3.5/5 ★ – Yojimboi's review of Monster Sanctuary.

A game that, frankly, I was expecting to feel pretty lukewarm on, but that was a pleasant surprise to me. Monster sanctuary turned out to be surprisingly deep (mechanically at least) and very entertaining, to the point where I went for 100%. The game is really divisible into two separate parts, the metroidvania side of it, and the monster battling side. I have my issues with both but we'll get into that. The Metroidvania part of the game involves you using the monsters that you've collected to explore the world in various ways. Some monsters are capable of swimming, others flying, others breaking down hidden walls etc. If I remember correctly there's probably 2 dozen or so navigation abilities, though not all are fully unique. This part of the game felt the weakest to me, like it was a little bit of an afterthought to the monster battling. The platforming tended to be a little bit stiff. A large portion of the secret areas involved using a single monster ability and then walking forward and opening a chest, rather than using multiple abilities in conjunction for interesting puzzles (though there are a few of those). All in all, the game didn't suffer too much for it though, as it's not the core of the gameplay, it mainly just serves as a means to get new monsters or equipment for those monsters, or to run into wild monster encounters that are roaming about the map. The real meat and potatoes here is in the monster battling system. This is where I was really expecting to be disappointed by the game, but boy was I wrong for that. There is really a lot of depth here, both in the complexity of the combat mechanics, and in how many options there are for team building. I personally opted for a buff stacking build where a single creature took advantage of being overbuffed with auras from the other creatures in the party, but even a build like that could have dozens of different component pieces. Each monster has a skill tree with roughly 40-50 abilities that come together to create a party that's strictly your own. On top of the great combat/build system, MOST (not all) of the grind that can make pokemon-like games so tedious is absent here. Items to respec your monster's skill trees are sold for a comically small amount of money and dropped regularly from enemies. Items to level up your lower leveled monsters are plentiful enough that I finished my run with about 30 to spare. More leveling items are given for free when your monsters reach a level cap. That being said, sometimes the somewhat slow pace of combat combined with how frequent wild monster encounters can make the game FEEL grindy, even if it really isn't. My full team had hit the level cap well before I even got to the final 2 areas, and that was with avoiding a fair few monster encounters. The game also ships with a randomizer mode, online PVP, hard modes, NG+, a mode that adds unique new equipment to every area, the list goes on. These modes combined with the sheer diversity in team building make for a super replayable experience. For an indie game, I was super impressed with my time in Monster Sanctuary, and despite its flaws I definitely recommend you pick it up.