I had high hopes for this one, it being a game made by ex-Persona staff. So I got it at launch last week and played it a bunch in-between playing Elden Ring.

I am now 20 hours in and I’m fucking done. That puts me around the halfway mark of the game, and I feel like things are either getting worse, or I just can’t take it anymore. This is very unfortunate, but wow, this game is something else. And not in a good way.

So I am NOT reviewing it since… you know… I can’t (because I didn’t finish it… take note, “professional” reviewers), but at least I’ll give my impressions so far and explain why I’m done with it… This is as much as you’re getting from me review-wise for this one.

Let’s go!

The good

The combat is fine. On your turn, you can move any of your characters in a free movement-style system, where you have a certain range you can move within, and launch attacks/use skills. Hitting enemies from behind prevents counter-attacks and causes a bit more damage, and physical attacks will let teammates assist if they’re close enough. There are a few interesting combat options. The main character can use resonance with either allies or enemies. What resonance does is share authority skills (basically special attacks) and also status. So if one of the characters under resonance has an attack buff, all characters in the resonance also get it. But that’s a double-edged sword since resonance also copies status effects. So if you have resonance going for all your party and an enemy puts one of your characters to sleep, it puts ALL your characters to sleep. And this is a problem because you have no GOOD way to know which enemies might do something like this, since all enemies are the same skeleton, sometimes with some different decoration. Overall a pretty okay battle system. It does have the really stupid modern RPG system of “game over if the main character dies” which NEEDS to stop being a thing.

The leveling is pretty unique. Instead of regular leveling, every character has a skill tree. Winning battles gives you Spirit. You can spend Spirit in individual characters’ skill trees. This makes them learn the skill you selected (or power it up, most skills have 3 or 5 levels they can go up), but it also increases the character’s level, and thus their stats. You can reset characters and regain Spirit if needed (which you will need to when you change your party around since you can never have more than one human character following you for some reason that is not explained… the other characters that form your party are skeletons based on one of the 7 sins). You can’t give equipment to human characters, so their power is entirely level-based. The skeletons do get 3 equipment slots (head, body, legs) so they have an extra option for getting stronger.

Everything else

“Dungeons” are not really dungeons. You go to different parts of the game’s school that are covered in a supernatural mist that makes people in the mist go crazy. Rather than having random battles and trying to get to the end, instead, you have to walk around the area, try talking to people or finding notes, and figure out what you need to do with those hints. Usually it adds dialogue options or gives you a code to open a safe, to eventually get an NPC to get out of your way. So far only one of the puzzles I did involved going outside of the “dungeon” and I had to google that one because I have no idea how I was meant to figure it out beyond randomly walking around the different parts of the school until I randomly found something, which is very much the opposite of good game design. The last one I did made no sense to me, and I was just about done with playing this anyways.

What is really weird about these dungeons is how you die. Of course, you can die in battle but that’s something separate. You can increase your “MAD” meter just by being in the mist and you die if you get it to 100% on the main character. There’s something called Death Calls. Your phone rings, which makes NPCs go even crazier and kill you if they touch you. If you answer the call to stop it from ringing, you get a battle you can’t win. Nice. BUT you can just disable Death Calls to the current “dungeon” anyways. By being close to Vanitas and calling the number he gives you at the start of every “dungeon”, you get a battle where all you have to do is break a crystal that has 1 HP. There you go, no more Death Calls. WEIRD. I have no idea why Death Calls are a thing when you’ll just end up disabling them anyways, especially if you want to level up. Because there are NO random battles. You just have to go close to Vanitas and call the newest number he gives you and you just repeat battles there until you’re satisfied. So the “dungeons” are just walking around puzzle-solving, with no real risk or anything really happening. Really odd. There’s one instance where one of the NPCs would randomly scream and kill you if you were within scream range. Huh. And the puzzles are fine but a bit obtuse at points, and by the time I gave up, it was mostly because it was getting really bad. The “dungeons” just overall happen to be a bit boring. Just grind a bit by calling the newest number and solve the puzzle for a “final” battle to progress.

The skeleton party members you get are a bit strange. There are 7 stats you get based on the deadly sins. There are different points of the story where you get an extra skeleton, and which one you get is based on what your highest stat is (if you already have that one you skip to the next for example). So you have no real way to “choose” what you get. The skeleton has a different skill tree based on which it is, so Pride and Greed play differently. You get those stats by doing personality tests and killing enemies, pretty much. It’s entirely random unless you’re good enough to know exactly what stats personality tests will increase, and it’s not like you’ll know what skill tree each of the 7 skeletons have anyways. This also goes to another weird element, Alter Egos. You NEED to talk to every NPC because some of them have Alter Egos. Those are just dark crystals that pop up in different parts of the school (no good indication of where they might appear). If you interact with them, it will tell you how much of a stat you need. If you have the stat at the correct level, you get the Alter Ego, which gives all your characters (including ones not yet in your party) a permanent stat boost. This is very weird and annoying. As if the game wasn’t enough “pointlessly-walking-through-the-school”, you have another thing that makes you do that.

The story is weird. Like, it’s pretty normal stuff overall. School gets stuck in a supernatural event because of some of the students and faculty making pacts with demons, and you have to stop it by also making a pact with a demon because why not… and you have amnesia for whatever reason… and it doesn’t matter because you play as Blanky McBlank the Silent, so your character barely even exists. There’s nothing super noteworthy here. But what is really weird is the Monarks. Monarks are those demons that people are making pacts with, they’re very powerful and also make the pactbearers very strong. You’d think they’d be important, being powerful demons that represent the deadly sins. You finally meet your first one expecting a big personality and shit… NOPE. They don’t fucking talk. At all. What? The game is called Monark, why aren’t the Monarks actual characters? Maybe there’s something past the halfway point where I gave up where they become characters. I don’t care to find out.

There’s not really anything else. You go through pretty boring cutscenes, get to the newest “dungeon” which is just a new floor in the building, stand next to Vanitas to call up some skeletons to fight until you level up a bit (which is a big complaint in a way because all the enemies are identical), then solve a puzzle, do another battle, and repeat. It ends up not being particularly interesting. The combat and leveling are fine. Everything else isn’t.

Overall

I am truly baffled by how the game was… designed like this. Like… If they replaced the weird puzzle-solving and otherwise-empty “dungeons” with actual dungeons (maybe in the Otherworld), maybe it would make some sense, but as it is… it’s a pretty odd game, and I’m not sure it’s… good. And hey, I gave up halfway, maybe it gets better after that point. I doubt it, but there’s a chance.

At this point, this is definitely a game I can’t recommend. There are much better RPGs you can get out there.

Gameplay design is omni-important, and this one needed more time in the oven.