Maybe I'm a weirdo, but I love when virtual card games have a little mini-rpg wrapper around them. I dunno, walking around an rpg map and talking to NPCs in between matches just makes me happy! Much like the Pokemon TCG gameboy game, Card Fighters is charming and mostly intuitive, with gorgeous pixel art. Some of the effect descriptions can be a bit confusing, but my main gripe is that the game is fairly stingy with card drops. You should expect to play against the same stable of opponents numerous times to earn some of the higher rarity cards. That wouldn't be so bad (I enjoy grinding every now and then), but because the drip of new cards was so slow, I never felt like my deck ever evolved past 'disorganized pile of the best cards I own'. There are legitimate card synergies present in the game, so it would have been neat to build into a specific archetype or strategy. Still, the game is full of life and joy, and captures a lot of what I enjoy about TCGs.

Did you know? It's well documented that first lady Hillary Clinton was an avid player of the Game Boy during her husband's presidency. However, what isn't as well documented is how she loved the handheld system so much that she bought two of them to give to George Bush and Dick Cheney before their inauguration as a symbol of goodwill among the two parties. Bush and Cheney reportedly loved Metroid II in particular so much that the game's plot about the Galactic Federation making up some bullshit about dangerous weapons and sending Samus to SR388 was what inspired the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

The term hidden gem gets thrown around too often, especially when a console's library is small. So in a world where about 70% of the Vita's library have been described as 'hidden gems' (even if they suck), it was surprising to find an honestly really interesting game that I'd never seen discussed beyond 2 or 3 blog posts saying it's alright. After beating it twice, I'm both glad I did but can also see why it's not as well regarded as it had the potential to be.

Lost Dimension can be summarized as Fire Emblem meets Xcom meets Among Us. Each chapter consists of taking 6 of 11 characters, all with unique skillsets, through maps filled with enemies. When you're done with the missions each chapter, you'll be prompted to eliminate the traitor among your cast. In any given save, the traitors are randomized (except for the first one on the first run). Once they're gone, their learned skillsets can be equipped to other characters, unlocking further powerful abilities with certain combinations. There's also a social link system where you talk to your allies and get an exclusive mission that you must complete to S-Rank them.

Let me say this: the gameplay is really good. It's a tactical RPG where there's no grid to move along to like other ones I've played thus far. The attacks are either targeted or positioning-based. Although the maps reuse the same enemies constantly and aren't really interesting overall, building your characters and making them wreck shit up is really fun. There's a dude who can teleport, a dude who can copy another dude's skillset, a dude that deals massive targeted damage, a dude that does massive AOE damage, a dude who buffs everyone.. etc. The cast feels well balanced, and after you start losing characters, it only adds to the customization. In New Game+, this only gets better (and is probably where the game is at its best.) You'll get a ton of skill points from the get-go, so you can complete a character's whole skill tree very fast. Sure, the difficulty kinda turns to shit that way, not that it was too high to begin with, but it then becomes a test to see how low your turn count can go. 

The character designs and graphics are also neat plus the soundtrack is great. That's pretty much all the nice things I have to say about this game. Here's what doesn't work: 

>The traitor system is shit

Between missions, you get a cutscene where 5 of the characters talk and some of their voices are red. If no voices are red, none of those 5 characters is a traitor, If 1-2 of them are red, they might be a traitor (or not). If 3 of them are red, there's a traitor in that group. You also get around 3 "Vision Points" per chapter, which you use to find out for sure if a character is a traitor or not. You're not the only one deciding who gets the boot, though, so once you find out, you'll need to spam missions without the treacherous character to get everyone else to vote for them. So not only is it pretty much a crapshoot whether you find out the traitor or not, it's also annoying to then kick them out. What happens if you do have traitors by the end? You'll have to fight them in the final battle, but nothing up until the very last chapter changes at all. It poses questions such as "do you sacrifice a weaker ally and keep the stronger traitor that'll fuck you up later?" but realistically, the "fucking up" barely affects you and the only reason you have a traitor in your party is because you fucked up who to kill. Can't savescum that,by the way! Also, in the penultimate floor you'll have to choose 2 traitors. Remember this.

