYABILITY | 2/5
You can look for some more of those hidden equipment or health items in a second playthrough, but there is no other motivation given to play through it twice.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
The game worked well at all times.
OVERALL | 50/100
You know, I'll take a game that is below-average in most aspects of a video game, if it does a specific thing really well. But Wonder Boy in Monster World doesn't really rate better than "average" in anything, as it's a game that takes many features of better games, puts them together and ends up being a worse product. So it's a skip for me, there are plenty of better retro platformers / action adventures to play from this time period, though it's definitely not a 'terrible game'.
We're a bit late into the 'Wonder Boy' series, as the Platformer / Action-Adventure 'Wonder Boy in Monster World', which released on October 25, 1991 for the Sega Genesis, is the fifth game in the Wonder Boy series already and only two more games release for this series from here on out in 1994 and, interestingly enough, 2018. The games preceding and succeeding this game I'm about to review also received remakes in the past decade, so the series has seen somewhat of a revival recently.
For its time, Wonder Boy in Monster World received positive reviews and currently carries a 7.5 Moby Score. Multiple magazines are quoted saying something to the tune of "Who needs Sonic, when you can have Wonder Boy", which I found funny to read in retrospect, but it should tell you that this isn't just some random character, but rather a relatively popular one. Some magazines weren't all too kind, like Sega Power's review saying that this is "one aimed at younger players, but I think that even they will find this very boring or repetitive." Who was right according to my taste? Well I'll start with this: I didn't beat the game.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 3/10
In this adventure of Wonder Boy, you play Wonder Boy, who needs to save Monster World, which is under attack by ... monsters? Where else did you think the monsters wanted to be at? The Wonder Boy by the way has a name, he is called Shion.
Shion gets the help of many residents of Monster World. He can use one girl's 'Ocarina', an instrument that unlocks door if the right melody is played. He can use Poseidon's trident to explore the underwater areas. He gets the assistant of a dwarven kid that unlocks the path to a cave filled with monsters.
There isn't a lot of dialogue here besides the generic few talks you will have with people who want you to help them, so that they agree to help you afterwards. You are thanked a lot for being a hero and on you go until you win the game. After you defeat the final boss, the end credits actually play immediately after, which is kind of anti-climactic, though there are post-credit scenes where the resolution of the story is quickly explained. Again, it's generic "the hero saved everyone, so that they can live on happily ever after, or until the sequel at least." talk.
As is usual for games that call themselves side-scrolling Action RPGs at this time, you discover towns and have a few people there that you can talk to (I wouldn't call this an RPG though). Though when I say a few, I do mean just a few, as there aren't many characters walking around.
This game is also another one of those that has you run around colorful worlds for most of it, only to have the final act be in some sort of futuristic looking area against a futuristic looking final boss. Why were so many end-game areas designed like this? The games often have no hint of sci-fi, but all of a sudden some rogue AI / robot from a distant planet wants to use his futuristic weaponry to destroy you, and you poor dude with just your sword are supposed to put an end to it. Well, you do in the end, but you know, it's getting hilarious at this point how this seems to be the resolution so often.
GAMEPLAY | 9/20
This is called a side-scrolling platformer / action adventure / RPG. The first genre is correct. The second as well. As far as RPG's go, this I wouldn't call one of them. There is no character progression in terms of stats or any decisions you can make, there is in general no choice you can make and the only stats that are there are for attack, defense and speed. Armor, weapons, shields and boots are what effect those stats. You get those by opening chests and going to stores, though you'll have to do a lot of grinding for gold to get many of those store items.
So yeah, it's not an RPG, you simply control Shion in this side-scrolling platformer. From the 3 hours I've played, there wasn't much exploration but rather convoluted level design that made you look around for where to go next. There isn't really any area or anything that opens up for optional exploration. There are some harder to reach chests in this game, some of which are tricky to find. I got to one by accident by pressing up randomly (you press up to enter rooms), and a room appearing in the middle of nowhere and leading me straight to a chest. That can hardly be called exploration though.
So you are equipped with a melee weapon and have to fight enemies, some of which can jump up, some of which can swoop down, some of which can throw stuff at you, rush you, guard with their own shields and all sorts. The problem is that the swinging animation of yours takes a few frames too long, so what happens way too often is that you try to time the swing right, but you are a split second too early and before you get a second swing off, you already get hit by an enemy rushing you. The tough part is that once you die, you are sent back to your last save, which will be at the previous inn. This can send you back many, many minutes, and there is often plenty of time between your last save and the boss fight for example.
