Returned for my third run of the game recently, so time to explain why this is one of my favorite games of all time. For those unaware, Monster Sanctuary is a Monster Taming game in the setting of a Metroidvania. The main focus of the game is to acquire monsters, using them both for exploration and in 3v3 battles, in order to keep the titular Monster Sanctuary safe from the trouble that arises during the plot. A pretty simple premise and the story is quite simple, but this game offers a great deal of depth.
For where the depth comes from, the first aspect of that comes in the combat. Most fights are a 3v3 situation where in order to do well, you want to optimize your team's actions to build up the combo meter for your first two moves before your third monster releases their strongest move that's being buffed by the built up combo meter. What makes this combo system is how, excluding switching in monsters and skipping moves, EVERYTHING contributes to the build up of the combo meter. Attacks, healing, shielding, buffing, and even items help to contribute to the combo meter. This gives pretty much every action weight and makes you think about all the moves you make in order to optimize each of your turns.
The combat is great, but what makes the gameplay truly shine is the monster roster and how their uniqueness creates near-limitless possibilities. With 111 monsters in the game the roster is a bit small compared to other Monster Taming Games, but that is easily mended by by their sheer quality. Each monster has their own skill tree to invest points into and offers a great deal of customizability. There isn't enough points to get everything, so you have to pick and choose what each monster gets and effectively what their role will be. Not only that, but the more you look into the skill trees, the more you see how you can mix and match teams of monsters as many abilities and passives enable certain strategies. Some monsters enable stronger strategies for one kind of debuff or to spam as many of them out at once, others are designed around getting certain buffs and want more ways to get said buffs from teams, and some late game passives offer bonuses for specific types of monsters that bring together many in ways you didn't think would happen at first. And that's not even factoring in a certain mechanic that gets introduced roughly the mid game for most people that also drastically impacts each monster. Also for this team building, while you can can only have three monsters out at once, your entire team holds six monsters, furthering the amount of planning you can do. Honestly, I'm not sure just talking about this aspect here is doing justice as there is so much you can do with the team building that to fully appreciate it you have to play the game yourself. Admittedly this aspect can be a bit overwhelming, especially for newcomers, but once you learn the core team building principles of how to maximize synergies between monsters, you'll have a great deal of the game unlocked to you.
What makes the combat and team building so rewarding is that there's plenty of cases to use them well. Besides the wild monsters encounter, you also have Champion Battles and Keeper Duels to put you through the test. Champions are unnaturally stronger versions of monsters where they're usually 3v1s, but they also get multiple actions per turn, making them fairly tough opponents. Beating them is doable, but if you manage to get five stars in your ranking (more on that later), you'll also get their egg, encouraging you to improve if you want that monster on your team. Don't worry about getting five stars on the spot as there is a rematch mechanic for them (just be mindful they scale). And then there's the Keeper Duels, the battles against other Monster Keepers (and the battle rule set for PvP). Unlike Wild Monsters fights (Champs included) where it's just 3 monsters and losing all of them (unless you throw in new ones) ends the fight, you're not stopping in Duels until one's team of six is completely defeated. Fights play out the same except the first turn player only gets two of their three normal actions on turn one and if enough time passes, a "sudden death" mechanic kicks in with infinity stacks constantly being applied each turn that ramps up the damage each monster does. Keeper Duels are a lot harder as the enemy AI here is a lot smarter, has better optimized teams, and has certain strategies in mind that you'll need to learn to overcome. Both of these fights can be daunting at times, but they are incredibly rewarding to overcome and help to bring this game's amazing combat and team building systems to their fullest. Just be warned that this can sometimes be a hard game at times on the default difficulty (you can lower it if need be).
And if that wasn't enough, once you beat this game the first, A LOT of new stuff opens up for future runs to add a lot more replayability (and given how this game is already replayable given the nature of Monster Taming games, it really does open up A TON to do).
Before moving onto the exploration side of the gameplay, I do have one complaint with the combat system of the game; The Ranking system, or rather what comes out of it. So for wild monster fights, you get ranked on various categories, like how much HP you have left, how quickly you finished the fight, etc, to tally up to a final score with a ranking of 1-5 stars attached to it. At first, I disliked the ranking system at first as other games with rankings (namely FE7 and Valkyria Chronicles's ranking system) make me feel like I'm playing the game wrong. Monster Sanctuary's was that at first too, but then I've come to realize how it's not really that mean as it helps to teach you how to improve. Not only that, unlike some of those games, Monster Sanctuary's team building means there's countless ways to get excellent ranks for each fight. That's not the issue. The issue is the loot tied to the rankings. Not for Champions as their loot is guaranteed drops so long as you hit certain ranks for the first time (ex. get 4 stars or more for their unique piece of gear), but for wild encounters. Sometimes, even when you do well and have a high rare loot chance, sometimes you don't get what you want. What makes this problematic is that Monster Eggs, your main way of getting new monsters, are also item drops and sometimes, especially early on, it can be a pain to get new eggs and thus new monsters that you may want for your team or need for exploration. This becomes less pressing once you're in mid/late game, but it can sometimes be an obnoxious thorn in an otherwise perfect rose for the combat and team building.
