Monster Sanctuary
Game Title: Monster Sanctuary
Released: December 8, 2020
Game Length: 40 Hours
Grade: A-
Prelude
Development: Monster Sanctuary is a game that has been around for a long time. About a dozen developers have been working on this project since 2015. Around 2018, they produced a small demo and wanted to start a Kickstarter project for more content. Some who donated more than the others would even get a hand in helping design monsters, characters, or encounters. They were able to get so many contributors that they were able to reach their goals to produce over 100 monsters (instead of just around 60), add special game modes, and other types of support. The game would release in 2020 and add additional features in a completely free update in 2022.
Levels
Enemy Levels: It is very important to pay attention to how levels work in this game. Each room you traverse with an encounter will increase the global monster level. The monsters in that room will then permanently be set at that level. Every time you go back to visit any monster group or champion, they will always be set to that level. This concept lets you choose which part of the Sanctuary you want to explore without worrying if monsters are too high a level. Later, there is an option to set all monsters to match your Keeper Rank level that can be turned off and on. After you complete the game, you can choose to reset all monsters and rooms to level 1 with new game plus. You retain all your monsters and items with various stipulations like not being able to use their abilities until you encounter them in the Sanctuary.
Friendly Levels: To keep up with the enemy levels, you must defeat every encounter as you come across them. You can choose to bypass monsters by not touching any in a group, using a special monster ability, or using smoke bombs to retreat from battle. Forfeiting or having all your monsters be defeated from a wild encounter will evoke a small currency penalty. Only the six monsters you have active will receive experience. They all receive the same amount of experience regardless of who survives or how well they perform. It is very important to keep one monster, preferably your set spectral monster, to be included since level boosts and eggs scale to the highest monster level in your roster.
Skills
Skill Trees: Every single monster has their own set of abilities. Because there are so many of them, reading how each one works is very important. A monster can resist or be weak against physical or magical types as much as elemental types. Some monsters can enhance their skills, turn neutral type skills into elements, ignore resistances, or ignore defenses. Some will target one or multiple monsters. There are skills to heal or shield monsters. There are passive skills that will increase their stats or boost the amount earned from equipment. Auras benefit all the monsters in a group. Unique auras are specific to that monster. Be very careful to read each modifier since every one can be vastly different depending on the monster type. One may deal additional damage based on their critical rating while another will heal more based on their defence. Only one skill potion can be applied to each monster.
Skill Levels: Instead of being able to advance one branch of skills as you earn points, Monster Sanctuary prevents you from advancing down a tier until that monster reaches a level milestone. Until you reach levels 10, 20, or 30, you will only be able to use skills in those specific rows in the tree. A monster could have three to five skill branches. You can obtain (and later purchase) skill resetters to move those points around. You can also choose to move any "recent" points spent elsewhere if they don't work out the way you had hoped.
Shift: After your encounter at the Sun Palace around level 25, monsters may have a light or dark attribute. Shifted monsters are colored differently than those who are not. Enemy encounters have a 25% chance to have one shifted monster and will generally provide their shift in an egg if one drops. The next shift you encounter will be of the opposite variant. You can purchase shift stones to apply either to a chosen monster in your roster, switch stones to change to their polar opposite, or clear stones to revert back to normal. Every monster has their own perk for light and dark. There are 18 different light shifts and 15 different dark shifts. Other than not being able to equip the Gray Pearl item, there is no reason not to apply a shift to your monsters.
Ultimate: At level 40, your monster will have an option to use one of three ultimate skills. Only one ultimate can be used per round and has a three round cooldown. Unlike skills, these can be switched at any time without using a skill resetter.
Equipment
Crafting: There are a total of five tiers. As you increase your Keeper Rank, you will be able to directly purchase the next tier of resources. Since the cost of these resources are rather exuberant, obtaining these items through encounters will still be the best way. Though, selling resources will only give back about 25% of their purchase value. Keep an eye out on the merchants since buying something like a ring + 4 would be a fraction of the cost from what it would be to buy all the resources to upgrade a ring four times.
Acquisition: What you receive after a match will be based on your battle rating. The chance of obtaining a rare item will increase to 60% with 4 stars or 100% with 5 stars. Every monster has a different set of loot that they drop that you can see in the Monster Journal. Only pictures of the four available items are shown until you obtain them. The game first determines if there is a monster you have never received an egg and "weighs" the dice for them. Then the game rolls to decide from which of the three monsters you will receive an item. If you receive a rare item, you have a chance of getting one of two rare items or an egg. Champions are different as you receive proportion to the number of stars you receive: common loot for one or two stars, rare loot drops for three or four stars, and an egg for all five stars.
Weapons: How powerful your monsters are will mainly be determined by how strong you upgrade your weapons. You will know immediately in battle if they need to be upgraded or you failed to even equip them onto your monsters. Each weapon will have a physical and magical number that will correspond to how much gets added to that type of skill. Be careful since some monsters can attack with a physical elemental strike or a magical neutral skill. There is a dark passive that allows the monster to equip two weapons with the second one reduced by 50%. There are many ways to obtain rare weapons through chests, obtaining four stars in a champion match, bartering infinity arena tokens, and some special merchants in the world.
Accessories: There are roughly 24 basic items and 34 special items. Standard items will boost one to three stats. The others tend to have an additional modifier that changes the potency of your skills or implement other modifiers. You can equip three items but you can't add duplicates of one. There is a light passive that allows you to equip four items.
Food: Yes, you can even feed your monsters with food that increases a single stat by a small amount. There are tiers of food like there are for resources. You can feed monsters as many times as you want but only the most recent three products are applied.
