Monark is the latest project from the Lancarse/Furyu duo, a Persona-inspired strategy role-playing game published by NIS America. When it was announced, we widely heard that part of the team was made up of veterans who worked on the Shin Megami Tensei series, which in our eyes was a sign of a fairly qualitative game. This new Japanese RPG is available on Nintendo Switch and PlayStation consoles (PS4 / PS5) as well as on PC (Steam) since February 25, 2022. We recently had the opportunity to test Monark on PS5, so we invite you to discover what we think of the game in this test.
In Monark, you play a young high school student with amnesia who wakes up one day in his school without the slightest memory surrounded by teenagers (including one posing as his sister) and a doctor who are standing in a foggy hall. The campus of Shin Mikado Academy is filled with an eerie haze that drives anyone who stays inside for too long to madness. An impenetrable barrier has been erected around the campus and the maddening fog is gradually spreading to every corner of the school.
At least, until you encounter a strange, frightening-looking stuffed rabbit (an encounter that takes place in an alternate world where "daemons" abound) that your character is quick to grab by the ears, interrupting him in a long villainous character monologue before making a pact with him to get his powers. In your immaculate school uniform and with your new powers in your pockets, it's your responsibility to save all those who have lost their minds and bring order to Shin Mikado by eliminating pact bearers.
To end the influence of a Pact Bearer, you must destroy three crystals that harbor their darkest desires inspired by deadly sins such as pride, lust or greed, obviously reminiscent of the plot of Persona 5. These crystals are only located in mist-filled areas that you'll need to successfully cross before losing your mind. Soon, you cross paths with a self-proclaimed student council representative who asks you and your group to stay out of the fog. You realize very quickly that this character with such a particular look has used the mist to create his own little cult of followers. Pactbearers are people with a strong Ego who have made a deal with a Daemon for the power to fulfill their dearest wishes.
The first thing that jumps to the eye when the characters start talking to each other is that the models in play are not very worked out... To realize the emotional state of one of your interlocutors, it is better to look at their illustration that appears next to the dialog box. Moreover, it is not only the character models that lack detail, the environments too and the technique of the game in general are quite "end of the PS2 era" with labyrinthine and repetitive decorations. No doubt, we are faced with a game that is sorely lacking in budget. We had the opportunity to play on PS5, and just the shadows in low resolution make a little stain in the decor… Even with less budget, some independent studios do much better than that.
To put an end to the desires of the Bearers of Pact, nothing beats a little riddle:
To end a Pact Bearer's influence, you must destroy three crystals. These are located in foggy areas. Fortunately, these areas are never very large, it often comes down to going through a floor made up of a few rooms where you often have to solve a puzzle to move forward.
Riddles that can literally get you stuck in the game if you don't understand a word of English. Yes, the lack of localization in our language can be a very big problem when playing Monark. Be warned that if you have no basic English, it will be impossible for you to complete the game without consulting a guide. Sometimes you have to open your menu and dig into the information you've collected on the students on campus by crossing the notes you collect in the different rooms to find the solution to a puzzle. Even someone fluent in English can get stuck on some puzzles that require excessive attention to detail. It is not uncommon to interact with an object in the game and a window opens asking you what the password is. It is then up to you to investigate and gather all the information you have unearthed in the different rooms to find the expected solution.
Exposure to mist is not without consequences for the player since you can see a madness gauge that you have to keep an eye on. It gradually increases as you spend long minutes looking for clues that will allow you to find the solution to a puzzle. To make matters worse, your phone may start ringing anytime you're exploring a foggy area leading to a terror call that won't stop until you dial another number to start a clash with "daemons." ".
If you answer a call of this type, you start a fight in another dimension that is impossible to win (all enemies will be at a level 4 times higher than yours or even at the maximum level). When one of those creepy calls comes out of nowhere, the other students wandering the halls attack you and the only way out is to get back to your Monark you made a pact with (you remember the creepy rabbit with big ears) to dial a security number that will trigger a confrontation with "daemons".
There are no random fights in Monark, to evolve your characters, it's up to you to choose when to fight. Everything goes through the telephone which is connected to the other world. Either you dial a random phone number and you risk encountering opponents that are far too powerful for you, or you dial those that are already registered in your call log for a more balanced fight.
Instead of using a classic experience system for growing your characters, Monark rewards successful battles with Spirit Points that you can then spend on skill trees. Each time you unlock a skill, your character simply gains a level knowing that the skills to be unlocked require more and more spirit points. As you progress, you meet different protagonists ready to join you for a while.
It is then up to you to choose whether you will level up this character who will eventually leave you for a while or concentrate on the main character. Which is also recommended, because as a group leader, the character you embody must not die in combat at the risk of seeing the Game Over screen appear. Note that while other students on campus can lend you a hand, your character also has the ability to control sorts of puppets similar to the enemies you fight in the other dimension. The developers had the good idea to allow players to customize these dolls. You can change their size, style, choose a voice, and level up the same way as "human" characters.
When a character's Madness gauge reaches 100% in combat, they enter a Madness state, which has the beneficial effect of increasing their attack stats, but in return forces them to attack anything in between. nearby, including his allies. In case the fight does not end after three rounds in a state of madness, he is knocked out. If the main character ends up in this state, the game is over after three turns. If the fights give an impression of classic tactical confrontations, especially at the start of the adventure, the strategic aspect gains in depth as you progress. You then understand all the usefulness of using the “authority” system which allows you to make the units on the battlefield “resonate” with each other, whether they are friends or enemies. You share status effects, buffs and debuffs, and access to authorities when you resonate with a unit. We're not going to hide it, Monark's combat system is a cut above all the rest.
By increasing the various stats of your "ego", you can touch and absorb crystals that are scattered all over campus. These crystals (which you seem to be the only one to see) contain "alter-egos" of the various characters (NPCs) you encounter as you unlock new sections of this grim high school. Crystals grant your party a permanent stat boost and add information that is encrypted base to one of the high school students'/campus character's personal file. Your ego grows in different ways, in particular you can sometimes find yourself faced with a questionnaire which presents you with several situations and which asks you how you would react in this situation. Depending on your answers, you earn ego points in different categories.
★ In conclusion, Monark a good JRPG to do?
Usually, we are quite good customers of this kind of productions even when the budget does not follow. Unfortunately, in the case of Monark, we are quite disappointed with the end result. Fortunately, the game is narrowly saved by its combat system which finally offers quite interesting things as you progress. The rest, on the other hand, is not up to par at all... The level design of the Shin Mikado Academy is really limited, the areas of mist with puzzles which are made up of 4 or 5 rooms are a horror, and the protagonists / antagonists follow cliché after cliché… The hardest thing to accept in all this is the technique of the game, especially when you play on PS5. As it stands, it's hard to recommend Monark to even the most hardcore fans of the JRPG genre.
Monarch
Game rating
5.5 
