Shane Haven

Monster Tale DS Review

The developers of Monster Tale must really love games. You can just tell . Monster Tale is a magnificent mix of homage’s, references, and nods to the history of great gaming that somehow all add up into something that feels entirely new and original. That takes a talented developer to achieve, and Dreamrift certainly has that talent. Born, from a lifelong love of games. 

Let’s track the connections to the classics as we make our way through this review, shall we? First up has to be Castlevania: Symphony of the Night — but not just because Monster Tale boasts a fully interconnected and re-traversable world like that game did. Rather, it’s because its core mechanic reminds me of Alucard’s familiars. You had the option to summon little hovering bats, demons, or other mini monster friends in that old Castlevania and they’d help you out in battle by automatically attacking enemies around you. They’d even level up in strength over time, becoming more powerful and gaining more advanced abilities. 

Monster Tale takes that same concept and pushes it one step further. Here you’re in control of a young blue-haired heroine named Ellie and her companion creature Chomp, who similarly hovers over your shoulder and auto-attacks foes for you. But Chomp’s development is more akin to a pet sim game, as the whole lower screen on the DS is given over to a special area where you can customize his growth with specific items like food, books, and exercise equipment.

A pinch of Pokemon then comes into play, as little monster Chomp can evolve into dozens of larger, more powerful forms that each learn new attacks and support techniques. They’re even elementally typed, tapping briefly into the “Water beats Fire” Rock/Paper/Scissors mechanic that has helped make Pikachu’s series so popular. 

And then we’ve got some Metroid going on. Happening both concurrently but also separately from Chomp’s growth on the lower screen are Ellie’s antics up above, and there it’s a platforming adventure straight out of Samus Aran’s signature series. Ellie even advances in ability herself just like Nintendo’s bounty hunter. Chomp gains experience points to grow, but not Ellie — she finds new powers by exploring the environment. Rolling up in a ball to squeeze through tight spaces, charging up her magical bracelet to launch laser shots, earning the power to wall-jump to ascend sheer vertical surfaces — it’s easy to see the inspiration here. 

Though her wall-jumping is most similar to Mega Man X. 

With all these many ties back to gameplay elements of your favorites of yesteryear, Monster Tale feels both nostalgic and new — it also looks fantastic, with the crispest, most precise 2D spritework a Nintendo handheld has seen outside of the Shantae series. Even with all those positive points, though, not all is smiles and lollipops in this whimsical world of monsters. There are a handful of issues in Ellie’s adventures that keep the Tale from becoming a true masterpiece. 

Backtracking is the first. Having to revisit the same sections of the same world multiple times is a key part of games like this, with Nintendo’s Metroids and Konami’s 2D Castlevanias outlining how to make retreading the same territory feel fun and flow well. Here in Monster Tale, though, it often just feels arbitrary. You’ll walk all the way to one side of the map, pick up some collectible, then the game will tell you to walk all the way back to the other side. So you do that, grab something else or trigger a brief cut scene, and then it tells you to again pick yourself up and schlep all the way back to where you just came from.

It’s tiresome and tedious, feeling like the developers didn’t do enough to sell the “why” of it all. Why does beating a bad guy in this small chamber unlock a completely unrelated door on the other side of the world? That sort of thing. The extra trips across the landscape end up lengthening the quest artificially, though at least you get more time to train Chomp and perhaps unlock a few more of his different evolutions than you otherwise would have with a more straightforward flow.

Another issue, though, surrounds those evolutions. Some of them are simple to unlock, giving you more choices for how Chomp will look and behave. Others, though, take hours of grinding to access. I spent hours working on opening up one specific new form, following the game’s clues for how to do so as best as I could — but I never got it. I just got frustrated and gave up, then jumped over to try unlocking a different form instead and earned it in about five minutes. That feels unbalanced, and unfun. 

Last of all is the game’s sometimes uneven difficulty. Monster Tale has all the earmarks of a younger kids’ game with its cutesy style and little girl protagonist. And it acts like one too, for a while, making you think it could be a great game to use in introducing a younger player to this style of adventure before letting them graduate to the Metroids and Castlevanias. Its difficulty spikes pretty severely at a couple of points, though, as later in the quest it throws down the gauntlet with rooms full of foes and some truly tough boss battles. So it still could serve as that kind of introductory title, but you’d probably need to stay on call in case your son, daughter, niece, nephew, or other young gamer in your life needs a bit of advice or assistance at those points.

Even with those imperfections in place, though, I have to highly recommend Monster Tale for every DS owner to seriously consider purchasing – for a younger gamer, sure, but also for yourself. This is a game that has clearly been crafted with love and respect for what video gaming is. The passion of its developer is apparent in every scene, enemy design, and animation frame. It’s just a joy to play. You might get a bit frustrated at times, as I did. The backtracking isn’t great and some of those Chomp evolutions are a headache. But all the while, even in those moments, you won’t stop smiling. Because you’ll just be constantly taken aback at how much love went into this Tale.

To download this game go to DSi Download.

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