Monster Crown

If this were a hobby project for one or two people, that would be fine. But they made a kickstarter and squandered $50,000 on this and that's unacceptable. From not delivering on stretch goal promises to not fixing bugs/causing more bugs to appear, this entire project from top to bottom was a mess. It really is tough to believe in their second project when this one was abandoned and they just ran with the initial investment money like they did. They even had the gall to create a new kickstarter for their second game.

Nothing like a game so bad I can start the review before beating it. And oh brother, Monster Crown is bad, barely reaching the level of a gen 1 Pokemon romhack and struggling for beta if not alpha functionality. MC is a throwback, a 16-bit 2D game trying to look 8-bit with catchy if simplistic music, a strange little world to explore and a deeper than it seems system of gathering dozens of fun little monsters to dog fight with. MC needs to be legally distinct so monsters seek strength and agree to pacts(pokeballs) to serve humans, gyms are chiefs, the pokecenter charges you, that kinda thing. It's a modern but medieval world absent any authority past your own monster gang but kings still rule and gangsters(two separate groups) run around as 1920s mobster pastiches. It's got that sub-$10 indie soul I appreciate in a flawed but admirable title. MC will be shedding the word admirable very soon. It's not bad at first, just a little weird and I can respect that somebody took a crack at the good ol' monster battler formula. What I can't respect is how unpleasant it is to play. Things start off dodgy but forgivable. Clunky UI, constant sound errors, busted scaling in buildings, poor dia…

Janky bug-ridden slow mess that can LITERALLY softlock your game in every menu. Slow prompt responses and inconsistent skip button mechanics means you are going to be missing a lot of important choices and dialogue options Worst of all the devs KNOW their game is a janky mess and still instead of fixing it they do a cash grab for a sequel. I wanted to like this game so bad, it promised so many good mechanics but I've had to restart my game from scratch 3 times because of railroad softlocks. I don't mean reload my game, I mean restart my game from scratch and losing all the monster friends I have gathered. I've played Pokemon since Gen1, Digimon, Monster Rancher, and I wanted so much for this to be a reminder of those times, and from the art and the hype it should totally be that But so janky, unintuitive and frustrating that I cannot even try a fourth time.

As it stands, there were a few problems in my short experience and they mostly share a reason: - The game is too slow, too many unnecessary button presses during dialog to skip the text spawn animation, everything required too many clicks, starts slow, long introduction; - Controls are confusing, arrow keys to move, Z and X for Confirm and Back respectively, Enter for the menu (game boy pokemon in emulator style) -- it's like, fine....... you can remap; - No sound mixer / slider. I always like my games quieter than the default and I have to fallback to the OS mixer to change the volume of the game. What game nowadays doesn't have an option to change the volume? An the reason is: Wanting too hard to be just like a game boy color pokemon game. Guys, these games were good DESPITE of the flaws, not "because" of them. We can have quality of life and still reach that lovely vibe. The graphics from what I've seen are pretty and charming. But without improved QoL I don't really feel like keep playing; There is also: - No window resize so I must keep the window basically in focus occupying most of my screen instead of what I wanted to do which was to have it small in the corner while I …

Best game I've played with retro graphics and music

Hard Pokemon