Monster Sanctuary

2D Platformer + Monster Catcher game is a perfect combo. This game starts off running and does'nt stop. Soon enough you'll be knee deep in team strats and buff/debuff combos.

It's honestly a shock to me that this game isn't overwhelmingly positive. I have nearly 500 hours in this game and felt the urge the other day to do another playthrough.
Satisfying platforming and exploration, minimal but fun story, and by far the best turn based RPG system I have ever played. The amount of depth in the team building and synergy is off the charts. Complete creative freedom for the player to build how they want. Can't recommend this enough if you like RPGs or pokemon like games.

It's a fun game that I won't finish. I definitely recommend folks check it out. However, it's worth knowing that there's a fair amount of grinding and the game is centered around building synergistic teams to counter specific fights/areas. This is not a game where you can pick a party full of mons you like aesthetically and then coast on that team until the end of the game. Ultimately, I'm held back by my lack of patience and general unwillingness to rebuild my team repeatedly over the course of the game. If there were no barrier to swapping the party around (leveling, shifting, skill resets, etc.) I'd be more interested in just trying out a bunch of different strategies.

It's also worth noting that the story is pretty dull and exploration abilities are tied to collecting mons which will be inhibited if your strategy/synergy is subpar and you cannot get eggs as rewards from 4-5 starring fights.

If you love pixel + pokemon + digimon indie kind of game, this game is totally for you.

Fun game that didn't overstay it's welcome but instead felt like it needed more, the game was fun and enjoyable. The concept was unique, the story however was TOO simple and I wish the "Post Game" story was extended further. I wish there was auto-battle at times since wild encounters are such a waste of time honestly unless it was a first encounter type thing. The combat was good but the wild encounters really made it feel like a drag considering the length of the "Main Story". Overall it's a solid 8.5/10, it knew what it wanted to be but there were definitely some changes that could have been made to make the experience even more enjoyable.

I cannot believe I didn't find this game sooner! Fantastic game that takes everything great about pokemon and puts it into a fun and refreshing format. I wish Gamefreak could do this...

Amazing game, especially if you're a metroidvania fan, and/or a Pokémon fan. I had a blast all the way through. Master difficulty made it very enjoyable for me, since I was looking up for a level of challenge that Pokémon games usually fail to provide.

I think this game has fair platformer elements to it. Although the real meat of the game revolves around the monsters. They have unique monsters that all have their own areas where they are found, and has unique moves/ abilities which makes team building very fun. Although you cant play online because no one is around and there isn't much a replayablity because you can play with most, if not all, the monsters on your first playthrough. I think if in the mood for a new monster collector game, then you really cant go wrong with this one.

It's a cute game, nothing groundbreaking. The Monsters have different sets of skills and it's fun to try to figure out which Monsters compliment each other for the three-Monster teams. The combos are interesting to play around with. Most monsters don't "evolve", but a few do with the right catalyst. The combat is not very complicated, and your team always goes first; no surprises, first strikes, or individual turn order. Unremarkable, trope-filled plot. All in all, a comfy game with a few challenges, but lends itself to just tinkering with team combinations.

Mixing metroidvania with monster taming works surprisingly well. Overall, a really good game with very interesting and unique mechanics!

Pro
+ Complex skill trees
+ Impactful weapons and accessories
+ Many different traversal abilities from all the different monsters
+ Exploring is a lot of fun because finding new monsters and equipment opens up many new paths and strategies
+ A special "shiny"-system

Meh
~ Monster designs range from extremely generic to super unique and well animated
~ The world looks nice, but sometimes also very generic... especially the caves/dungeons
~ PvP Arena... nice to have i guess? Never used it and it unlocks a bit late in the game

Con
- Story and dialogue is EXTREMELY bad and annoyed me so much... i saw so many plotholes (a bad guy told me he killed someone, but then the same person tells me that nothing can perish in the sanctuary? And how come someone who was frozen in time for HUNDREDS OF YEARS knows so much about... ok i have to shut up or this gets too long)
- Food system felt a bit inorganic and unnecessary
- I couldnt find an option to check the passive skills during combat... especially at higher levels it gets a bit tedious to remember the passives of all my monsters (does buffing with this monster in the current round give additional shield or healing?)

The complexity of all the unique mechanics make Monster Sanctuary definitely worth to check out! Still, its a bit rough around the edges, keep that in mind when you think about buying it.