With that all said and done, time for the Metroidvania aspect of this game. For the most part, it's pretty solid. Now if you're a more dedicated Metroidvania fan, Monster Sanctuary is a bit lighter on its elements. Namely how there's less crazy skills and abilities you'll get compared to the typical Metroidvania and how the player character themself gets two main upgrades. That I can see being a bit of a turn off for some, but to say Monster Sanctuary is completely without what makes those games fun would be a lie. While the player character themself gets little upgrades for exploration, you still get many tools to help you explore the Sanctuary via the monsters themselves. Some can break down certain walls hiding loot, others can active elemental orbs to open up new paths, and there are those that enhance the mobility of the player with things like letting them fly for a bit, the ability to swim through water, or just being a mount for faster movement. Things like that and much more offers the player a lot of depth in exploration and how to interact with the world. Plus, it's an incredible way to still encourage the Monster Taming aspect of the game since the more monsters you get, the more opens up for your exploration and what you can find.
In addition to this, like other Metroidvanias, Monster Sanctuary can be quite open. Yes, the game does have an intended order for you and there are a decent number of places you need to finish first before accessing, if you know what you're doing, you can go off the typical path and access a good number of places early. And with the game's level scaling system, you can go to these later areas without being punished for doing so (though as a small tip, if you ever do get out-leveled by 3-5 levels, I'd recommend to drop your current task, level grind a bit, and then continue until you're on par again, resuming constant fights if the enemy starts being ahead by one level). Not only does that offer the Metroidvania fan their exploration itch, but the ability to go to different areas instead of one path also means more ways you can team build by finding certain monsters quicker. Also added in a later update is the ability to mark your map, which helps out with exploration a lot and shows map completion for each area, which is a godsend for those wanting 100% map completion.
Now onto the game's story. For the most part, it's an excuse plot for the gameplay. It's a fairly simple story to follow with maybe only two or three weird or rushed things to happen in it. However, it's a serviceable story and there's nothing really awful or bad dragging it down per say. At worst however, rather than having anything bad, there's just a lot of stuff that could have been greatly expanded on for some of the characters as you either see some elements where they could be improved upon or some stuff we don't get to see happen on screen. If you play the game, you'll know what I mean there.
While the main story's plot is pretty simple, one thing I will give the writing a lot of credit is the lore. When you look into it, either by what NPCs tell you or read up in the Monster Journal, this game has some very interesting lore about this game's world, from the backgrounds of each monster, how the Monster Keepers got some monsters into the Sanctuary to keep them protected from the Old World (outside of the Sanctuary), and various other world building details that make this game's world feel a bit more alive, but also "whimsical" that we don't get from many games nowadays. Would have preferred if more of this stuff was tied into the plot, but it's not a deal breaker and the actually interesting parts of the plot also often have ties to the lore you can learn about.
As for other aspects of this game, the music is great. The OST does start off a bit more tame, going for a more relaxed feel, but the further you get into the game, the more you start finding the game's best songs. Amongst these are more atmospherical feeling to each location, some very intense battle themes, and more. Easily helps elevate the game in a lot of places and moments that really needed it.
On the topic of sounds, I think the game's sound design, namely for combat noises, are really good. They really stick in your head, especially when you either get in a lot of hits, when the enemy takes a lot of passive debuff damage, and especially the sound effect for monsters being defeated are quite rememberable. Although I do think the succeed a bit too well for the missed sound effect and the agony it induces whenever that happens. Outside of the fights, the menuing and item obtained sound effects are also quite impactful as well.
Last thing I'll make note of are the visuals. This game looks great. Each of the game's main areas are well designed and all stand out on their own. All of the Monsters look quite nice and their sprites and art in the Monster Journal generally looks really great as well. It's a very visually pleasing game that helps to continue the endless charm of 2D sprites/pixelwork.
Overall, Monster Sanctuary is a fantastic game. Been almost four years since its release and this is still the best Monster Taming game that I have ever played and has so much to offer for many more years. It may not be perfect given its more simplistic story, but the utterly amazing game design, especially for its Monsters and 3v3 battles, makes up for many of the game's few short comings. If you love the Monster Taming genre, this game is one of the best ones that you can find. And you can even often find this game for cheap with it often getting discounted, making it quite the steal too. Again, Monster Sanctuary is an amazing game and gets one of my highest recommendations for people to play.
