The Monster Taming genre has been getting
lively these past few years, especially in
the indie scene.
And now, after 4 years of work, a successful
Kickstarter, and a lot of hopes and dreams,
Studio Aurum has released its own project
on Steam’s Early Access program.
Previously known as Crowns, Monster Crown
is the work of a group of friends lead by
a Canadian fellow named Jason Walsh.
Jason has always been fascinated by the monster
taming genre, and a major inspiration comes
from Pokémon...but not how you might expect
it.
Monster Crown takes inspiration from the unused
concept art for Capsule Monsters, Game Freak's
initial pitch for a monster game that would
eventually become Pokémon.
And the official artwork wears this inspiration
on its sleeves.
Like other fans of Monster Taming games, he
grew up with titles like Dragon Quest Monster
and Telefang, and he wants to show the world
that the genre goes far beyond just Pokémon.
In fact, one of his inspirations for Monster
Crown’s breeding system comes from his disappointment
at how Pokémon’s breeding didn’t result
in unique crossbreeds.
The game begins with picking the player's
appearance and color scheme, followed by your
father doing a Professor Oak.
He explains that you live in a world where
humans and wild monsters exist, but some crafty
people discovered a way of creating pacts
that would benefit both sides.
But he warns you that becoming obsessed with
power may have a cost…
Back in the present day, your father needs
your help with some chores.
He lends you one of his monsters, then goes
over some of the basic mechanics.
After that, he presents you with a comic book
as a reward for your efforts…
And in it is a shady personality test claiming
that you could win your own monster.
This is just a way to recommend you a starter.
You’re free to pick any from a selection
of 5, each belonging to one of the game’s
5 Monster Types.
And so, dad tells you to spend some quality
time with your new friend, picking fights
with random monsters and biting their heads
off.
Once your starter grows a level, your father
recognises your ability as a Monster Tamer
and sends you on an errand to deliver a present
to the King of the Humanism Kingdom, and thus
starts your adventure.
Monster Crown is advertised as a darker take
on the genre, and while the marketing and
screenshots might set off red flags and undesirable
memories of certain cringy Pokémon ROM hacks
and fan games, I feel like that's doing a
disservice to the world of Crown Island.
Most games have a clear hierarchy where the
Tamer is the top and the Monster is the bottom
bitch.
Monster Crown is closer to the Megami Tensei
series where both sides don't typically co-exist
unless it’s mutually beneficia.
The art style might make it seem like a happy-go-lucky
world in the vein of Pokémon, but the setting
and atmosphere is more grounded and pragmatic.
It's a world where the creatures pose a danger
to those who don't treat them with respect
and the population suffers from similar problems
to our own, but it's not like everyone else
wants to rip your guts out while smoking weed
and killing babies.
Aside from a red-haired edgelord and a cuntface
getting his just desserts, the game isn't
as grimdark as the impression you might get
from the marketing.
The minute to minute gameplay is fairly standard.
You explore different areas, meet different
people, solve different problems, and fight
different monsters.
Monster Crown employs roaming monsters that
wander around the overworld and chase after
you.
Touching them initiates a battle, and you
send out one of the monsters in your party.
Battles follows a turn based format where
both sides fight each other until one is knocked
out.
Winning battles earns Experience Points for
your monsters, letting them grow in level
and learn new moves.
You can choose whether to spread Experience
Points between all party members or just the
participants.
Monsters and their moves belong to one of
5 types, each being 50% more effective against
one type and receiving 50% less damage from
another.
Will beats Brute, which beats Malicious, which
beats Unstable, which beats Relentless, which
beats Will.
Monsters can have up 6 Moves at a time.
There is no limited number of uses, and there
is no hit chance to worry about, but different
moves do make use of different stats to calculate
damage, similar to the Physical/Special split
in Pokémon.
During your turn, you can also tell your monster
to defend for 1 turn, switch your active monster,
use an item, or attempt to escape.
Or just accept defeat like a little bitch.
Defending and switching monsters also increases
your Synergy bar by one level.
Your stored Synergy is then automatically
spent on your next offensive move, multiplying
its damage.
But keep in mind that Synergy is reset when
your active monster is knocked out or when
the battle ends.
This mechanic adds an extra layer of strategy
to what is otherwise a rather simple combat
system, and indeed certain boss battles will
screw you over if you let the opposition charge
it up and use it to boost their stats or to
smack your party around.
Outside of battle, you can do your usual exploring,
with a bit of roguelikeness thrown into the
mix.
The maps are static, but throughout them are
randomly generated items with various effects,
and also random NPC Tamers that you can fight
for money and experience or trade monsters.
Certain NPCs will heal your party for a price,
but you can also establish a camp by using
an item.
You'll want to do this because getting defeated
means that you lose all the items you're carrying.
One interesting mechanic is Monster Scouting.
Basically, you target roaming monsters in
front of you and attack them with your leader.
If your team is powerful enough, the monster
gets friggin’ erased and you get the goodies.
If it’s not, the monster takes some damage
but comes charging at you to start a battle.
The game’s big selling point is its breeding
mechanics, and they are a bit like Dragon
Quest Monsters or Megami Tensei, but on steroids
and without Giant Penis Monsters.
First, you need...
Well, monsters, which you recruit by beating
the crap out of them and using a Pact item
until they accept.
You then set one monster as the Primary, and
another as the Secondary.
After doing the thing, an Egg is produced,
which will hatch into a new monster after
a while.