An almost perfect metroidvania style monster battling game. There's more than 100 monsters to choose from, countless combinations and strategies, and so many ways to play. I was able to 100% it in just under 50 hours and I am pleasantly surprised to see there's fun new things you can do in NG+ mode. I would struggle to come up with any other complaint than I only want the game for a solo pve experience so the pvp part doesn't apply to me. That said it doesn't really have a negative effect on playing through the main story. Definitely worth the purchase price and it's a no brainer if it's on sale.

This game might be for you but its not for me tbh. Locking monsters behind doing perfect in a battle is kind of lame.

this game is amazing!
i wish i had discovered it earlier.
my first playthrough took me roughly 60h.
yeah, it can be hard and frustrating, but i never lost my interest and motivation to keep on going, trying, leveling, exploring and collecting.
i even bought it a second time (for the switch) - it's so incredibly good. and even if i'm 4+ years late to the party, for me it's a candidate for my game of the year <3

As a metroidvania.. this is 10 out of 10 for me. Music is a banger, gameplay is great, quite long, post story content, sufficiently in depth story.. Highest quality indie game.

Just got my last achievement for this game, took me 45 hours, at a price of around GBP 15, this is a great deal!

Enjoyed collecting and growing the different monsters. The battling and skills systems is surprisingly complex.

I agree with other reviews that the plattforming side of the game is a bit boring, but that shouldn't surprise since this is a creature collecting game and not a plattformer. Besides, I would not have enjoyed more plattforming that what the game offered.

Definitely recommended!

Very enjoyable team battle mechanics, very adorable artwork too! Currently obsessed with collecting them all~! Shout out to their upcoming game Aethermancer, it brought me here!

It's okay.

Game was fun for the first 10 to 15 hours. But I don't know, at some point it just got tedious and I just wasn't having fun anymore.

I think it's too much grind. To keep up with the level scaling of the monsters and enemies you can't skip too many fights. But damn does the fight takes forever. So it ends up feeling like I spend 4 hours fighting instead of actually exploring the map/going through the story.

You also can't just simply pick whatever monsters you like and put them in a team as you will likely have a hard time near the end of the game. The monsters you picked need to have at least some form of synergy with each other. Either a burst team, a buff team, a charge team or buff/cleanse team.

It is most likely that the team you end up with that could clear the game would have at least 2 monsters that you don't really like but are just there because it gels well with the team. What's worse was that the monsters that I do want to get that fit my team locked near the end of the game where there's nothing left to do but new game+.

I didn't quite like the 5 star system either. I understand why it is there, but I think it is waaayyy too strict. You can easily tell that you are using a sub optimal team when you reach 3 stars rating in a normal encounter. In the end it felt like the system went against what the devs intended. Instead of rewarding the players for playing it right and optimally, it instead ended up feeling like the the game punishes and criticizes the players for choosing to play with the Mons you like instead of the Mons that have synergy with each other.

I think the story is okay, but it wasn't enough for me to push through to the end. Maybe if there was no need for me to grind or if there could just be more self sustaining monsters that have less reliance on others. I would be ok with a sub-optimal auto-fight as well.

I'll probably come back to this another day.

100%-ed the game. Masterpiece.

Music is 10/10.

There's a lot of strategy involved in teambuilding, and a lot of variance in viable builds.

Story is nothing to write home about, but it's decent enough to serve its purposes.

Looking forward to Aethermancer!

I've really enjoyed this game, I have it on the Switch as well and having a good time on my second run now on the PC with a different team. The skill trees on each monster and the shifting is a nice touch, fans of the genre should enjoy and get an easy 40-60 hours of playtime. (I'm a little more than halfway through at the time of this review)

Looking forward to Aethermancer in the future from the same developer.

Grew up with the older pokemon games. This gives me a bit of that joy as an adult.

It isn't perfect, but after 20 plus hours on gamepass on the xbox and now a steam purchase, it is a good game.

Probably going to be one of those games I slowly 100%. Lots of little "puzzles", but it has been my background game when I want to watch a TV show or listen to an audiobook while just zoning out.

I am sure others have better reviews.

Played this game on the switch originally; about 100+ hours, and i just got this for PC.

A very fun strategy game but can be challenging.

My favorite Spectral Monster to use is the Eagle.