For where the depth comes from, the first aspect of that comes in the combat. Most fights are a 3v3 situation where in order to do well, you want to optimize your team's actions to build up the combo meter for your first two moves before your third monster releases their strongest move that's being buffed by the built up combo meter. What makes this combo system is how, excluding switching in monsters and skipping moves, EVERYTHING contributes to the build up of the combo meter. Attacks, healing, shielding, buffing, and even items help to contribute to the combo meter. This gives pretty much every action weight and makes you think about all the moves you make in order to optimize each of your turns.
The combat is great, but what makes the gameplay truly shine is the monster roster and how their uniqueness creates near-limitless possibilities. With 111 monsters in the game the roster is a bit small compared to other Monster Taming Games, but that is easily mended by by their sheer quality. Each monster has their own skill tree to invest points into and offers a great deal of customizability. There isn't enough points to get everything, so you have to pick and choose what each monster gets and effectively what their role will be. Not only that, but the more you look into the skill trees, the more you see how you can mix and match teams of monsters as many abilities and passives enable certain strategies. Some monsters enable stronger strategies for one kind of debuff or to spam as many of them out at once, others are designed around getting certain buffs and want more ways to get said buffs from teams, and some late game passives offer bonuses for specific types of monsters that bring together many in ways you didn't think would happen at first. And that's not even factoring in a certain mechanic that gets introduced roughly the mid game for most people that also drastically impacts each monster. Also for this team building, while you can can only have three monsters out at once, your entire team holds six monsters, furthering the amount of planning you can do. Honestly, I'm not sure just talking about this aspect here is doing justice as there is so much you can do with the team building that to fully appreciate it you have to play the game yourself. Admittedly this aspect can be a bit overwhelming, especially for newcomers, but once you learn the core team building principles of how to maximize synergies between monsters, you'll have a great deal of the game unlocked to you.
What makes the combat and team building so rewarding is that there's plenty of cases to use them well. Besides the wild monsters encounter, you also have Champion Battles and Keeper Duels to put you through the test. Champions are unnaturally stronger versions of monsters where they're usually 3v1s, but they also get multiple actions per turn, making them fairly tough opponents. Beating them is doable, but if you manage to get five stars in your ranking (more on that later), you'll also get their egg, encouraging you to improve if you want that monster on your team. Don't worry about getting five stars on the spot as there is a rematch mechanic for them (just be mindful they scale). And then there's the Keeper Duels, the battles against other Monster Keepers (and the battle rule set for PvP). Unlike Wild Monsters fights (Champs included) where it's just 3 monsters and losing all of them (unless you throw in new ones) ends the fight, you're not stopping in Duels until one's team of six is completely defeated. Fights play out the same except the first turn player only gets two of their three normal actions on turn one and if enough time passes, a "sudden death" mechanic kicks in with infinity stacks constantly being applied each turn that ramps up the damage each monster does. Keeper Duels are a lot harder as the enemy AI here is a lot smarter, has better optimized teams, and has certain strategies in mind that you'll need to learn to overcome. Both of these fights can be daunting at times, but they are incredibly rewarding to overcome and help to bring this game's amazing combat and team building systems to their fullest. Just be warned that this can sometimes be a hard game at times on the default difficulty (you can lower it if need be).
And if that wasn't enough, once you beat this game the first, A LOT of new stuff opens up for future runs to add a lot more replayability (and given how this game is already replayable given the nature of Monster Taming games, it really does open up A TON to do).
Before moving onto the exploration side of the gameplay, I do have one complaint with the combat system of the game; The Ranking system, or rather what comes out of it. So for wild monster fights, you get ranked on various categories, like how much HP you have left, how quickly you finished the fight, etc, to tally up to a final score with a ranking of 1-5 stars attached to it. At first, I disliked the ranking system at first as other games with rankings (namely FE7 and Valkyria Chronicles's ranking system) make me feel like I'm playing the game wrong. Monster Sanctuary's was that at first too, but then I've come to realize how it's not really that mean as it helps to teach you how to improve. Not only that, unlike some of those games, Monster Sanctuary's team building means there's countless ways to get excellent ranks for each fight. That's not the issue. The issue is the loot tied to the rankings. Not for Champions as their loot is guaranteed drops so long as you hit certain ranks for the first time (ex. get 4 stars or more for their unique piece of gear), but for wild encounters. Sometimes, even when you do well and have a high rare loot chance, sometimes you don't get what you want. What makes this problematic is that Monster Eggs, your main way of getting new monsters, are also item drops and sometimes, especially early on, it can be a pain to get new eggs and thus new monsters that you may want for your team or need for exploration. This becomes less pressing once you're in mid/late game, but it can sometimes be an obnoxious thorn in an otherwise perfect rose for the combat and team building.