You don't lose the parents, so breed away
all you want until you get your own special
abomination.
The Primary Monster will pass down its base
Attack, Defense and Speed stats, while the
Secondary will pass down Magic, Resistance
and HP.
The offspring will also inherit the moves
of both parents.
Genetic manipulation of some sort will also
play a role.
Right now, there’s one Alternate Gene available
that produces different results, so that’s
something to look for in the future.
The recent update also brought NET Eggs, which
apparently lets you breed with a random egg
that contains genes from players all over
the world.
Aside from sounding like a depraved sex act,
this should be pretty interesting as more
monsters get added to the game.
And yes, online battling and trading is a
thing too, but still very early in development.
Calling it "true crossbreeds" might be overselling
it just a little bit, though.
From what I understand, each monster has 6
forms: 1 is the basic form, and the other
5 belong to one of the 5 Types.
The offspring simply takes one of the 5 forms
of the Primary parent, and the color scheme
of the Secondary.
There ARE completely unique combinations,
and I’m sure there will be lots more in
the final version.
I’m just saying that while there is a ton
of different designs, you shouldn’t expect
them to be infinitely generated based on the
parents.
And speaking of final version, this isn’t
it, so, yeah, there’s gonna problems.
The developers have been very active on the
Steam forums looking for feedback and helping
with problems, and the beta branch has improved
a number of things since launch.
But there are still improvements that need
to be made before the game leaves early access.
So here are some suggestions, starting with
the big ones.
My main complaint right now is playability.
The bugs and the quirks with the interface
significantly impact the experience, which
is why I can't 100% recommend Monster Crown
in its current state.
I don't mean superficial bugs like the weird
fade in and fade out that seems to come from
skipping the title screen too fast, or the
terrible word wrap, or your party leader spazzing
in and out of existence.
I mean things like the Experience bars being
completely broken and not displaying the correct
amount, or that one time when both monsters
were knocked out and the game didn't know
what to do with it.
The interface has a lack of consistency.
Some screens use generic button labels like
OK, Back, etc.
But other places use specific keys or buttons
like L1, or C, and they aren’t updated if
you change them.
I’m playing on a controller with a custom
control scheme, and I accidentally pressed
the wrong buttons until I got used to it.
My suggestion would be to use the generic
labels everywhere, avoiding situations where
one menu says one thing and a different menu
says another thing.
The special functions like Scouting and the
Canoe are also unnecessarily cumbersome.
I don't know how many there will be in the
end, but maybe Scouting should get its own
dedicated button since it's an important function.
There isn't a need for two separate special
function groups either, and the Canoe could
just be turned into a contextual action.
I feel like the game could also communicate
things better.
It would be nice if the game told you when
you finished all available story progress,
to avoid confusion when you see NPCs blocking
your path.
There are some spots that don't let you progress
but also don’t have anything to indicate
it.
I also found a monster with 2 asterisks in
its name, which apparently means that all
of its base stats are above average.
There are 2 parts of the battle mechanics
that I'm worried about, one being the Synergy
system.
For boss battles it adds a layer of strategy,
but it’s sort of pointless for regular random
battles since they don't last long enough
for it to be worth using.
It’s in an awkward position and I'm not
sure how to improve it besides maybe making
it carry over between battles.
You might think that the solution would be
to make every random battle into a complex
tactical challenge...
But there's a good reason why developers don't
do it, and that's because the player would
get fatigued very quickly, and simply getting
from one point to another would take longer
than it should.
The other part is move balance.
They use extremely low values, so there isn't
a lot of room for variety and progression.
For example, Pokémon has Fire Type moves
with many different powers, effects and drawbacks,
with the strongest usually suffer from low
PP or low accuracy.
Monster Crown has none of these, which could
result in some becoming obsolete or simply
being clones of each other.
Now for the less important things.
For starters, there’s a lack of oomph in
certain bits.
For example, the battle intro could be a bit
faster and play a sound effect.
There’s also no sound effects in certain
menus.
Speaking of menus, they feel a bit sluggish
and awkward, with things like the switching
screen resetting when you exit the status
screens, and also not showing the Types of
each monster even though that’s where it
would be the most useful.
The transition between walking and running
could be smoother, and making certain animations
faster or skippable would also be great.
The game poses the question of whether you
will be a savior or an absolute penisface,
but on the story so far there’s no player
agency.
No dialogue options or anything.
On that same note, the current 5 hour long
story content ends right when you unlock Breeding,
which kind of dampens the excitement.
Finally, it’s a 2D game built around a fixed
resolution, and non-integer scaling to higher
resolutions causes inconsistent pixel sizes
and shimmering.
My suggestion would be applying some sort
of pixel interpolation filter, such as the
sharp-bilinear preset that comes with Retroarch's
default shader package.
There's also something wonky going on with
the framepacing, causing small but constant
stuttering.
According to RivaTuner Statistics Server's
frametime graph, there seems to be a dip every
few moments, pointing to something in the
game’s logic being out of sync with the
screen's refresh rate or something.
And now that I’m done tearing the game apart,
I just want to say that, maybe the game could
have spent a few more weeks in polishing state
before going into Early Access, but given
how responsive the development team has been,
I’m confident that its problems will be
resolved as development progresses.
So while I’m not totally sure I’d recommend
the game “right now”, the mechanics, the
breeding and the art style are all in a very
promising place right now, and I’ll definitely
revisit it when it’s complete.
If you’re a fan of the Monster Taming genre,
you should definitely keep a close look on
Monster Crown.