Monster Sanctuary may not be perfect, but it sure does a lot of things right with the Battle Mechanics. I love the fact that I can change my Monster's Play Style by investing points in the expansive Skill Tree. Just using Raw Power is not good enough to win, its all about Team Building and Strategy in fights. With so many Skills, Passives, Auras available it may be difficult to create a good team but its possible. This game encourages experimentation, and you need to know what counters what in Ranger Battles to win. If your burned out playing Pokemon over the years, I highly recommend buying Monster Sanctuary. 111 collectible Monsters may not sound a lot but it really doesn't matter considering you can customize your builds with different skills to fit your needs.

Very fun and rewarding turn-based RPG. The team-building and combat strategy is great and more complex than it appears at first glance.

Though maybe not the "main" point of the game compared to the monster collection and combat, the world traversal, while simple compared a fully-fledged Metroidvania game, is very satisfying if you like that style.

Really fun! I've seen a lot of people complaining about the story simplicity but I found it charming. The monster lore is a bit silly sometimes imo but its cool. Combat is easy but challenging enough to be engaging. I don't think this game offers a ton of replayability for me, however I may change my mind after trying ng+ and its nuzlocke-style feature. The environments and level design are interesting! Like them a lot.

Pokemon but 10x better

It is super fun, and the graphics and art style are wickeed charming

The best part of this game imo, is using your creatures to traverse the world.

Fun as hell. Mechanics are easy to learn but make the game much more dynamic!

Battle's are awesome,
Little secrets everywhere,
Best game I've ever played.

the story is interesting, the combats offer a variety of puzzles to figure out, i like the other puzzles in the game. I haven't fully scratched the surface but this game is really, really nice.

Really nice game.

This game really caught me off guard. The turn-based combat has a shocking amount of depth, and the developers did a great job balancing the game such that you're naturally driven to explore the different build and team composition options to give you an edge in some of the more challenging areas. If you've been frustrated with how easy and mindless modern Pokemon games have been, this is the game you're looking for.

It's definitely a creature collecting game first and a metroidvania second, but the developers did a great job merging the two genres. Naturally, your monsters act as your items with each having an overworld ability. Also, I'm pretty sure it's the only creature collector I've played where I felt like catching them all was fun and doable in a reasonable amount of time.

This game really feels like a hidden gem and it pains me that it's not more popular than it is. It's 20 bucks at full price. BUY THIS GAME.

Metroidvania plus Pokemon, done well.

If the game came out 25 years it would have been a masterpiece. As it wasn't though, the amount of archaic design choices is absurd.
-Unable to sync new monsters to your current level without consumable items
-EGREGIOUS amounts of backtracking, where you don't get all your abilities to find secret areas until basically the end of the game.
-Cryptic systems, that might have been interesting in 1997, but now you'll just google them. Just put the info in the game, every time I have to go to the wiki it pisses me off.

Overall, it's a really fun game, and I think they really nailed the combat. Buffs and debuffs really matter, enough that counter buffing and debuffing is extremely strong; very few games get this right. A mix of tanks support and damage works as intended (it's hard to round 1 nuke everything). Fights feel challenging, with many boss fights making you really need to pay attention that what they're doing and counter it. Also you can control the combat animation speed, which is a really nice QoL feature.
The puzzles in the game are fine. I don't really care for puzzles in games, but these weren't too annoying.
Exploration feels ok. There are some secrets without visual indicators which means you need to test every single wall in the game, which is annoying. Aside from the EGREGIOUS amounts of backtracking in the game, normal exploration feels pretty good.
Items are fine. The food mechanic feels kind of like bloat, but you only rarely need to deal with it. Upgrades are kind of annoying due to limited resources.
The monsters feel pretty good overall. Some are clearly better than others, but all of the monsters are usable, even the really early games ones. The skills are petty interesting, and you can make some really strong synergies. It's really unfortunate that levels don't sync because I would have had a lot of fun trying different combinations. Unfortunately by the time you can purchase the leveling item as a consumable the game is like 90% over. Also the monster shifting items being a limited quantity is annoying. I didn't use a single one all game because I didn't want to waste them.
The story, writing and characters are all fine. I didn't find much particularly annoying which is pretty good, since most other similar games are borderline unbearably cringe.
Music is fine. Gets a little repetitive but it serves its purpose.

There appears to be some end game content, but I'm probably not going to play it. I've already beaten the hidden last boss, so I don't really see the point. I was planning to backtrack though and unlock everything, but at this point I don't really want to.

