by Lord Badger
Let’s take the unmistakably successful formulaic gameplay of Pokemon, add a dark and mature story line, finish it all off with some gorgeous retro pixel art and you have Monster Crown: Sin Eater. A beautiful and instantly engaging monster trainer.
Story
Monster Crown: Sin Eater starts of as pretty much every monster tamer game does. You, Asur, are a young boy living a simple life on your family farm. Where the narrative differs is instead of living in some idyllic life you live under the tyrannical rule of Lord Taishakuten.
One day your older brother Dyeus returns home from his adventures as a monster hunt and tells you that an unstoppable world ending threat is approaching. Unfortunately he doesn’t go into much more detail as Lord Taishakuten men burst into your house, arrest him and drag him off to the city….and so your adventure begins.
Graphics
There is no getting around the fact that Monster Crown: Sin eater is a stunning example of pixel art done well. There is something I can’t quite put my finger on here. It’s nostalgic for sure but the pixel art for the monsters are unique and sometimes grotesque.
Everything from the map, to the menu, to the gameplay itself looks and feels like classic Pokemon….just a hell of a lot darker and grittier. Like someone took a classic Pokemon adventure and removed any shred of hope.
Gameplay
So, We have established the Monster Crown: Sin Eater looks amazing and has a dark and gritty story. All good so far right? So how is the gameplay? I hear you ask…..well that is complicated I’m afraid. Everything I have mentioned so far is great. I was hooked! But as I spent more time playing that joy soon dissipated.
The problem is two of the Monster Crown:Sin Eaters game mechanics either don’t work or break the game. I’m serious. The two main selling points of the game stopped me from playing.
First up, monster types. There are five different types of monsters in the game. They are: malicious, unstable, relentless brute and will.
in time honoured monster taming fashion malicious beats unstable, unstable beat relentless, relentless beats brute, brute beats will and as you would expect will beats malicious and so the the circle of weakness keeps ever on spinning.
All seems pretty formulaic and familiar so far right? you know how this works. You build a team of mixed types to take on monsters of that region and expand your stable of monsters. Except, in Monster Crown: Sin Eater monsters can have two or three different types of moves. which sort of defeats the whole point really. to make it worse I have a couple of monsters that have one of each move (I’ll get on to how in a bit) which really makes the idea of having types pretty moot really.
Up next for gaming breaking mechanics…Breeding. Touted as a selling point for Monster Crown: Sin Eaters, and it definitely was for me, but now I wish it never existed.
The problem is with breeding in any game, when you don’t put restrictions on it, you can simply get two powerful monsters and keep breeding them until you get some ridiculously strong monster and breeze through any challenge in the game.
Yes, yes I know, I didn’t have to keep breeding the same two monsters but if there is no penalty for inbreeding then nothing is really gonna encourage me to stop. I did occasionally introduce a different monster into my inbred monstrosities bloodline. But this was merely to break the game even more by introducing new move types. After not long at all I ended up with a couple of monsters that had one of each move type and pretty much became unstoppable.
You could argue this was my fault but I would counter with the fact the game does nothing to discourage it. If breeding was restricted to monsters with the same type or you had penalties for inbreeding I feel this could be a great game mechanic. As it is, well it just breaks the game I’m afraid.
Final Thoughts
I can’t lie, I fell in love with Monster Crown: Sin Eater almost instantly. the nostalgia, the dark and gritty story, the wonderfully familiar pixel art. There was so much potential here. I am genuinely upset that it all fell apart so quickly.
Monster Crown: Sin Eater has me extremely conflicted. There is a great game here. truly there is but it is spoilt by two of its major game mechanics. Now maybe I have to shoulder some of the blame for my unethical inbreeding programme but almost every gamer will do what they can to gain even the slightest of advantages.
Monster Crown: Sin Eater has the makings of a truly special game….it just falls foul to its own sins.
Overall Score – 7/10
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