Goonya Monster Switch Review – Avoid This Like the Plague

Goonya Monster is a sequel of sorts to the Goonya Fighter series, which is a poorly controlled, convoluted, and strange experience that originally released on the Nintendo Switch back in 2019. Goonya Monster mixes things up by pinning you against monsters while working cooperatively with friends or AI in an effort to collect souls and win. Yeah. It’s more confusing than it sounds, actually.

So is Goonya Monster a multiplayer experience you need on your Switch? Or does this title, along with its siblings, belong in the bin? Let’s find out!

Goonya Monster opens with some characters facing a monstrous threat, but guess what? They have no weapons! Oh, no! Thankfully (Ugh, I use that term loosely) a half-monster that is not quite monster enough shows up and offers Busters, laser guns that are capable or stopping the monster threat.

Honestly, it was hard to stay focused and follow what was happening on screen, because the voice acting is all over the place, and the constant use of certain quips and catch phrases is beyond grating. Not only that, but this is also a mobile-like experience with currencies to buy stuff and Episodes will be released periodically to continue the storytelling experience for anyone interested.

Goonya Monster lacks proper connection to the characters right from the start, and it is insanely difficult to care about anything happening on screen. The characters are annoying, the premise is nonsensical, and this is just one of those games where I was cheering for the monsters pretty much from the beginning. This is a hard game to get into, but it only gets worse.

The way Goonya Monster plays is two different ways. You can play as the buster users, which are the humans trying to take out the monsters and purify their souls, or you can play as the big monster and terrorize the humans. It is a 3v1 affair, and the goal for the humans is to purify a certain number of souls while the big monster has to prevent that from happening within the time limit. It is a perfectly fine idea for a game, but this one is littered with issues.

First of all, the controls are horrendous. I played Goonya Fighters years ago, and I had the exact same problem then, which makes me believe that the Goonya games purposefully have awful controls to stabilize gameplay, I guess. In Goonya Monster, characters fall frequently even when just walking straight. Not only that, but the Busters and the big monster attack are inconsistent and do not work a lot of the time. It does make for a more frantic play style, but it is infuriating to not feel like I am in full control of my character.

The environments are fine and the characters designs are pretty cute, but it is hard to appreciate these things when the game plays and controls grossly. The mechanics of the Goonya series feels broken, even if it is meant this way, and because of that, the desire to continue playing dies rather quickly. It is no wonder that the online community is dead upon arrival.

There are a lot of customization options and unlocks, but you need to play a lot in order to receive enough currency to buy anything of actual value. Not only that, but Goonya Monster is plagued with microtransactions that feel like an insult considering the game has a $19.99 USD pricetag. I would be much more understanding if this was a free-to-play game, but when you are paying top dollar and are still pressured to pay even more for cosmetics, that is unforgivable.

Another design flaw, and I think it gives major disadvantage to the big monster, and that is activating special abilities. When the big monster activates their charge move, if they trip, it goes away, causing them to potentially lose it immediately. The humans can also drop a soul they are carrying if they trip, but they can simply pick it right back up. However, the big monster can eat the soul if the humans aren’t careful. I understand this mechanic is put into place for balancing, but once again, it does more damage than good.

As I pointed early, the game looks good and the characters are cute, but I need to talk about the audio. I mentioned at the front that the voice acting is a mess, and Nyamo is quite possibly the worst character I have ever encountered in a video game, but the soundtrack just does not feel right. It is like going to a rock/pop concert while shooting monsters, and since the music changes often, it honestly does not gel with what is happening on screen during Goonya Monster.

Goonya Monster like its own Goonya siblings is a mess. There are some great ideas mixed into this one, but the terrible controls, unbalanced mechanics, and insanely annoying voice work and soundtrack leaves little to be desired. The worst offender, by a long shot, is the random tripping mechanic that causes all sides to suffer no matter the circumstance.

Again, if Goonya Monster was free-to-play, I would be much more forgiving of some of its flaws, but since it is asking a lot for the entry fee and even more for cosmetics, I cannot accept the pricing structure here. This is a game with too many flaws to overlook, and since it is asking a lot of its players, I cannot in good conscience recommend this game until some of these issues are addressed or the price is dropped to $5 or becomes free-to-play.

Goonya Monster Switch Review provided by Nintendo Link
Publisher: MUTAN
Release Date: December 4th, 2022
Price: $19.99, £15.09, €16,79
Game Size: 1.3 GB