While a school full of teenagers is hardly the most unique premise for a JRPG, the trope sells, so here we are getting more. I’ve seen many people saying that this looks like Shin Megami Tensei games or the Trails series based on trailers, but the game doesn’t really play out like those at all. If anything, it’s closer to Lost Dimension and The Caligula Effect, but comparing the game to things you’ve never touched isn’t helpful, so let’s dive in to what the game offers.

The story starts out with you making a pact with a daemon named Vinitas, the Monark of vanity. In doing so, you’re provided an Imagigear that allows you to fight in the “other world,” where daemons exist. Anyone that makes a pact with one of these Monarks is known as a pact-bearer, and is provided a special ability. Each time these powers (or Authorities, as they’re called) are used in the normal world, a shroud of mist fills the area and drives those within it crazy. This may not be as big an issue if the school wasn’t enshrouded in a big force field. It’s up the protagonist and his friends to make the school normal again. That’s the gist of the narrative, although it may throw you for a loop later on.

The gameplay loop for the first few missions is identical. Get paired up with a student, complete three battles (assuming you’re okay with potential death calls), rinse and repeat. Each area has a different antagonist pact-bearer, and you’ll have to solve puzzles to make it to the phones to pick up the call to go to the other world. If you find that you’re not strong enough for any one battle, you can call numbers in your call history, contacts, or dial a new number to gain experience. In the case of this, experience is called Spirit, and it’s used for purchasing items, as well as building out your skill tree. Every skill learned levels up the associated character once. You can strengthen the skills you have, and in some cases it’s required to unlock other skills. Puzzles require you to pay attention to notes and what’s being said, as you’ll often need to input passwords or actually type out answers, which is way more satisfying than I expected.

The battles themselves are quite tactical, as your characters will have a circle in which they can move on the battlefield, and can position themselves as necessary with attacks. If attacking isn’t an option, the characters can also buff, wait (which heals them), or defer their action to someone else, giving them an additional action if they’ve gone already. This allows for some pretty deep combo systems, and a single wrong choice can make or break the battle. There are also two gauges that allow for you to awaken or be driven mad. Being awoken allows the character to nullify the madness gauge and provides a special ability (or abilities, depending on what you’ve unlocked). Going mad is essentially a berserk status where you’re not able to control the character, and they die after three turns. Combine the two and you become enlightened, which has the potential to turn the tide of a battle real quick.

As you progress through the game, not only will you acquire different teammates in the students, but you’ll also build up your collection of fiends. These are daemons that you’ll bring into battle that you can customize with the spoils of war, as well as various cosmetic items that you will be rewarded with for unlocking the in-game achievements (same as the trophies on PlayStation). How you build your team is mostly up to you, especially once you reach a certain point and are given agency of who to bring into battle. It’s also dependent on how much you really want to grind out Spirit.

While I didn’t often get stuck with the puzzles, there was a point after the initial characters where you’re traversing a garden, and it’s clear who you need to speak with to progress. Even the information she’s looking for seems to be simple enough to acquire, as it’s just behind her and then as simple as looking up the ID profile (the number was actually familiar from a previous puzzle). However, the game didn’t let me just tell her the answer. The only option when speaking was that I didn’t know, and I had to go around looking for the trigger to let me provide the answer to progress. Normally the puzzles allow you to answer them immediately, so it was frustrating to have the answer without being able to provide it. The narrative up until this point is also more of the player knowing what’s going on with the antagonists and just watching the characters figure it out themselves. Not horrible by any means, but it would’ve been nice to get some variety and be guessing throughout.

This isn’t a AAA anime game, nor is it something that’s going to push your PS5 to its limits. It’s probably not a game that’s going to surprise you much either. However, this is a game that will provide you something you can keep coming back to for relaxation. This is a comfort food JRPG. This is a game you can put on and just grind away to build your party, with the enemies growing alongside you to ensure there’s enough challenge. Not every game has to innovate on its every aspect; it just needs to ensure the elements included are enjoyable. Luckily for Monark, it’s plenty fun.

8 out of 10

Pros

• Deep Combat System
• Addicting Skill Trees
• Fun Puzzles

Cons

• Some Puzzle Triggers
• Predictable Story Arcs

Monark was developed by Lancarse and published by NIS America in association with FuRyu. The game is available for NS, PC, PS4, and PS5. The game was provided to us for review on PS5. If you’d like to see more of Monark, check out the game’s site.

 

Here at GBG we use a rating method that you are more than likely familiar with – a scale of 1 to 10. For clarification, we intend on using the entire scale: 1-4 is something you should probably avoid paying for; 5-7 is something that is worth playing, but probably not at full price; 8-10 is a great title that you can feel confident about buying. If you have any questions or comments about how we rate a game, please let us know.

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