With that all said and done, time for the Metroidvania aspect of this game. For the most part, it's pretty solid. Now if you're a more dedicated Metroidvania fan, Monster Sanctuary is a bit lighter on its elements. Namely how there's less crazy skills and abilities you'll get compared to the typical Metroidvania and how the player character themself gets two main upgrades. That I can see being a bit of a turn off for some, but to say Monster Sanctuary is completely without what makes those games fun would be a lie. While the player character themself gets little upgrades for exploration, you still get many tools to help you explore the Sanctuary via the monsters themselves. Some can break down certain walls hiding loot, others can active elemental orbs to open up new paths, and there are those that enhance the mobility of the player with things like letting them fly for a bit, the ability to swim through water, or just being a mount for faster movement. Things like that and much more offers the player a lot of depth in exploration and how to interact with the world. Plus, it's an incredible way to still encourage the Monster Taming aspect of the game since the more monsters you get, the more opens up for your exploration and what you can find.
In addition to this, like other Metroidvanias, Monster Sanctuary can be quite open. Yes, the game does have an intended order for you and there are a decent number of places you need to finish first before accessing, if you know what you're doing, you can go off the typical path and access a good number of places early. And with the game's level scaling system, you can go to these later areas without being punished for doing so (though as a small tip, if you ever do get out-leveled by 3-5 levels, I'd recommend to drop your current task, level grind a bit, and then continue until you're on par again, resuming constant fights if the enemy starts being ahead by one level). Not only does that offer the Metroidvania fan their exploration itch, but the ability to go to different areas instead of one path also means more ways you can team build by finding certain monsters quicker. Also added in a later update is the ability to mark your map, which helps out with exploration a lot and shows map completion for each area, which is a godsend for those wanting 100% map completion.
Now onto the game's story. For the most part, it's an excuse plot for the gameplay. It's a fairly simple story to follow with maybe only two or three weird or rushed things to happen in it. However, it's a serviceable story and there's nothing really awful or bad dragging it down per say. At worst however, rather than having anything bad, there's just a lot of stuff that could have been greatly expanded on for some of the characters as you either see some elements where they could be improved upon or some stuff we don't get to see happen on screen. If you play the game, you'll know what I mean there.
While the main story's plot is pretty simple, one thing I will give the writing a lot of credit is the lore. When you look into it, either by what NPCs tell you or read up in the Monster Journal, this game has some very interesting lore about this game's world, from the backgrounds of each monster, how the Monster Keepers got some monsters into the Sanctuary to keep them protected from the Old World (outside of the Sanctuary), and various other world building details that make this game's world feel a bit more alive, but also "whimsical" that we don't get from many games nowadays. Would have preferred if more of this stuff was tied into the plot, but it's not a deal breaker and the actually interesting parts of the plot also often have ties to the lore you can learn about.
As for other aspects of this game, the music is great. The OST does start off a bit more tame, going for a more relaxed feel, but the further you get into the game, the more you start finding the game's best songs. Amongst these are more atmospherical feeling to each location, some very intense battle themes, and more. Easily helps elevate the game in a lot of places and moments that really needed it.
On the topic of sounds, I think the game's sound design, namely for combat noises, are really good. They really stick in your head, especially when you either get in a lot of hits, when the enemy takes a lot of passive debuff damage, and especially the sound effect for monsters being defeated are quite rememberable. Although I do think the succeed a bit too well for the missed sound effect and the agony it induces whenever that happens. Outside of the fights, the menuing and item obtained sound effects are also quite impactful as well.
Last thing I'll make note of are the visuals. This game looks great. Each of the game's main areas are well designed and all stand out on their own. All of the Monsters look quite nice and their sprites and art in the Monster Journal generally looks really great as well. It's a very visually pleasing game that helps to continue the endless charm of 2D sprites/pixelwork.
Overall, Monster Sanctuary is a fantastic game. Been almost four years since its release and this is still the best Monster Taming game that I have ever played and has so much to offer for many more years. It may not be perfect given its more simplistic story, but the utterly amazing game design, especially for its Monsters and 3v3 battles, makes up for many of the game's few short comings. If you love the Monster Taming genre, this game is one of the best ones that you can find. And you can even often find this game for cheap with it often getting discounted, making it quite the steal too. Again, Monster Sanctuary is an amazing game and gets one of my highest recommendations for people to play.