モンカルファンタ ～勇者と水晶の少女～ (2026)

For the record, I’m playing this with an auto-translator. I’ve played the demo to the end, and I’m probably about 5 hours in total if I count that into the full version. Anyway, the story is as basic as it gets. It’s your typical “you’re the hero, build a party, and defeat the Demon King” setup, and you travel with a princess named Himeri whose soul is trapped in a crystal ball. The gameplay is more comparable to Dragon Quest or Final Fantasy than Etrian Odyssey. Personally, it reminds me of the first 7th Dragon on the DS because of its overall presentation, though it doesn’t have the same level of difficulty. It also has a hack-and-slash looter aspect, where every encounter rewards you with random gear drops. These come with color rarities, star ratings, and sometimes random special effects. There’s also a special command (courtesy of Himeri) that you can charge during battles, one for example lets you double the drops if you defeat the last enemy within the same turn. It’s aiming for that addictive, relaxing loot and loop, and I’m personally enjoying it. Leveling up grants you points you can allocate to any stats you want, along with skill points for upgrading abilities. It d…

(Reviewed at about the halfway mark) Monkaru Fanta (Monkaru being a portmant of "Monster-treasure-hunting") is more of a reflection of, rather than authentic, traditional JRPG. I can't recomend this to EXPerience fans, nor traditional JRPG fans. I find myself at a loss of who this game is actually for. If you've played 7th Dragon or similar then you know exactly what you are getting here, but with a distinct Dragon Quest vibe. The classes are nearly identical to DQ3, with the exception that Heroes and Mages both get access to all 3 elements, while Priests get Light (Kyrie). There's a world map, some small dungeons, you get a boat and have to collect the "things". Everything is pretty small in scope, but encounters are dangerous and the encounter rate is high. Despite this, there is not much challenge. Combat is elemental based, and you see all weaknesses when targeting foes, and magic is not very diverse, so this reduces almost all choice every round to "pick the right element". There are not many options for buff/debuff, so everything comes down to dealing as much damage of the right element as you can each round. If you're familiar with Union skills from their other games, they…