Monstania - Impressions

I started playing Monstania as my next Super Famicom game, and after getting about halfway through it, I think I’m starting to get a pretty good idea of how I feel about it. My first impressions were actually fairly positive. Monstania came out in 1996, pretty late in the Super Famicom’s life, and you can definitely see that in the presentation. The graphics are bright and colorful, the sprites are detailed and expressive, and everything has a really polished look to it. Visually, it’s probably one of the nicer-looking Super Famicom games I’ve played so far.

The music is even better. The soundtrack was composed by Noriyuki Iwadare, who is probably best known for his work on the Lunar and Grandia games, and it really shows. The music has easily been one of my favorite parts of the game so far. There are several tracks that immediately stood out to me, and the soundtrack gives the game a lot of personality that I’m not sure it would have otherwise.

The characters are likable enough too. They all have fairly distinct personalities, although at the same time I wouldn’t say any of them have really grabbed me yet. The story is also fine. There’s nothing particularly wrong with it, but nothing about it has made me desperate to see what happens next either. I think that sums up a lot of my feelings about Monstania in general.

It’s all right.

The problem is that the further I get into it, the more I feel like there just isn’t that much here beneath the presentation.

Monstania is extremely stripped down for something that initially looks like an RPG. There really isn’t any grinding. You don’t gain experience from enemies in the traditional sense, and your characters level up according to the game’s progression. There aren’t really shops to visit or much equipment management either. Most of the weapons, items, upgrades, and other things you need are simply given to you as you progress. Because of that, character progression feels very scripted. You’re generally going to be at exactly the level the game expects you to be, with roughly the same tools every time you reach a particular battle.

And that brings me to my biggest problem with Monstania is the battles.

At first, I thought the combat was going to be some kind of simplified strategy RPG system. You move around on a grid, and enemies take their actions after you take yours. But the more I’ve played, the less I think of Monstania as a strategy RPG. Honestly, I think it’s closer to a puzzle game disguised as an RPG. Enemies react to every movement you make, you constantly have to think about where an enemy is going to move after you move. If you stand on the wrong square or approach an enemy incorrectly, you can completely screw yourself over.

Also you can’t just go grind five levels and come back stronger, beating a difficult battle is usually about figuring out what the game wants you to do.That’s where I’ve struggled with it. In something like Tactics Ogre or Final Fantasy Tactics, I feel like I have different options. I can build characters differently, use different party compositions, grind if I need to, or approach a battle in several different ways.

Monstania isn’t like that. A lot of the time it feels like there is a solution to the battle, and you’re trying to figure out what that solution is. There was one boss fight against a giant plant where I died around five times. I had actually figured out most of what I was supposed to do. I had to keep my support character protected while my main character went after the boss. What I didn’t know was that one of my abilities could be used to jump over obstacles without opening a path through them. That one missing piece of information completely changed the fight.

Then there was an escort-type battle where I had to protect a character while climbing a mountain. She could get wiped out incredibly easily, and I kept failing the battle until I figured out how the game expected me to use her. That kind of thing can be satisfying when you finally solve it, but I’ve also found it pretty frustrating. Another problem is that the game doesn’t always communicate its mechanics very well. You can look at your abilities on the status screen and get a basic idea of what they do, but it often doesn’t tell you enough about their actual range or area of effect.

Does this move hit enemies directly in front of me? Does it hit everything around me? How many spaces does it travel? Can I select a target?Sometimes the only way to really know is to use the ability and see what happens. That’s especially annoying in a game where positioning is so important. You can end up spending valuable ability points on an attack only to discover that it doesn’t reach the enemy you thought it would.

Even the basic movement took some getting used to. The default controls are almost like old-school tank controls on a grid. You turn your character with left and right and move forward or backward depending on the direction you’re facing. I eventually got used to it, but I still wouldn’t say I like it. The funny thing is that some of the actual puzzles outside of battle have been more satisfying.

At one point, you have to clean the floor of a restaurant by moving over every tile without messing up the path. There are three of these puzzles in a row. The second one alone probably took me around half an hour, and while I was doing it I thought it was kind of ridiculous. But I somehow managed to solve all three of them without looking at a guide, and I was actually pretty happy about that afterward.

So I don’t necessarily dislike Monstania because it has puzzles. I think my problem is more with how much of the combat itself feels like solving a puzzle rather than fighting a battle.

Another strange thing is that Monstania is apparently a very short game, yet I still don’t really feel like playing it for long stretches. I’m already approaching four hours according to my save, although some of that is definitely because I leave the game running while I do other things or get distracted. Still, considering how short the game is supposed to be, you would think it would be something I could easily sit down and blow through.

Instead, I usually play for a while, get through a couple of battles or puzzles, and then feel like I’ve had enough. That’s probably the biggest warning sign for me. I’m not excited to keep playing.

When I first started Monstania, I thought it was probably going to be a B Tier game for me. Now that I’m around halfway through, I’m leaning much more toward C Tier. The presentation is doing a lot of work to keep it there. The graphics are excellent, the sprites look great, the colors are wonderful, and Iwadare’s soundtrack is easily one of the highlights. Without those things, I honestly think I might be looking at a D-tier game.

That’s kind of frustrating because Monstania feels like a game that had the potential to be much more than it is. The presentation makes it feel like there should be a larger RPG underneath it, with towns, shops, equipment, character growth, exploration, and more freedom in how you approach battles. Instead, everything feels very controlled and minimal. There are branching paths in places, which does give the game some theoretical replay value, but I’m not sure how much I would actually want to replay it when the basic combat system is the part I like the least.

So that’s where I am with Monstania right now. It’s not a terrible game. In fact, there are quite a few things I genuinely like about it. But the battle system is becoming the one major thing that is dragging down everything else. Maybe the second half will change my mind, but at this point I’m starting to think Monstania is going to end up being one of those games where I can appreciate what it was trying to do without particularly enjoying the experience of actually playing it.