Monster Sanctuary Switch Review – Metroidvania Meets Pokemon

There’s something addictive about monster taming games. I don’t think there’s any room for argument there. Throughout the years we’ve seen dozens of games come out in the genre, some of them memorable while others have been long-forgotten to time. With Monster Sanctuary getting a long awaited release on the Nintendo Switch, what better time to find out if it stacks up with the greats in the genre, or is this one that will end up sitting on your wishlist for years and years? 

Well, I can tell you straight up that the developers of Monster Sanctuary definitely understand the things that fans of the genre want, without being a clone of Pokemon. They’ve mixed in a 2D, Metroidvania-style overworld with a very familiar JRPG turn-based style battle system. It’s a nice, unique take on both concepts that is only enhanced by the abilities your monsters can use outside of battle.

The story of Monster Sanctuary sees you traveling around a large map called, funnily enough, Monster Sanctuary. Your goal is to defeat Champion Monsters, who are some extremely strong monsters who are popping up all over the place, much to the dismay of all the people you’ll run into. To achieve this, you need to expand your team of monsters as much as you can, which you do by battling monsters and stealing their eggs. That seems a pretty evil thing to do, but if the wild monster population gets too out of control, who knows how quickly the world will be overrun?!

The grind for levels is relatively slow, which is pretty fit for the genre. However, whenever you hatch a new monster, it does hatch at a level that is close to your party. This means that you don’t need to do a lot of backtracking to make sure your new monsters are battle ready. Even so, if you are someone without a lot of time, the long, drawn out grind might be a bit too much for you.

The battle system is a simple JRPG one that you might have seen if you’ve ever played a game made in RPG Maker. Your team sits on one side of the screen and your opponent sits on the other. You put in your commands for your monsters and then you wait and see what moves your opponent throws out. Overall, it’s easy to figure out, even the systems they’ve added to spice up the combat. For example, there’s a combo system where the more hits you put on an enemy the more powerful your next monster’s attack will be. This leads to a strategy where it’s better to use weaker monsters first to allow you to power up your stronger monsters’ attacks.

With that said, the difficulty curve does seem relatively steep. Between the first and second areas, it felt like the enemies were suddenly holding their own against me. Some of them even felt almost as difficult as the boss of the first area, who took quite a lot of hits to defeat. It’s not too jarring or anything, but it does mean you’ll be spending a lot of time in each area, even after you have cleared each one.

Graphically the game has a nice retro feel. Monster Sanctuary looks very much like something that could have been released on the SNES, which gives it a lot of charm. It’s not comparable to the third-party games that generally look forgettable, but it’s quality feels influenced by some of the more beautifully made games of the era. Think Super Metroid or Donkey Kong Country kind of quality. The artists for this game really put in a lot of work.

It’s also worth noting that the monsters are a mix between the adorable and the more menacing, and they all designed well enough to where there won’t be any you will want to leave each area without obtaining for yourself. Personally, my favorite was my first hatched monster, a Blob I named Blob Dobbs. This cute little green slime took over my starter monster immediately as my lead fighter, and it wasn’t long before I had an entire team of monsters that I wanted to use ahead of my starter, really cementing the fact that the monsters in this game were created to be appealing and fun to use.

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The monsters each have a skill tree that you can work through every time you level up. This is a nice change from the style seen most often in the monster tamer genre. Instead of having to wait for multiple levels to get a new technique or upgrade, you get to choose from a list of upgrades meaning you can power up your monsters in a way that suits you. The upgrades do things such as increase an attack’s level, your overall stats or some passive abilities that can help your entire party during battle.

Adding to the atmosphere of the game is the soundtrack. Between the perfectly selected music to match the theme of each area or battle, to the sound effects of the moves performed by the monsters, you really will feel immersed in the game and it’s environments. It carries on a very welcome trend of good indie games being backed by some absolutely outstanding soundtracks, and I’d put this one toward the top of the list if I had to rank it!

All in all, Monster Santuary is a monster tamer game that is worth playing, and it’s one you will remember. It certainly does things differently from any other game in the genre, with it’s Metroidvania style overworld and monsters that are all unique and intriguing when tied in with the simple yet interesting battle system. Despite the amount of necessary grinding you’ll need to do to get far in this one, every other aspect is good enough that you’ll get a lot of mileage out of each area. So why not give it a go? What do you have to lose except hours and hours of your life making slimes fight each other?

Monster Sanctuary review provided by NintendoLink
Publisher: Team17
Developer: Moi Rai Games
Release Date: December 8th, 2020
Price: $19.99, £15.99, €19.99