Monster Crown (Switch Review)

Monster Crown is a rpg that is honestly difficult to understand the mechanics at first. The game also isn’t very stable as it crashed multiple times. Not much is explained well to the player and many systems take time to learn. While the Gameboy Color graphics are nice a Switch should be able to run this game.

The rpg elements are similar to other creature capture and taming, but done somehow weirder than most. Several monsters don’t learn new or stronger moves as they level and the breeding mechanic to get better stats or monsters means a lot of grinding. While you level up quickly slow progress makes you feel consistently under leveled and any grinding is useless the amount of crashes loses that progress and you need to start over again. While most bosses can be captured it requires you to over level and get monsters to half health this makes it an almost guarnteed capture. There is also the Synergy mechanic defending or switching monsters can increase power of moves or change their type. Finally level can be stalled unless you defeat certain NPC’s good luck finding them and sometimes they won’t fight you unless you do something first sometimes it is straightforward other times it can be find another NPC in another town despite them saying in the nearby area.

Plot is very predictable thus not interesting darker than Pokemon. It revolves around fighting a person trying to destroy the world through the use of powerful monsters. So you go on a quest to find them first.

While I did enjoy the darker story and difficulty not only was the type chart harder to follow and amount of content was good with a lot of post game content. The amount you miss too due to lack of direction and having to stay on a certain path or risk another crash is sad because it is honestly a game with a lot of potential and in my opinion has the time to be great as the developers are actively patching out several problems and is more stable.

I believe I played this game at the wrong time playing at launch over prior to announced patches that could fix many of the issues discussed. I probably would have judged it more fairly if I did play it later. I plan to review it after they finish patching and trying to fix this game. I know this is also on Steam and don’t know if that version is better or more stable, but if you want an alternative to Pokemon then I would recommend it just wait till it is fully patched.

Score 3/10