MONARK

With FuRyu games you know you're getting something unorthodox in exchange for it not being the highest quality. Unfortunately this is probably FuRyu's worst game. Everything about it is a tedious and boring slog. It also suffers from a localisation that's bad even by NISA's incredibly low standards. Seriously, just don't.

A jrpg with tactical combat and an interesting story with amazing characters and an incredible soundtrack that suffers from a lot of repetition and a really slow start. Starting with its good points, Monark's story takes place in Shin Mikado Academy, a school that has been cut off from the rest of the world by a magical barrier. Some parts of the school are affected by a mist that causes people to go mad. The mist is created when pactbearers, people who have teamed up with demons that live in the otherworld connected to the school, make use of their powers Your job as the hero, who is in my opinion a case of the amnesiac protagonist done exceptionally well, is to defeat the pactbearers and clear the mist from the school. I loved the story, the setting is intriguing, it's got a fair amount of plot twists and you get to guess some of them by reading records found around the map which made that feel rewarding. The main cast of characters is full of personality, each one of them deals with their own set of traumas and insecurities and some of them you'll get to know them from the perspective of both allies and enemies. They feel like real people fighting their own demons. Monark likes to deal with strong negative emotions such as regret, fear, anxiety and so on, and it does so beautifully. The only caveats are that the story starts off painfully slow and that, at a certain point in the game, you'll need to replay a certain portion of the story with a different character each time. The game uses this time to go more in-depth into each character's life and motivations, which it couldn’t do earlier. The payoff when you finish this section is amazing. That said, you will be visiting the same maps, and the battles themselves don’t change much, if at all. This makes this portion of the game feel fairly repetitive. Another thing I loved is the music, the voiced tracks are absolute bangers while also accompanying the characters they represent extremely well. If you are reading this and decide not to play the game, please still give the [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aV_KLskG0KI&list=PL0Jx2yeK4QpbABtcJoPIujITkt725iJ0r&index=5] main theme [/url] a listen. Regarding the combat it's, I'd say, strange. It's a tactical RPG that lacks features like being able to see your enemies movement range or abilities. The characters stats are in the three digits realm, and can go up to four digits with buffs. The game doesn't show exactly how much damage you'll do so I just went by feel. Early battles can be a bit hard but later on it's quite easy to break the game by abusing its mechanics. It also tends to get a bit repetitive as there isn't much enemy variety and you will spend a good chunk of battles just traversing the field until you get access to skills that increase your movement. There is also an "awake" and "mad" system. Human characters can increase their "awake" gauge by doing certain actions, when it reaches 100% they enter a buff state for three turns. While all characters increase their "mad" gauge by casting most abilities, when it reaches 100% they gain increased stats but you lose control of them and they die in three turns. If you manage to get a character to both 100% awake and 100% mad they become enlightened which gives them an insane buff for the duration of the state. Managing these gauges at later stages of the game becomes essential and the game rewards you greatly for making use of this system. One thing I really enjoyed about the gameplay is that your character plays a more supportive role from the back rather than being a powerhouse, which can be if you want to, but I've found it most enjoyable as an enabler of other characters strengths rather than a damage dealer himself. Overall, while I had my frustrations, Monark left me greatly satisfied and I'm looking forward to Varlet later this month.

Having 100% the game overall was a fun experience. Was grindy but once you figure out the strats it wasn't that bad. good story but even better music. Not too hard either, some fights were hard but overall not too hard

I liked the characters, the music and story, but the combat just wasn't for me. I looked up the answers for some of the puzzles, but if I put in the effort, I could've probaly figured it out, maybe.

Usually a fan of most JRPGS, this one was not for me. Mediocre story, boring characters, combat was stale but the theme was great and the mystery aspect I was hoping to keep me with the game.

这部游戏大概是我玩过的，将无过去无人格的空白主角塑造的最好的剧情了。主角的无记忆成为了叙事工具和伏笔，并且紧紧的融入的剧情的主题和表达里面。玩到最后你能很深刻的记住主角身边的每一个人，他们个个都有鲜明可爱的个性，包括这个由玩家来起名字的“自己”。不仅是人物塑造，游戏的主题和整体剧情都可圈可点，虽然开局略显老套，但前期小章节的对话内容都没有让我失望，主角团对反派的刨析嘴炮总会让人眼前一亮。 但是战斗真是拉了大分了，玩起来特别的累，特别的无聊。解密更是电波系，我反正觉得挺折磨的，大大方方看攻略了。

This one gets a tepid recommendation. Combat has some interesting bits (like how the resonance ability lets you turn +1 bonus for each team member into +5 just by sharing each bonus between all resonating members), but can feel slow and grindy (higher level enemies can't really be outmaneuvered if you're too low level - and on the other hand, if you are max level, nothing in the game is an actual challenge, including the true final boss). I'd recommend Scarlet Nexus for more dynamic combat where you share teammates' powers, or Caligula Effect for tactical combat where you can actually avoid attacks by careful timing/positioning. Story is just ok - they went for something fairly convoluted, which is ambitious/admirable... except then pretty much all twists/reveals were heavily telegraphed way ahead of time, and I just felt stuck waiting for them to happen already. "Choices" you're given are NEVER meaningful (with a single exception at the very end of the post-game content) - for example, for a question like "is it ok if I join?" the answer options are "of course" and "we're glad to have you". Characters are ok too - I did find a bunch of teammate interactions funny, and cared enough to do some grindy post-game stuff for one of them. There's also the option to talk to NPCs for different responses in different phases of the game, which is nice to have (in my opinion, though, only a few of these were funny or interesting - most were just super generic and forgettable). Some more minor gripes: * the "skip" option only works for the character lines, and NOT for situations where the game just pans extra slowly across the room before/between/after character lines * for the English translation they made the choice to just never include honorifics (-san, -chan, etc) or common terms like senpai - obviously it's not a dealbreaker or anything, but in my experience most games just leave those in, and they don't suffer for it. Seeing high schooler characters call the club president "Madam President" seemed a bit stilted/unnatural, too