Overall it's a good game, but it feels like a huge missed opportunity. If the game was designed in a more modern way that respected your time, it would be like 300% more enjoyable. Maybe 5% of people who play this game will enjoy the archaic systems that artificially extend the game length, but everyone else would rather enjoy a single play through and move on. This style of game was fun when back when I was young and didn't have 40 other games waiting to be played in my Steam library.

I recommend the game as long as you have some patience, or really enjoy games that take a while to 100% complete.

It's a solid experience overall, but I think the game gets even more exciting after reaching max level and unlocking all monsters. At that point, you can experiment with countless builds and synergies, and every monster is viable in some way. This really makes you think a lot, especially with the tough keeper challenges that constantly push your team to its limits. If you're into experimenting or theorycrafting, you'll likely enjoy the game thoroughly, but if you just want a fun Metroidvania or creature-collector experience, there's still plenty for you to enjoy too.

this game is so good! you guys should give it a try

JRPG x Pokémon x Metroidvania, and a good one at that.

exept the platformer part, that can be very anoying sometime, and never intersting :
(i would like an option to remove it of the game, make that the game automaticaly do the imput for maximum height multijump, that is somtime needed with high precision multiple time in raw)

it is a good game.
the teambuilding, chose of attacks with synergy, strategy with the monster, is good.

Goog game. Yeag.

This game is very strange in a way, i got decently far in the game, but a series of the game's strange dissensions just made it a chore to play. It started with going into an area that was almost like a sun temple after completing the snowy peaks. but when i entered, it was from underground, but here i am in the open air, which makes no seance, it pretty much ruined the area for me since it obliterated any sense that this was its own little world rather than a game world.

And then there was the level jump, every thing was way higher level in an area i didn't like with monsters i didn't like, the entire place felt like slog, so i stopped playing, i have gotten my moneys worth of content so i quit. I real felt that this game could be better, and might even get better, but i'm not going though that stupid temple. (it admit idly didn't help that i discovered a really good minecraft mod by that time, stealing away any time i would want to spend playing a game).

Monster Sanctuary is a great monster-gathering metroidvania game. With a great artstyle, varied and unique monsters to gather and a solid soundtrack, it truly was a blast of fun to play trough.

Aurumtail, magmamoth & Rocky were some of my favourite monsters..

This game is amazing.

Best Pokemon-like I've ever played.

Surprisingly fun and addictive gameplay 👍

This is ART in the form of a video game.
Moi Rai Games does such a great job on the exploration, combat music, pixel art, depth of mechanics that I can't recommend enough the game.

Please play this masterpiece.

A rather amazing explortion and monster collecting game pokemon fans would most ceartinly enjoy this tittle. those who enjoy the more casual side of turn based strategy but want a bit of complexity whilst remaining easy to understand. The story is rather simple and quite charming and melds well with the realms history. i"ve found the music a bit on the loud side i do suggest turning it down a bit.

Good game, good price, very relaxing to play

Excellent Metroidvania with turn-based combat. Your teams are comprised of monsters that you collect along the way, and you can collect EVERY monster, minus the bosses. Don't let the cute pixel art fool you, this game can be quite challenging. Buy It!

Brilliant game, highly recommend.

For anyone who read the negative review complaining about drop rates being tied to your battle rating, the respawn rates of monsters, and the unskippable encounters don't worry, he's a moron:
-It's easy to get high enough ratings for the drops you want, even if you're not trying hard.
-Encounters respawn after you clear 3 others or use a cheap item.
-You can either just jump past most monsters or get an ability later in the game that lets you skip them.

The game has a highly addictive loop of finding new monsters that both:
-Have abilities that let you get to new parts of the map.
-You can theorycraft around to build a cool team/synergy for combat.

It's well worth playing even if you're not big on metroidvanias, and there's plenty of QoL and convenience built in for both the turn-based battler half and platformer half that means neither drag down the pace of the game or get frustrating if you fail. You just get put exactly where you were and get to try again. as there's basically no punishment for losing.

You can re-spec any monster at any time using a cheap item, and you'll often run into encounters that will make you re-think your approach, and cook up a better team in order to continue. You're encouraged to sub out different monsters depending on typing, and basically all of them are viable (you'll still see beginner monsters used in end-game fights).

Seriously, give it a try, and keep an eye out for Aethermancer being developed by the same guys if you're into Roguelites. Sadly I'm not, so I'll be waiting on a Monster Sanctuary 2, or a a permanent explore/story mode when they release their next game.

Game was fun,but I will not play twice.