>The story is just ok

In your first run, you probably won't get what the fuck is going on. You're on this tower, you lost your memory, and there's an evil guy,climb tower fight evil guy save the world yeah ok whatever. In the second run, you'll start noticing some differences; suddenly, there's this really white child loredumping the fuck out of the game and it turns into a chosen-one plot and the bad guy is actually somewhat sympathetic, yada yada yada. For a game you gotta play twice, this should have probably been divided better instead of every big revelation being saved for the back half. It also has the Fire Emblem problem where, since the game doesn't know what characters you have, none of them have much bearing on the plot. (though at least they talk,sometimes)

>Your second run might fuck you over

Personal annectode time. I picked this game up somewhere during the last week. I got like 10 hours in and was like yeah this is fine I guess. I stop playing for a while. 2 days ago, on a caffeine binge while procrastinating doing my portfolio, I pick it back up and get to the end. "wow,this ending is kinda weird felt like there was a lot left unsaid also uhhh that sword guy in the beginning, I think I'd like to use him". I google "lost dimension endings" and realize oh, I gotta beat it again to get the real ending and a different boss fight. To get the "true" ending, you'll need:
-All characters S-Ranked.
-Eliminate every traitor correctly
In my first run,I had managed to complete 7 of the 10 social links, so all that was left was the sword dude, the magnet dude, and the buff lady (I had actually done that one but forgot to talk to her after the character quest,which is what actually triggers the S-rank). On a GameFAQs thread, I start reading that oh shit, the traitors are randomized, so it's possible that I don't even get to complete the social links before I have to kill them! The earliest you can trigger S-ranks is the 4th chapter, so it might take 2 runs to get the best ending or it might take 3,4,5 runs to get it. A few people recommend using your second run just to max the missing characters, even if they are traitors. Fuck that, I'm not playing this shit a third time. I pray to RNGesus and press on. 

Thankfully, it seems to be going well. I get to the fourth chapter in just a few hours between yesterday and today, none of the needed characters have been traitors yet and I managed to find the traitors out. I get to the elimination part. I had used Deep Vision to find out the copy dude is the traitor. Ok I liked him in a first run but fine. He gets booted off. The antagonist shows up and goes "uhhh yeah you got kill one more lmao". Fuck. This had also happened in the first run, but I assumed it was just because I fucked up and had one extra traitor,somehow. I gather that the telekinesis kid was probably the traitor but my dumbass teammates boot someone else off. Oops! Reloading the save file doesn't do shit either, the damage is done. 

So there's no way to get the true ending in this run now, right? I'm already dreading having to replay the game again and possibly fucking it up when I boot the final mission. The boss goes on the same spcheel, the telekinesis kid (fuckin called it) goes surprise! traitor. I beat him easily and get to the final boss. But wait, there's a cutscene that wasn't here before despite the boss being the same? Here's what's happening. The ending and the boss you get are unrelated. The ending only really requires you to beat the game a second time and have all the S-Ranks (afaik), but says nothing about no traitors. If you want a slightly stronger final boss, you do need to have no traitors, but all the lore that gets spouted at you in the last 10 minutes is the exact same. I beat the boss in one turn using a busted-ass move that allows me to skip the opponent's turn. I'm done. Just Youtube the true boss.

It's not often that I feel the need to 100% beat games or even 90%,80% or 70%. In this case (it's like 95% beat if all that was gonna change was the final boss), the feeling of finding a cool game not often discussed was what propelled me to want to see all of it. And even though I technically didn't, it was still a fun time, and this is for sure what I'd call a 'hidden gem'. Sure, it might obviously be a budget game, the mechanics might not fully gel with each other and it may be miserable to see through the end for a RNG determined fraction of players, but it warrants more discussion than Drive Girls ever should,so.. at least try it out.

I thought it was building to something but the ending was the biggest pile of nothing. Gameplay was fun but repetative, I tended to play while watching tv.

The script was funny in places (congrats to the translators for putting in a few references that made me lol) but god there's one character that's completely transphobic and put a really bad taste in my mouth.

Also, fairly sure I was playing the UK version and they used the S slur? Not flagging that up and keeping the game a 12 is literally a breach of some sort of licencing law hhhhh. I don't think much care was taken in the making of this game.

Full video review: https://youtu.be/wRoXRy2AfcY

Overview and Game Loop
So the entire thing plays as a very structured turn-based JRPG. You’re thrown into this mysterious school setting with a main character that has amnesia and a “mist” that causes other students to go insane. The general game loop is extremely linear and follows the same pattern all the way through. You get some story dialogue, search a floor of some building within the school for a phone call, answer that phone call to engage in a battle in another realm, another story dialogue to close out that section, and then repeat this process over and over.