Boss fights represent ridiculous difficulty spikes here. Until the first boss for example, apart from those swing animation issues, you won't have any problems. And then you reach the boss and it just jumps on top of you constantly whilst throwing up tiny minions that hurt you when they run into you. So you got 4-5 minions coming after you from both sides, the boss coming from the top and until you take a looong time to figure out how to beat this thing, you'll, well, lose a loooot of time, and it doesn't really fell satisfying either. This the case for a lot of boss fights where it feels like the enemy attack patterns are way too wild and random. The main thing this game does with boss fights is just throw a bunch of stuff at you at once, which makes it hard to dodge, but even harder to find an opening to strike. Not fun.
The worst issue comes a few hours in however, when you are supposed to use Poseidon's trident to go underwater and find Poseidon. Multiple times I found myself thinking "where the hell do you want me to go and why are you making it this so convoluted?" I looked up the solution for a while and you know it's not a good sign when you see the actual path and think to yourself that this is way too unnecessary.
In the end, the save system and repetitively annoying gameplay made me abandon this one a few hours before completion. It's not even like this is a game where it being so hard is the point. It's not necessarily even that hard in terms of combat, bosses excluded, but finding your path and having to go all the way back to inns due to the lack of save points just makes the game annoying to play.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 7/10
No voice acting. The soundtrack ranges from meh to really good. The intro track sets a good tone for a game this is both child-friendly and one that will kick your butt repeatedly, and while few tracks combine these themes, you'll have tracks do a pretty good job of using either one to give off a relaxing vibe or one that captures the tension well. However there are some true stinkers here as well, like Village Theme 1, not to be mistaken with Village Theme 2.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 7/10
This game has good looking graphics thanks to its use of a wide color palette and attention to detail in the scrolling backgrounds. One interesting thing the game does in its villages is a visual transition effect when you enter a house, which makes the inside of the house become visible.
The sprite work, enemy design and animation here is not great, but the devs created a cozy and inviting world here, at least graphically, though it kinda starts falling apart a bitonce you hit some rough patches when it comes to hard enemies/bosses or not knowing where to go.
ATMOSPHERE | 5/10
Welcome to monster world, a world called after monsters that is in turmoil as it gets invaded by monsters. The game uses all the tropes you'd expect from a platformer of the early 90s, so unless this was one of the few games you played over and over at the time, you will notice that it doesn't offer anything new and doesn't really pull you in like plenty of other games manage to do. The world that is created here in its basic form, thanks to its soundtrack and graphical presentation, is inviting overall though, however you'll be stuck at very hard bosses and puzzles multiple times, so more likely than not it's only inviting until a certain point, where you likely will find yourself stuck, especially if you were a kid in the 90s playing this.
CONTENT | 6/10
Enough content here for an Action Adventure like this. You got many boss fights, many different enemy types, different types of equipment, plenty of puzzles and hidden stuff too boot. Not all of this is good content, but you'll be busy for a good 10 hours if you decide to play it to the end.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 4/10
Most of the time, where you need to go is straightforward. Then there are times where you will keep running around in circles, unless you figure out that you need to go to X first or press Y, which unlocks a new path. That sort of environmental puzzle is pretty enjoyable. But most of the time when things aren't straightforward, you're meant to go to some place that is only described very imprecisely, and it's a lot of time away and makes it very easy to get lost with no positive impact on fun factor or satisfaction from figuring out the way. Add to that that if you die on your way there, you're sent back all the way to the last inn you saved at, and you can see where you'd get easily frustrated.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 2/10
Nothing new on offer here, it's a mix of features and a focus on themes and a theme for its world that you have seen in a lot of different games before. There isn't even a specific thing this game tries to focus on more than on other areas, the game is meh to alright in every area, which makes for a meh game overall. It's got average world building, basic gameplay, convoluted level design, a middle-of-the-pack soundtrack, frustrating boss fights, slow pace and a boring set of one-dimensional characters. I'm sure the series has done better than this, but this game isn't doing anything above-average unfortunately.
REPLAYABILITY | 2/5
You can look for some more of those hidden equipment or health items in a second playthrough, but there is no other motivation given to play through it twice.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
The game worked well at all times.
OVERALL | 50/100
You know, I'll take a game that is below-average in most aspects of a video game, if it does a specific thing really well. But Wonder Boy in Monster World doesn't really rate better than "average" in anything, as it's a game that takes many features of better games, puts them together and ends up being a worse product. So it's a skip for me, there are plenty of better retro platformers / action adventures to play from this time period, though it's definitely not a 'terrible game'.
Reviewed on May 12, 2023