Monark

 PlayStation 5
Metascore
66

Mixed or average reviews - based on 27 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 6 out of 27
  2. Mixed: 20 out of 27
  3. Negative: 1 out of 27
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  1. Push Square
    Feb 16, 2022
    40
    There's an interesting story here and the horror-JRPG vibe is much appreciated, but whatever enjoyment they could bring you is utterly annihilated by the outrageous, egregious amount of grinding you'll need to do to see the game through. Monark is gaming reduced to a thick, treacly sludge to wade through, no cutscene or story beat or reward ever feeling like it was worth the struggle. Just play Shin Megami Tensei while listening to Nine Inch Nails and you'll have a better time.
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  1. 3DJuegos
    Feb 21, 2022
    A new scholar JRPG adventure game in the same vein as Shin Megami Tensei, but not as good. Pretty lengthy, deep and engaging, but somewhat unoriginal and technically dated.

User Reviews

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User Score
5.4

Mixed or average reviews- based on 18 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 7 out of 18
  2. Mixed: 4 out of 18
  3. Negative: 7 out of 18
  1. Ledjon
    Apr 12, 2022
    2
    The game is your typical Visual Novel Tactics JRPG. If you base your judgment on what the trailer showed for this game... Just stop. The storyThe game is your typical Visual Novel Tactics JRPG. If you base your judgment on what the trailer showed for this game... Just stop. The story has really good potential but the amount of talking in the game will put you to sleep unless you enjoy a visual Novel based game, which if you base your purchase for this game off of the trailer as I did, the trailer does not depict that. The puzzles are fun and different and are really well set up and will have you talking to every NPC in the game and even using your menu options to try to solve them. The battle system is a really fun tactics RPG and uses a different type of Health to Attack strategy where your health plays a role in your attack. Unfortunately, the game has no random encounters and only has 1 battle set up per chapter after you solve the puzzles. You can however after you beat the chapter, go back and retry the battle over and over basically grind which you have to because as soon as you beat the act(4 chapters) the next act has a giant gap in the difficulty and levels. The graphics are comparable to an early first-gen PS4 game, the location and buildings are bland and for some annoying reason, they capped the camera angle when you are outside of the buildings so you can not look up and the way the camera is set you want to look up!!! Overall this was disappointing, the trailers were false advertising for what the game really is, a joke and a visual Novel waste of time and money. Really Disappointed in Furyu for the development of this game. They honestly should have just made Crystar 2.… Full Review »
  2. AdoMobA
    Mar 14, 2023
    4
    Pros
    - the OST is hype
    - the combat is an interesting take on the turn-based genre Cons - game feels like it is stuck in the Ps2 JRPG    Pros
    - the OST is hype
    - the combat is an interesting take on the turn-based genre

    Cons
    - game feels like it is stuck in the Ps2 JRPG era technology wise
    - the characters are prone to going on long winded monologues about not much without being prompted
    - horrendous pacing issues mainly during the god-awful Act II
    - even the voice acting sound unenthusiastic about the stuff they are saying

    Monark, a game that feels like 2005 Ps2 JRPG released in 2021 for the Ps4/Ps5. Though I played the Ps5 version so I did not experience the performance issues on the Ps4, the game is still mired by a plethora of tech limitations.

    The whole game looks like a Ps3 JRPG that had its textures upscaled for a ''remaster'. There is a weird one and a half second delay after every spoken line, making it seem like the game is frantically loading in the next audiofile. Not as a natural lull in conversation, an artificial slowdown making you feel like the long winded cutscenes about nothing are even more long winded.

    Oftentimes, a banging OST starts playing mid conversation, but it is not an instrumental, so the lyrics drown out the dialogue. It is almost like the game itself is tired of the characters repeating their convictions for the seventieth time and just shuts them up.

    The OST is one of the few things one can praise about this game. Pleiades, Gunpowder and Dear being some of the standouts, the tracklist gets you hyped for the arguably fun combat.

    The combat itself is also an interesting choice. Instead of random encounters or enemies walking
    around on the map, you are given an option to enter special combat maps through your phone, which you then have to beat. For all of Monarks flaws, the combat is actually fun, offering some interesting choices through its varied mechanics. You are given a couple of main characters plus several minions to play with, all of them offering unique skills for you to throw at the enemy. Though the Lust minion is just objectively the best, offering the best damage skills in the game like damn.

    Over with the good now let's get back to the bad. The story. The beginning is interesting. But then it buries itself under heaps and heaps of exposition, delivered through the awkwardly paced dialogue. The way the story segments itself is a problem too, because not counting the final battle, you can only bring one cast member along at a time for all the battles, and fill out the rest of your party with the different minions.

    And speaking of the final battle, to even get there, you must slog through Act II, which might be one of the most boring and poorly paced endeavors I took on during the last couple of years. It consists of four parts, taking along one of the four party members for each. Oh I am sorry, it actually consists of two parts that get copy and pasted so you have to run through each of them twice.

    And you cannot even skip the cutscenes, even though they are ninety percent the same, as minor differences happen since you bring different characters there. I went from lukewarm to outright bored during Act II and almost did not finish it.

    And saying all that, I still cared enough to get the platinum for this game. There is enjoyment to be had here, marred by some of the worst storytelling imaginable. I can't in good conscience recommend this game, unless it's on a deep, deep discount.    … Full Review »
  3. onehitok
    Jun 24, 2022
    10
    Good game, kokoro best girl.
    The ones who voted negative are unloved by their parents and never had a girlfriend.
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