Monster Tale is odd in that it’s technically a metroidvania but eschews explorations almost completely by having a “helpful” marker on the automap that always show you where you have to go next. Not that you have much of a chance to get lost here, the whole game consists of various smaller levels all connected to each other but due to the lack of one massive map getting around and memorizing the layout is stupidly easy. To me, this feels like they tried to create an easy metroidvania for beginners and went slightly overboard to the point that it negated the qualities that make them so fun to play in the first place.
And still, I played straight through the game, roughly 9 hours spent. It has a clever combination of melee and ranged main attacks that make combat oddly compelling. Ranged is good for getting ranged enemies itself, but uses up energy until you left with the basic ranged weapon with very low reach. Ranged attacks on the other hand don’t stop some charging enemies, where melee is better. Hitting with kicks and fists is satisfying and pins down enemies and is likely what you will use throughout most of the game. Enemies get slowly more difficult and require you to always adapt and learn their behavior. And while you don’t get EXP from killed enemies, you can get money to buy stuff, and even at the end I hadn’t maxed out all those abilities, so getting money never loses a point.
There’s another mechanic that keeps you engaged. You have a pet monster companion that you can evolve into different forms and they actually do get EXP for killing enemies, and each form can reach up to level 30 while also unlocking other forms. You need your pet companion for some really minor puzzle-ish situations where your pet has to move levers on the second screen, and only your pet companion can be switched between the active main screen and the secondary one. Overall the pet monster evolution stuff probably will even make you wanna grind a couple of times to unlock certain forms, which really is why I spent so much time with the game.
The story is about a little girl who goes to another world, finds out some other kids have taken it over and enslaved its monster population and now she wants to help the monsters. It reminds me of so many 90ies video games but the story presented here is charming in a way that I didn’t mind too much. Don’t expect great writing, but it never bothered me and overall this is a game aimed at kids or teenagers, so it goes with the territory.
If you play this for its metroidvania qualities you likely be disappointed, you get a lot of upgrades but then are usually shown almost exactly where to use them and many upgrades have only one or two uses throughout the game. This makes the whole upgrades gameplay loop quite ridiculous (some upgrades feel like one upgrade sliced into sub upgrades and then parcelled out to you one at a time). But if you just want a relaxing action platformer with cutesy graphics it’s a lot of fun. And some of the boss fights are neatly designed, though by the time I reached the end I was so overpowered I killed the final boss so fast it’s was kind of disappointing. Worth it, though with all the caveats mentioned.
The Entropy Pump 