That’s the entirety of Monark and honestly, it’s a bit too structured for my tastes. I don’t have anything against linear games, but I also like JRPGs that don’t just recycle the same pattern to completion.

Exploration and Puzzles
In Monark, the most exploration you get is maybe entering a classroom and picking up a healing item before moving to your actual objective. That’s it. Otherwise, you simply need to solve a small puzzle to find the source of the mist for that given floor.

And I say puzzle, but that’s pushing it a bit given that most of the time you just need to memorize a small number or word sequence and enter it elsewhere - like the combination for a safe that you find on a sticky note in another room. The vast majority of the “puzzles” feel more like obstacles than something I enjoy doing.

Combat
None of the combat actually takes place in the school setting, instead being set entirely in this “other realm” that you have to dial into. Upon doing so, you select which units to deploy, where to deploy them, and then go at it in a neat mashup of different combat systems. It’s turn-based, but you have freedom of movement and can shuffle around your units as you please. Positioning is key as there are things like back attacks and assisting other units based on their proximity to a given enemy.

I liked the overall approach here. It’s not as strict as your regular turn-based JRPG, but still stays true to that experience without going full action-based. And there’s a good bit of depth too. You get entire skill trees per unit, the ability to outright defer your turn to any other unit, a full slate of status effects, buffs, and debuffs, and this cool madness and ascension system on top of it. These mechanics build on each other in cool ways, allowing you to set up combos with a bunch of assists flying everywhere or even situations where it becomes beneficial to let a unit go mad.

Ultimately though, this all comes with one major flaw: you hardly ever need or get to use these mechanics. About 90% of fights you can finish simply by using basic attacks and a lot of the time, you have to go out of your way to actually use the more complex mechanics. Boss fights are really the only time I ever got to see units go mad, use ascension, or ever felt the need to inflict status effects and debuffs.

Difficulty and Grinding
There are two difficulties: normal and casual, with the latter simply reducing damage taken by 30% in exchange for a decreased item drop rate. Both difficulties, however, are subject to the game’s absolutely insane difficulty spikes. I thought I was doing completely fine up until the second boss, which one-shot me numerous times until I dropped the difficulty to casual, which simply made it a two-shot instead.

Monark is a game that purposely keeps you underleveled and I found myself repeatedly grinding the optional fights over and over just to stay up to par with the bosses - there are no "normal" encounters. In most JRPGs, you can get by by simply fighting all encounters you run into or even dropping the difficulty if you want to play more leisurely, but Monark throws out both of those options. What you are left with is an incredibly grindy, repetitive, and unfulfilling game loop. And the fact that skeletons are the only enemies you fight does not help either.

Story
I feel it’s important to note that the dialogue and cutscenes take up probably about 50% of the game’s playtime, so it’s pretty beefy in that regard. That unfortunately doesn’t make it good though, and that’s ultimately the impression I got here. Mainly, I couldn’t shake this feeling that the story was trying to be too much and lacked focus.

I understand what is going on, but not what the writers are trying to convey with the story. It’s like a mess of ideas all cobbled together that sounds cool on paper, but lack the depth and direction to really work. The entire first act, for example, works like a series of short stories about individual student’s psychological problems and a slight dive into each of their backgrounds. Each gets expanded on later, but I should note that the first act alone is like 15 hours of gameplay so you will be waiting a while for the story to really kick into gear.

And it’s incredibly tropey too - to the point where it was hard to tell if I was playing a parody, but no, the game is actually taking itself seriously. This is the kind of anime story I would expect to appeal to 13 or 14 year olds, with so much edge I am surprised my controller didn’t cut me.

Graphics and Music
Monark looks about what I would expect from an early PS4 or late PS3 JRPG. It’s not outright terrible, but not good either - just bland. The music though might be my second favorite thing under the combat. The vocal tracks that play during boss fights absolutely slap and the regular background music isn’t that bad either.

PC Port
You get a small set of graphical options to change and the game ran flawlessly at 1440p, 60 fps on my 1070 Ti so I guess I can’t complain. I had no issues with the controls on controller and the default keyboard and mouse layout isn’t that bad either. You do not get a cursor on screen though, so the mouse is just used for its buttons.

Overall
Monark is a bit of a mess of ideas - some good, some bad, but most leaning a bit towards the latter. You get some nice combat, but coupled with some very grindy progression and lackluster gameplay outside of that combat. You get a story with some nice themes, but little coherence between all of these themes and filled with so many anime tropes that it’s hard to take seriously. A disappointment overall as a big JRPG fan.