Monark
Review
Heavy is the Head that Wears the Crown
by Camrin Santchi
reviewed on PC
Royal Flush
Fascinating ideas and concepts can be held back by the execution being lacking. Even if it’s not painfully bad, if a game fails to do justice to its concepts it can make the game tragically forgettable. Or, in the case of NIS America’s Monark, destined to be a cult classic and only that.
Monark opens with an unbeatable fight followed by a questionnaire that puts the player through a psychological test. Psychology is a very important part of Monark, and it is often voiced in the credence of 'Desires', which is a less loaded way to reference the Seven Deadly Sins: Lust, Sloth, Envy, Pride, Wrath, Greed, and Gluttony. The game insists from the very beginning that it is not Desire that is inherently evil, and that without Desire one may as well just be a doll and not a person at all. Other concepts such as Faith, Hope, Love, and Woe are also touched on later in the story, but for the majority of it players are met only with talk of the Seven Deadly.
The main goal of Monark is to save the protagonist's school, Shin Mikado Academy, from mysterious circumstances. A strange barrier sealed the campus, trapping students and staff alike, and a peculiar fog began flooding the halls, driving those within to Madness. This is caused by those who made deals with Monarks, powerful demons (Or daemons, as the game insists) that preside over the Seven Desires, each bequeathing their human Pactbearer with a power called an Authority that allows them to seek out their selfish wishes at the cost of the sanity or even lives of those around them.
Great ideas lacking in execution
The tutorial, dealing with Kurama the Pactbearer of Pride, sets the stage for what is to come in the rest of Monark - a game of great ideas, story, and dark themes held back by its execution. The battles in gameplay are essentially like one of the Trails Of games, a turn based RPG that is executed on an open battlefield that players move around. The battles in the game are difficult and encourage careful planning, and players should be wary of the fact that, unlike most games, your party does not gain EXP.
In a surprising similarity to the Dark Souls series, players instead acquire what is called SPIRIT from battle, which is a currency, skill unlock, and experience system all in one. Players can exchange SPIRIT with Vanitas, the bunny shaped and alliteration loving daemon they formed a pact with, in order to acquire healing items, or they can spend them on upgrading their characters- each Skill unlocked in a character’s skill tree counts as a level up, giving an associated boost in stats. Because of just how valuable SPIRIT is, and how hard it is to come by, Monark encourages heavy grinding in order to compensate, particularly since in Act I each section of the game has a different associated party member, who starts at Level 1 when they join your cause.
Grinding is done through making calls to the OtherWorld, essentially reaching into the abyss where daemons live and finding an area you can beat the enemies in without too much difficulty. Specific numbers can be found hidden throughout Shin Mikado (The ones titled ‘Fertile Grounds’ are fittingly named grinding spots), but one can dial randomly to see if something answers. Just be wary, calling the abyss randomly could lead to situations one isn’t quite ready for. This reviewer found a good way to grind Spirit is to stick around the main base of operations for players, the True Student Council. This allows you access to any previous party members even after they’ve left the party, since they bum around the classroom while waiting for you to wrap up your current objective.
Tragically that isn’t the only issue with Monark, just the combat. When the player isn’t engaged in battles in the OtherWorld, they are tasked with exploring Shin Mikado, destroying the crystallized Ideals of the Pactbearers in order to weaken their powers and stop the encroaching Mist. In order to do that though, players must enter the madness inducing miasma. This causes an appropriate ‘Mad’ gauge to climb for both the player and their human companion where appropriate - a concept that ties exploration to combat. If in the overworld the Madness gauge reaches 100%, the player is knocked unconscious and wakes back up in the infirmary, no worse for wear. But if the gauge maxes out in combat, the character channels a powerful scream and goes into a berserker rage, attacking anything in sight for enhanced damage for three turns before collapsing in exhaustion. Since this game enacts the age old tradition of a Game Over proccing if the protagonist falls in battle, it’s wise to keep careful track of the Madness gauge for the white haired student you’ve been controlling the whole game.
Searching the fog
Exploring the fog and risking madness is necessary however, since each section of the game is full of collectables such as the aforementioned phone numbers that help find grinding spots, or more importantly the answers to puzzles. Each Pactbearer's location is blocked off into three areas, with most having a puzzle accompanying it, which often needs a pen and notepad nearby in order to solve it. For example, several puzzles involve logging into another student’s account in a computer lab- but to access it one must first type in the student’s ID number, which is a long sequence of numbers, and then find the password through hints scattered through the fog. This is probably the most frustrating of the puzzles- since some others just involve finding a random note in the fog and picking the right response to a student or teacher blocking the way forward.
That’s not to say Monark is bad however. As the first paragraph mentioned, I feel this game is full of intriguing concepts and fascinating ideas, but it is held back by its execution. Monark is full of dark themes, contemplations of Ego and Desire and what they mean, what makes someone truly human, and if or when they should set aside their Desires. Accompanied by a soundtrack filled with catchy J-Pop/Rap music from the V-Tuber group Kamitsubaki, and a team of developers fresh off the Shin Megami Tensei and Persona series, Monark is a game that I had high hopes for. From a story perspective it succeeds and then some, but from a gameplay perspective I find it lacking in both combat and exploration.
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7.2
fun score
Pros
Engaging story, soundtrack, characters, and themes
Cons
Grindy in Battle, puzzles that need careful notes
