Monster Tale

Screenshots

Notes

I hadn't heard of this game before and it has strong hidden gem energy. The art is incredible, the gameplay is pretty fun and everything about it is pretty well polished.

It has a unique DS mechanic which is your monster pet who hangs out on the touch screen when not in use. It's a little gimmicky, can be annoying when you need him to open doors and he's being slow, but basically works fine.

The game has one massive flaw which ended up putting me off: it's a metroidvania platformer but the level design is bad. Rather than being fun to backtrack and explore with new abilities, you're forced to walk really far back and forth across the map over and over again. Your new abilities don't really unlock new shortcuts or paths outside of the one new area you're going to in each section. And there aren't really interesting hidden secrets or things to find. So it just becomes boring. It then drags out for too long, to the point I got so bored of playing I couldn't force myself to continue.

All the elements of a really great metroidvania platformer are in here, but because of the world design it just falls flat and becomes boring. It's a shame, but what can you do?