Was Monster Crown Worth It?

Are you nostalgic for the original Pokémon games? Today we’re looking at Monster Crown, a recent indie release. I picked up the Switch physical cart, but it’s been on Steam for a while now. Was Monster Crown worth it?

Background

This is a retro pixel style Pokémon clone. I’m a huge fan of the genre, and I’m glad that it’s experienced a bit of a renaissance. This is the first outing from Studio Aurum, not to be confused with the cosmetic studio that has the top Google result.

What does Monster Crown do well?

It’s ambitious when it comes to the breeding features. The system is very deep and allows for a lot of monster customization. Through the breeding system, you can create “custom” monsters. The story is a bit more mature, and admittedly I was surprised to see a character actually die onscreen.

What could Monster Crown do better?

Honestly, a lot. This game is janky.

Monster Designs

Most of the monster designs look like fakemon from 20 years ago that you would have seen in a Pojo magazine. Frankly, they aren’t charming and I don’t want to collect them.

Release State and Polish

This game has been in development since February 2016. It has been officially released on Steam as of Summer 2020. I checked to make sure it wasn’t just me, and reviews as recent as December 2021 also attest that the game as buggy.

Apparently some patches may have ironed out the bugs and glitches. I played in early December and still had issues with crashes, screen tearing, and unresponsive controls.

While it’s clear that the developer is invested in the game, there shouldn’t be so many issues. All the bugs and glitches should have been ironed out long before the game got printed. These range from interesting exploits, like getting multiple monsters from a “Gym Leader” enemy, but crashes or unresponsive controls quickly ruin that fun.

Monster Types

As you can see above, the monster types are Malicious, Brute, Will, Relentless, and Unstable. I constantly got these confused and had to keep a tab open with a guide to check weaknesses. I can see having characteristics like this as personalities, but they weren’t intuitive types. I’m not the biggest fan of some of Pokémon’s matchups, but I was pining for something more memorable.

Was Monster Crown fun?

Not really. I wasn’t having a great time and I got tired of playing after a couple crashes. My backlog is too large to waste time on games that I’m not having fun at.

Also, special mention to Tanukrook, the monster in the desert area that griefs you for exploring. Very annoying.

Was Monster Crown worth it?

The numbers above are misleading, as you can easily spend hours crossbreeding your desired monsters. However, that’s for you to decide, as I ended up dropping this game. There are plenty of great monster-collecting games, some of which I’ve covered on this site.

While the bar might be lower for indie games, it’s not this far down. There are better monster collecting games, such as Monster Sanctuary or Monster Hunter Stories 2. There are also plenty of Pokémon romhacks that are improvements upon the original titles.

I unfortunately cannot recommend this game. Monster Crown was not worth it. It is getting some more updates and DLC down the line, but I don’t feel that this is a fun or rewarding gameplay experience.

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