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!

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

Full review (no spoilers):
The game filter you if you aren't very smart, don't like to grind, don't like reading, don't like exploring, aren't patient (especialy at a certain part of the game).
The game is pretty good, not a masterpiece for sure but it's worth completing and you could use a guide If you have some issues, take your time with this game, when stuff changed around school I've made sure to visit everything and talk to everyone to read new stuff, at some point you may feel tired and call the game lazy for it but it's a way to show the player a certain emotion, like If you've started to watch Re:Zero you may get tired because stuff reset so the game does put a weight on the player for a reason and that's important because there is no triumph on an easy victory.
If you check the % of achievement you'll see that like 10% players have completed this game so If you tend to give up easily.... all this make the game worthy of completing. Below you'll find the temp review that do talk about some lies some people have said, you can grind and you'll probably have to grind, not as much as a disgaea game tho.
Here's a tip for a part of the story, still not a spoiler but make the story a bit better: Start your journey with a president then end it with a male junior, you'll understand when you be there, you'll be confused at first as If you had no choice but that mean you aren't there yet, good luck.
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.

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

Number one game not to play with a headache. Oh gods I have no clue where I am anymore...

A jrpg with tactical combat and an interesting story with amazing characters and an incredible soundtrack that suffers from a lot of repetition and a really slow start.

Starting with its good points, Monark's story takes place in Shin Mikado Academy, a school that has been cut off from the rest of the world by a magical barrier. Some parts of the school are affected by a mist that causes people to go mad. The mist is created when pactbearers, people who have teamed up with demons that live in the otherworld connected to the school, make use of their powers

Your job as the hero, who is in my opinion a case of the amnesiac protagonist done exceptionally well, is to defeat the pactbearers and clear the mist from the school.

I loved the story, the setting is intriguing, it's got a fair amount of plot twists and you get to guess some of them by reading records found around the map which made that feel rewarding.

The main cast of characters is full of personality, each one of them deals with their own set of traumas and insecurities and some of them you'll get to know them from the perspective of both allies and enemies. They feel like real people fighting their own demons. Monark likes to deal with strong negative emotions such as regret, fear, anxiety and so on, and it does so beautifully.

The only caveats are that the story starts off painfully slow and that, at a certain point in the game, you'll need to replay a certain portion of the story with a different character each time. The game uses this time to go more in-depth into each character's life and motivations, which it couldn’t do earlier. The payoff when you finish this section is amazing. That said, you will be visiting the same maps, and the battles themselves don’t change much, if at all. This makes this portion of the game feel fairly repetitive.

Another thing I loved is the music, the voiced tracks are absolute bangers while also accompanying the characters they represent extremely well. If you are reading this and decide not to play the game, please still give the main theme a listen.

Regarding the combat it's, I'd say, strange. It's a tactical RPG that lacks features like being able to see your enemies movement range or abilities.

The characters stats are in the three digits realm, and can go up to four digits with buffs. The game doesn't show exactly how much damage you'll do so I just went by feel. Early battles can be a bit hard but later on it's quite easy to break the game by abusing its mechanics.

It also tends to get a bit repetitive as there isn't much enemy variety and you will spend a good chunk of battles just traversing the field until you get access to skills that increase your movement.

There is also an "awake" and "mad" system. Human characters can increase their "awake" gauge by doing certain actions, when it reaches 100% they enter a buff state for three turns. While all characters increase their "mad" gauge by casting most abilities, when it reaches 100% they gain increased stats but you lose control of them and they die in three turns. If you manage to get a character to both 100% awake and 100% mad they become enlightened which gives them an insane buff for the duration of the state. Managing these gauges at later stages of the game becomes essential and the game rewards you greatly for making use of this system.

One thing I really enjoyed about the gameplay is that your character plays a more supportive role from the back rather than being a powerhouse, which can be if you want to, but I've found it most enjoyable as an enabler of other characters strengths rather than a damage dealer himself.

Overall, while I had my frustrations, Monark left me greatly satisfied and I'm looking forward to Varlet later this month.

Even tough I have not played much yet, it feels pretty solid.