2/5 ★ – Lancey's review of MONARK.

Pros - the OST is hype - the combat is an interesting take on the turn-based genre Cons - game feels like it is stuck in the Ps2 JRPG era technology wise - the characters are prone to going on long winded monologues about not much without being prompted - horrendous pacing issues mainly during the god-awful Act II - even the voice acting sound unenthusiastic about the stuff they are saying Monark, a game that feels like 2005 Ps2 JRPG released in 2021 for the Ps4/Ps5. Though I played the Ps5 version so I did not experience the performance issues on the Ps4, the game is still mired by a plethora of tech limitations. The whole game looks like a Ps3 JRPG that had its textures upscaled for a ''remaster'. There is a weird one and a half second delay after every spoken line, making it seem like the game is frantically loading in the next audiofile. Not as a natural lull in conversation, an artificial slowdown making you feel like the long winded cutscenes about nothing are even more long winded. Oftentimes, a banging OST starts playing mid conversation, but it is not an instrumental, so the lyrics drown out the dialogue. It is almost like the game itself is tired of the characters repeating their convictions for the seventieth time and just shuts them up. The OST is one of the few things one can praise about this game. Pleiades, Gunpowder and Dear being some of the standouts, the tracklist gets you hyped for the arguably fun combat. The combat itself is also an interesting choice. Instead of random encounters or enemies walking around on the map, you are given an option to enter special combat maps through your phone, which you then have to beat. For all of Monarks flaws, the combat is actually fun, offering some interesting choices through its varied mechanics. You are given a couple of main characters plus several minions to play with, all of them offering unique skills for you to throw at the enemy. Though the Lust minion is just objectively the best, offering the best damage skills in the game like damn. Over with the good now let's get back to the bad. The story. The beginning is interesting. But then it buries itself under heaps and heaps of exposition, delivered through the awkwardly paced dialogue. The way the story segments itself is a problem too, because not counting the final battle, you can only bring one cast member along at a time for all the battles, and fill out the rest of your party with the different minions. And speaking of the final battle, to even get there, you must slog through Act II, which might be one of the most boring and poorly paced endeavors I took on during the last couple of years. It consists of four parts, taking along one of the four party members for each. Oh I am sorry, it actually consists of two parts that get copy and pasted so you have to run through each of them twice. And you cannot even skip the cutscenes, even though they are ninety percent the same, as minor differences happen since you bring different characters there. I went from lukewarm to outright bored during Act II and almost did not finish it. And saying all that, I still cared enough to get the platinum for this game. There is enjoyment to be had here, marred by some of the worst storytelling imaginable. I can't in good conscience recommend this game, unless it's on a deep, deep discount.