The monster-catching is phenomenal. The developers clearly get it. I almost want to say that they get it in a way that even Pokémon doesn’t, but it’s kind of hard to argue with the most successful media franchise of all time, so instead I’ll say that Monster Sanctuary aims for—and wildly succeeds at—a different interpretation of the genre than Pokémon. Pokémon is all about forming a bond and growing with your unique Pokémon partner. Monster Sanctuary is about developing unique teams and strategies for monster battles.
Respect for the player and their time is pervasive throughout the design of Monster Sanctuary. Battles are turn-based and 3v3 (rather than 1v1). Monsters have attack, defense, and magic stats, as you might expect, but there is also a mana system. Each ability has a mana cost to use, and each ability also has multiple levels, with higher-level versions being stronger and costing more mana. Each monster has a mana and mana regen stat as well, and this means you need to invest in those stats if you want to be able to consistently spam your most powerful abilities.
I don’t think there’s one particular feature that makes the battle system tick. Instead, it’s a confluence of design decisions that together result in a system that easily allows for experimentation and variety. To put it succinctly, monsters are easy to obtain and change.
For instance, suppose you want a competitive Pokémon. If you haven’t explored competitive Pokémon before, there is a lot that goes into that. Since Pokémon focuses on your bond with your unique partner, there are a lot of systems in place to ensure that your Pokémon is different from every other Pokémon, and being competitive means ensuring that all of those systems work to make your Pokémon as strong as possible. You need to breed for your Pokémon’s IVs, nature, and ability and then train your Pokémon’s EVs and level, all of which are time-consuming. Certain moves can also be difficult to obtain, requiring learning as an egg move or obtaining a TM.
Monster Sanctuary doesn’t have any of that. Monsters of the same breed are identical, so you don’t need to worry about their stats. Monsters can only be hatched, not caught, but new monsters will be only a few levels below your highest-level monster, meaning they only need a little bit of training to be brought on-curve. Moves are handled in a skill tree, so there’s no hassle there—and skill points can be reset with a consumable. So if you want a competitive monster in Monster Sanctuary, all you need to do hatch it and grind a few levels, or, if you already have one, give it the item to reset its skills.
(Actually, there’s one more thing. Part-way through the game, you unlock the ability to shift monsters into one of two alternative forms, which gives the monster additional stats and a passive ability. So if your monster isn’t in the right form… you just need to give them a consumable to shift them.)
In Pokémon each Pokémon can hold one item, while in Monster Sanctuary each monster gets a weapon and three accessory slots, so there is a bit more work required there, but equipment have levels and upgrade materials aren’t hard to get, so it’s really not much of an issue. Each monster can also eat three consumables which boost their stats, and those are also trivial to obtain.
On top of making it easy to obtain the monsters, the game UI contributes the ease of experimenting, as you can easily save and load entire teams (meaning you don’t need to deal with the hassle of figuring out your equipment load-outs if you change teams).
In battle, during each of your turns, each monster gets to move once, in any order. There is a combo-multiplier from multi-hit moves, so you generally want your weaker monsters to move first to increase the effectiveness multiplier of your heavy hitter. (Heals, shields, and status moves all affect the multiplier, not just attacks, so you can take advantage of it regardless of strategy.) While all special moves consume mana, each monsters can also do a generic attack that doesn’t cost mana, as well as select a weaker version of any known attack (if the enemy only has a bit of HP left and the highest level move isn’t needed).
Your monsters fully heal between each fight, so encounters can always be tuned for a full-strength party (and you don’t need to spend time on out-of-combat healing), but, like in Pokémon, winning individual battles generally isn’t hard—winning in style is. At the end of each fight in Monster Sanctuary you get judged on several factors, including how fast you won and how healthy your monsters were at the end of each round. The better your score, the better your odds of obtaining a rare item—including a monster egg (which is the only way to obtain them; there’s no breeding). As a nice design choice, your score affects your chance of getting rare items, meaning you’ll get them regardless of how you perform, just at a slower rate if you don’t do well.
The combination of the skill grid and 3v3 battles makes a wild number of monsters and strategies viable, which is where the game shines. In Pokémon, you generally just want to hit as hard and as far as possible (story mode, not pvp). But that doesn’t work in Monster Sanctuary, since you need to keep your monsters healthy (for every turn, not just at the end of the battle). Support monsters that keep you healthy or create synergies through de/buffs are extraordinarily useful. This shouldn’t be a huge surprise, since in Pokémon doubles (2v2) has many more viable builds and Pokémon than singles (1v1).
But wait, there’s more! One of the categories you’re graded on is based on the statuses and rebuffs you inflicted on the enemy. Giving points based on speed implies that the game wants you to sweep as fast as possible (with some support for healing/shielding), but the status category makes slower, status-based teams viable as well.
In other words, Monster Sanctuary is extraordinarily thorough in providing for a variety of strategies, ensuring those strategies can succeed, and making it easy to experiment and switch between teams.
It’s a beautiful play pin for someone who wants to experiment with strategic monster battling. Anything and everything is possible, and you can try anything out with minimal investment. Plus, Monster Sanctuary de-emphasizes evolving, meaning each monster can stand on its own merits. Monsters can only evolve by bringing a certain key item to a certain location, and most evolutions are side-grades rather than upgrades. Pokémon might have more monsters, but many are not fully evolved and so essentially function as stepping-stones to other Pokémon, which in a way makes Monster Sanctuary’s roster feel richer, as every monster you look at can be a serious consideration.
The metroidvania side of the game is good. That might seem subdued after paragraph after paragraph of ebullient praise for the monster fighting… and that’s because it is. The metroidvania gameplay is perfectly competent and fun, but not transcendent for the genre in the same way that the monster fighting is.
The main gimmick for the metroidvania gameplay—and the way it ties into the monster fighting—is the fact that your monster give you an “explore ability” that assist with exploration and puzzle-solving. For instance, some monsters can create an object that holds down floor switches, while others can knock down loose walls. By ensuring that you can’t encounter a monster with ability X before reaching area Y, Monster Sanctuary gates exploration progress in a manner that is subtle yet effective.
The game world is filled with all sorts of puzzles and platforming challenges, which makes it fun to explore and traverse, although none are as involved or strategic as the monster battling. You can put icons on your world map and write notes, which makes it simple to keep track of spots with a challenge you can’t clear yet. Additionally, you have a Monster Journal that provides information on monsters you’ve seen and obtained, but you only need to see a monster to discover its explore ability, so if you get stuck it’s easy to figure out which monster you need to advance. Lastly, while you can only bring 6 monsters into battle, the roster of monsters you can select for explore abilities is much larger, meaning you’ll rarely (if ever) need to return to town to swap monsters to get the proper explore ability.
The story serves its purpose, and that’s about it. You’re a newbie monster keeper, it turns out you’re extraordinarily talented, some bad guys are trying to take over the world, and the only way to stop them is with monster fighting. It serves its purpose, and the backstory of the world is a bit interesting, but the narrative is unlikely to stay with you for any significant time.
The game has charming pixel graphics and chiptunes. Your active monster will follow you around on the map (like in certain Pokémon games), so they all have sprites for running, jumping, swimming, and so on, so there’s actually a lot of care and effort put into the visual experience. The visuals are also enhanced with effects and particles that are a bit finer than the base pixel graphics.
Monster Sanctuary is a great twist on the monster-catching genre, providing exception monster-catching gameplay with an interesting second genre woven in. The focus is squarely on exploration and experimenting with battles, so you won’t find the same attention to individual monsters and world-building as in Pokémon, but as long as strategic depth if what you want you’ll be satisfied.
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