Exploration
Landscape: The full map consists of 14 different biomes, each containing two different areas. For example, Horizon Beach has both monsters on islands and underwater. There are roughly three introductory areas, the "safe zone" where you find many of the locals residing, and three intermediate areas. The four advanced regions aren't necessarily available until you make progress in the story and your Keeper Rank. Two regions are "hidden" until you clear out most of the map with one final tower as your endgame. I must also state that a couple years after the game released, a new Forgotten World section of the game was added for free.
Map: Like Super Metroid, the map itself only shows the rooms you have been with obvious connections between them. It shows the percent of rooms visited in each region and the overall region. It does not take into account whether you opened all the chests. Map markers are very important since there will constantly be important things you will need to remember where they are at when you return. Anything that might seem insignificant should be marked like a cliff too high, a small gap, a weird statue, or a locked room. There is no limit on markers and you can name them whatever you want.
Explore Abilities: There are approximately 40 different explore abilities. They also have different variations like how a bat will see a dark room completely in red or a firefly will shine a light through the darkness. A rock monster will generate a tiny stone while a fungus will form a mushroom. Small birds will lift you up slightly while bigger ones will give you another inch. Mounting monsters increase your speed. A lot of monsters will trigger elemental orbs, and yet there are monsters who will be able to do the same thing from a distance when those devices are oddly placed. Sometimes you might need monsters with two abilities at the same time. There is a difference between pushing a heavy block and lifting a large boulder. Since there isn't a limit on how many monsters you can have, keeping one of each explore ability handy wouldn't risk anything. You can see each monster's explore ability in the Monster Journal.
Residences: Scattered about the regions are characters that you can have a little discussion about the game mechanics. You can meet with your parents, rename your monsters, rename yourself, exchange one specific egg for an extinct monster, and carry out some quests. There are occasional merchants with special goods that you can purchase. Inside the Keepers' Stronghold are all the essential characters that buy and sell goods, upgrade equipment, and let you battle against any previous champion monsters. There's even an infinity arena that steadily increases the level of encounters in exchange for rewards. One character will let you switch your outfit to both male or female versions and from all alternate color variants.
Mechanics
Battle Rating: The game rewards you based on how well you perform in battle. It does more than calculate points based on enemy difficulty. It gives you points on how quickly you defeat your enemies right down to whether you defeat them with one monster during a turn or three. No points are awarded if you continue beyond five rounds (or 8 rounds with champions). Points are awarded for each turn your monsters had more health than the other monsters. Every modifier applied on any monster is taken into account. The last category for "execution" uses some very complex math with how high the combo meter goes, how much damage you deal, and each time you exploit a weakness.
Modifiers: There are a total of 9 buffs that can improve a monster. Might and Sorcery increase physical and magical damage. Barrier outright decreases damage. Agility and Spellshield dodges damage. Sidekick adds a little extra aftermath damage. Regeneration restores health. Channel lowers mana cost. Glory increases critical chance and critical damage. There are also 6 debuffs. Burn hurts a monster based on their offensive capability while poison pools from their health. Chill hurts their mana potency. Shock increases damage. Weakness cuts down their offense while Armor Break breaks down their attack.There are 7 stacks. Each one of these works differently than the others. Age and Predation increases the monster's abilities every turn. Bleeds deal damage afterwards but only half are removed per turn. Blind can cause a monster to miss a single hit from a skill but then immediately removes one from the stack afterwards. Charge is a direct increase in damage that gets removed after a turn. Tether is a decrease that gets removed one per turn. Wound reduces any healing done.
Keeper Duels: Challenges against other Keepers are slightly different than wild encounters. First, you are not defeated when losing your three current monsters. If any monster is defeated, another one will replace it until all six monsters are defeated. You can only perform two actions your first round. There are areas where you can challenge preset groups at certain Keeper Ranks, story events where you challenge allies and opponents alike, other players in an online arena, or a legendary room in Magma Chamber where you can challenge 25 Legendary Keeper monuments based on 14 Kickstarter backers and 11 developers.
Monster Journal: There are 111 monsters in the game. Like Pokemon, they all have their associated number listed in your journal. Their silhouette is the first thing shown, followed by their look when you encounter them, and finally a history lesson when you hatch them out of an egg. There are some very fascinating lore behind how the monsters may have lived before the war and how they might have came to the Sanctuary after the war. There are four spectral familiars you can choose from and encounter in a secret room at the end of the game. There are 27 champion monsters with approximately five you will encounter early from normal monsters, five regional challenges, and the rest hidden away when you are nearing the level 42 cap. About 21 monsters came from Design Contests. There are 16 monsters available through evolutions.
Game Modes: While the game does have difficulty settings, there are a number of game modes you can set after you defeat the final boss. As described above, new game plus allows you to start the game over and use any monsters you have in your possession. Randomizer is a mode that cycles all the monsters throughout the Sanctuary no matter their original region. Bravery challenges you to a limited team of monsters. Permadeath makes sure that a monster is unable to be revived or continue once knocked out. Relics of Chaos implements 11 weapons and 28 accessories with powerful effects in exchange for some drawbacks or restricted to certain monsters.
Summary
Review: While this game may appear to be similar to other monster taming games, there are way more complex mechanisms in play here. Depending on how you view optimization, this beautiful mess can either drive you to learn them all or frustrating when being punished for trying something different. The game seems to fight against itself as it struggles to balance between the two polar opposite ideologies. One one hand, you want to build the best three monster team that can be used to counter any strategy the game throws at you. If you don't, then you are punished by going back to the drawing board where you have to research skill trees, gain a few levels, and upgrade different equipment in an attempt to make things better. There is enough content, options, and variety to keep you going for hours, but whether you would enjoy such complexity is another matter entirely.