Monark: A Grindy Take on Strategy RPGs

Monark is such a weird game for me. When I originally got the code I fell in love with the game. Everyday I couldn’t get enough of it until I did get enough of it. Monark is a strategy role playing game and a rather good one. It’s just that it’s easy to forget that fact when you have to repeat battles over to stand a chance in the next story encounter. In a more traditional role playing game, this wouldn’t be an issue. However, in a strategy game, that can be a huge detriment.

Coming to us from developers Lancarse and a few of the original creators of the Shin Megami Tensei series, including the original author, Monark is the latest game from publisher FuRyu. FuRyu is a Japanese company known for creating and publishing RPGs in Japan. They tend to team up with Western publishers to get their games across the pond. One of their past projects was the fun and underrated the Alliance Alive.

One thing I feel this game gets right is narrative. It puts you in the role of an amnesiac high school student who suddenly becomes what is called a pactbearer. The school he goes to is covered in a strange mist and no one can exit it. You learn that in order to remove the mist, you must defeat the other pactbearers. However, things aren’t that simple. You set out to solve the mystery of the mist and the pactbearers.

The story goes into some really interesting and dark places. If you were ever a fan of the narratives of Shin Megami Tensei or Persona, you should feel right at home. This is very much a story of high school kids. Though I should mention that not only students become pactbearers.

School Management

When it comes to gameplay, Monark is great but not without issues. Let’s start with navigating the world. Monark’s world isn’t a huge one, owing to the fact that it takes place in a single school. The game is divided into two parts. The first part is then divided into individual arcs centered on certain party members. You see, you can only have one party member at a time so when you do one of their stories, it’s just you and them. I feel like this helps you to get know each companion because you’re only focusing on their story at the time. There are four in total, and they each have their own interesting personality quirks. Each arc limits where you can travel to in the school building that concerns the companion you are with at that time.

One of my biggest gripes with these sections of the game is map management. The game gives you a map in the menu and mini map. Those are good; the problem is when you need to know exactly where you are. The minimap can’t be expanded and the menu map doesn’t tell you exactly where you are. This led to several headaches trying to find my next destination.

Quelling the Madness

In order to get into a battle you need to have a particular phone number. You can find phone numbers all around the school. This is very useful for grinding; more on that later. When it comes to story battles, you’ll be exploring a particular floor of a building and see a stack of phones. Your party and the enemy units are made up of fiends. You can customize your fiends look with multiple options for voice, hair, and various other things. The fiend units are the only ones that you can change the equipment of. Human characters have gear they equip and can evolve through the skill tree.

The battles in Monark can be quite intense. You have your usual set of stats and abilities that you would normally find in a strategy rpg along with some more unique moves. There isn’t an MP gauge but instead a madness gauge. It starts at zero and the more you use things like magic spells the higher the gauge gets until that character goes berserk. There’s also another gauge for particular units that allows them to awaken and have a stat increase. The protagonist has the ability to link with other units and share skills and stat buffs and debuffs. Linking a maddened unit and an awakened unit enlightens both.

At the end of each battle your performance is graded. Taking advantage of all the different mechanics usually yields a better grade in addition to finishing battles fast. I found most battles thrilling and challenging. They often left me thinking long and hard about making certain moves. There were times when I tried to brute force my way through and had my protagonist surrounded by enemy units.

The Grind

While I enjoy the battles, halfway through the game things get difficult. The only solution for some of these difficult battles is to grind. That got kind of annoying seeing as some battles can take up to ten minutes. Luckily, there’s no fail state, so you’re never really losing progress. You also are fully healed after every battle. The only downside to battles is your madness gauge goes up but you can see the school infirmary to get that taken care of.

In order to grind out battles, you find numbers that will take you to battles you can grind out. The problem is you’ll be replaying battles over and over again to level up. The only thing that changes for a number’s particular battle is unit placement. Your team will spawn in on the same side of the map every time. Now, you can learn certain strategies later on that shorten these battles up but before that they can take up to five minutes to complete. That’s pretty long for battles you’re meant to repeat.

Leveling up is pretty weird in this game. At the end of every battle you’re given skill points, however, the skill points aren’t for a particular unit. The points you earn can be spent on any unit in your party. That’s a good thing if you have units just joining you and you need to level them up. Your characters level up by unlocking skills. This means that the usual stat boosts you would normally associate with a jrpg is now tied to skills. Honestly, I had no issues this way of leveling up.

Presentation

It’s pretty obvious Monark was made on a budget but that doesn’t stop it from looking good. Sure, if you really look at the character models, they look real cheap. However, the character designs are really striking. The menu is awesome, imitating the form of a cell phone. The only thing that stands out is that most of time you’ll be battling the same fiends repeatedly.

And I don’t think this has happened before but NIS America worked with Sentai Filmworks on the English dub. I have to say that this is one of the best localizations I’ve heard from NIS America and they have some pretty good ones under their belt. I feel like everyone does a good job but nobody sinks into their role in those production more than the talented Brittney Karbowski. She really brings her character to life but I can say no more due to spoilers.

Also, the soundtrack absolutely slaps. I really enjoyed the boss music most of all. Each boss fight is accompanied by a J-Pop song that had my head bouncing.

Conclusion

Monark is an easy game for me to recommend. While it can get a bit grindy further in, I never got bored with it. The story is easy to get into and features some fully realized characters. Learning the battle mechanics will help with the fights ahead. If you’ve ever been a fan of japanese role playing games, the Persona or Shin Megami Tensei games then you owe it do yourself to pick up Monark.

Monark is available on Playstation 4 and 5, Switch, and PC via Steam.