MONARK

Story was great, however I felt the ending was rushed. It's presentation / direction left me feeling unsatisfied and thinking "oh that's it, I beat the game".The combat on the other hand was hitting the neurons when you realize it revolves around the resonance system. When you link up with teammates and acquire their skills, it just opens up disgusting combos that can one shot enemies. The Boss music in this game is PEAK. They're all good and catchy and just get me hyped for the battle. I even listen to them outside of the game.

My only complaints are that the grind in this game is TEDIOUS. it feels like the developers made it as boring and long to bloat your play time. It wasn't worth doing the last 2 Fertile Grounds because i would end up clearing the previous ones way faster and get a better rank netting me more SP (Fertile Ground 7 my beloved). The last thing i absolutely despised are the instant death moves. You could be nearing the end of a battle and an enemy uses a skill that just straight kills you saying "death". This wouldnt be a problem if it wasn't for the fact that if the MC dies, it's game over. This becomes extremely frustrating during boss fights where the enemies are tough and it takes a a lot of turns to even get to the boss in the first place.

Overall, its a gem in a rough game. I don't regret getting all the achievements and was actually sad that it was over. If you don't think this game is worth the full price tag, that's fine. I personally feel like getting it on sale is the best option. Please Try Out Monark!

Is this one of the best games I've played? No. But low key, I really enjoyed this. There are issues, no doubt, but there's a lot to like, for example. at how it skews many of the expectations of the genre - even if the vast majority of the twists are signposted very clearly (which, don't get me wrong, is FAR preferable to the opposite).
Combat is a tactical affair, which is quite easy to pick up if you've ever played a tactical jrpg. Your party can assist each other in battle if close enough, you can launch uncounterable back attacks, you have magic abilities for offence, support, and health. You probably know the drill. Then comes the slight skewing of the genre - magic costs sanity (going insane turns you berserk and then die after three turns - which loses you the fight if it's the MC) and physical attacks (other than basic ones) cost HP - think the same kind of stuff as Persona, for example. However... you can also use said madness to achieve Enlightenment for a few terms, vastly increasing your stats, giving you a risk versus reward set-up.
The combat itself could have benefited massively from more variety in the maps and enemies (but honestly, I've found that in a lot of tactical jrpgs that get praised to high heaven (like FFT, or Disgaea for example) and it feels more of a criticism of the genre itself, and the limitations of it.) Once you work out what you are doing (and the sheer power of the MCs special abilities) there is no need to grind unless you want to 100% it like I did. I was going into the final fight of the post game with almost all of the party 30 levels below, it's that powerful when utilised properly.
The story is... Well, let's just say it has its fair share of things that make me wince, wondering why the devs would think it was a good idea. Silent protagonist - big wince. (Seriously, I can't think of a good reason to include it other than (maybe) not having to pay much for the little voice acting you then include.) Amnesia (and other plot points) which people barely seem to comment about, and questions that should be asked rarely being done - big wince, albeit slightly redeemed later on. Being willing to die for your friends... but not give them all of the very important info you have on the situation at hand because... reasons I guess. Wince. A student body and faculty staff being remarkable unbothered by lots of people dying, people going mad, and a whole host of things that in a normal world would have seen them all panicking and running around willy-nilly before being claimed themselves - Seriously, I don't even want to go to a Japanese college/high school (depending on what they are called where you live...). Those places are unhinged! I spent most of the start of my time playing the game wanting to scream at the characters why they aren't freaking out more.
But I still loved it. It's dark, and off piste, and isn't afraid to touch some dark stuff, or unconventional wisdom into the mix. I liked the central thrust of the conceit which essentially takes the emotions labelled as the deadly sins, and play around with how these emotions can actually lead to drives for good things as well as bad if you get consumed by them. The romantic interest - such as it is, isn't the one you would have expected it to be. The music is in general really rather good and scene setting. There are some ACTUAL puzzles in it. Not fetch quests, but things you actually have to work out yourself, which is groundbreaking in today's world. (The final one is either really tough, or really simple, and if you find it tough I wouldn't blame you for looking up the answer. There is one other one I found a little difficult, as well, but most of them had enough info given to you that you could work it out okay.) Honestly, I had an absolute blast, and if there was a sequel for it, or something similar made off the back of it, I'd be interested.
That said, I don't have all that much money, and don't think I could have justified my purchase at full price. Getting in a sale softens your expectations and lets you put up with some things you wouldn't usually.
I'd say, give it a shot - it might not be for you, but equally, it might be your very own guilty pleasure.

I liked the characters, the music and story, but the combat just wasn't for me.

I looked up the answers for some of the puzzles, but if I put in the effort, I could've probaly figured it out, maybe.

This one gets a tepid recommendation.

Combat has some interesting bits (like how the resonance ability lets you turn +1 bonus for each team member into +5 just by sharing each bonus between all resonating members), but can feel slow and grindy (higher level enemies can't really be outmaneuvered if you're too low level - and on the other hand, if you are max level, nothing in the game is an actual challenge, including the true final boss). I'd recommend Scarlet Nexus for more dynamic combat where you share teammates' powers, or Caligula Effect for tactical combat where you can actually avoid attacks by careful timing/positioning.

Story is just ok - they went for something fairly convoluted, which is ambitious/admirable... except then pretty much all twists/reveals were heavily telegraphed way ahead of time, and I just felt stuck waiting for them to happen already. "Choices" you're given are NEVER meaningful (with a single exception at the very end of the post-game content) - for example, for a question like "is it ok if I join?" the answer options are "of course" and "we're glad to have you". Characters are ok too - I did find a bunch of teammate interactions funny, and cared enough to do some grindy post-game stuff for one of them. There's also the option to talk to NPCs for different responses in different phases of the game, which is nice to have (in my opinion, though, only a few of these were funny or interesting - most were just super generic and forgettable).

Some more minor gripes:
* the "skip" option only works for the character lines, and NOT for situations where the game just pans extra slowly across the room before/between/after character lines
* for the English translation they made the choice to just never include honorifics (-san, -chan, etc) or common terms like senpai - obviously it's not a dealbreaker or anything, but in my experience most games just leave those in, and they don't suffer for it. Seeing high schooler characters call the club president "Madam President" seemed a bit stilted/unnatural, too

Temp review:
Someone lied about this game not having random encounter to level, guess he didn't bother to read the beginning..... you can powerlevel by being close to a certain person and make a call, so you can farm. I would have told them but they've disabled their comment thus the game isn't as hardcore as it seems unless like them you can't read.

Ok game is fun, with a combat system that really is too repetitive to grind but enough interesting for the little times you had to do it, basicly you go for the story that is actually well made so if you want a good game with good story with a little side TRPG this game is for you but if you want a good TRPG with story well go for disgaea or other games like that.

Having 100% the game overall was a fun experience. Was grindy but once you figure out the strats it wasn't that bad. good story but even better music. Not too hard either, some fights were hard but overall not too hard