Greenalink reviews Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom

Developers: Game Atelier

Publisher: FDG Entertainment

Release Date: 4th December 2018

Average Price: US $40 or £34.99

Filesize: 4.2gb main game and at least over 800mb for updates
Available platforms: Switch, PS4, Xbox One, PC (Early 2019)

Website: http://monsterboy.com/blog/

Monster Boy a game that took over 5 years of development and has an interesting development history as well, with games with very long development times there are usual concerns if the quality ends up being sub-par but after playing this I can tell you that that's not the case with this game.

Features

6 playable forms

5 magical items 

1 pig with an eye-patch

Monster World and Wonder Boy: Monster Boy and the Wizard of Booze?

The game was originally a Kickstarter sequel to an entirely different game:

Flying Hamster II: Knight of the Golden Seed, that got cancelled and made a partnership with the publisher FDG Entertainment and made partnership with LAT Corp a year later to officially incorporate the title into the Wonder Boy series. That game was called:

"Monster World and Wonder Boy: Monster Boy and the Wizard of Booze"

Feedback got negative due to the reference of alcohol and so it got renamed to the title we know today as:

"Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom" which makes a lot of sense as every human has been cursed into an animal, the nod to Wizard of Booze is still in there as one of the characters drinks a lot and cause havoc thanks to his wand. 

Graphics

Along with the title, this category had a few major revisions. Originally going to use motion-sprites a method used in many games such as Steamworld Dig, but by October 2017 they have decided to use Hand-drawn designs. They were probably influenced by Lizardcube's incredible remake to Wonder Boy the Dragon's Trap which first became publically available to Youtube in June 2016.

Announcement trailer from late 2013

After playing the final game and watching one of the earlier trailers, most of the enemies and bosses showed in that video remained visually the same. The updated designs for the playable characters is a huge step up to what their original incarnations a few years ago, they look cleaner, more expressive and have decent running animations (looking at you pig and frog). The background art assets were redone too with some notable level design changes. For example, one of the houses found in the village only had the entrance to the armoury but not the blacksmith to unlock upgrades.

The game has some neat visual glow like effects when entering dark and gloomy places which is a nice little touch. Gameplay performance is decent on all platforms but the Nintendo Switch version isn't 100% perfect, I did notice a performance drop in some of the more intense sequences most notably the 2nd set of phases against the final boss, I did have a look on YouTube for PS4/Xbox One versions and they ran at 60 frames, still that is only 0.5% of the entire experience which is impressive, maybe it could get a patch to fix that performance issue in the future or not.

More reliable than Slippy Toad

Sound

Technically the first new non-port/remake Wonder Boy game to be released in the post chiptune-era. There are sound effects, grunts from various hero forms, enemies and bosses (so no voice acting) and music.

The majority of sound effects are modern samples, the coin spawning sound effect, for example, is directly taken from Wonder Boy 3: The Dragon's Trap, one of the few retro sound effects and an irreplaceable one too.

The grunts are pretty standard but some are pretty hilarious including the frog boss whirlwind attack and the masked bombers responding back to the player for stealing their bombs.

The soundtrack is the real star of the game, it has a mixture of remixes mainly from Wonder Boy 2, 3 & Monster World along with some brand new compositions. While the remixes are already decent, the new ones steal the show.

Grass Fields, for example, is so good that you could use it in a movie as part of a montage cliché and it still works. The Falls feels like a lost track from Sonic Adventure with a lovely piano sequence part-way through. The Haunted Manor has DS era Castlevania vibe mainly The Hidden Curse from Portrait of Ruin.

Then you find out the composers who were responsible:

* Yuzo Koshiro - Streets of Rage/Etrian Odyssey

* Motoi Sakuraba - Dark Souls series

* Michiru Yamane - Sega Rocket Knight series and IGAvania Castlevania games

* Keiki Kobayashi - Ace Combat series and Ridge Racer 7

* Takeshi Yanagawa - Shenmue II

* Tee Lopes - Sonic Mania (worked on the English Opening theme of Monster Boy)

 and there's no surprise why the soundtrack is fantastic.

Gameplay

Where can I start on the gameplay?

Dragon's Trap was criticised for its simpler level designs due to Master System's limitations and while Monster World did fix that, international versions of the game became brutal due to the lack of continuing the game after getting a game over so a lot of safety saves were required.  

Simply put Monster Boy's gameplay is a combination of Dragon Trap's various animal forms and Monster World's diverse level design, added with a hint of stressful free checkpoint/save stations throughout the game.

The game isn't afraid to throw a challenge that can feel brutal at first but at the same time not too intimidating to redo, throughout the entire adventure, there are enemies to slay for gold and brain-teasing puzzles that even 20 year veterans like me had to take a good 5 to 10 minutes to figure out what to do.

There's a sense of accomplishment when you figure out a clue/solution to a hard puzzle or figuring out a boss's weakness. What makes the game stand out from many other modern 2D game is the creative use of game mechanics along with excellent level design, early games animals are still required for the rest of the game but not forced to solve every single puzzle.

One of the main reason why it works is because, the playable character can change form on the fly, while Dragon's Trap did have that feature through limited transformation rooms or using a secret ability from Tasmanian Sword, the levels back then were heavily focused on 1 animal form in mind.



Value


One of the game's key bullet points mentioned in various trailers said that it's a 15-hour adventure and I've managed to beat it in roughly 12 hours in-game time, that's still impressive and I haven't even 100%'d the entire game yet. There's a lot of hidden secrets, past game references in clever ways and even tougher puzzles to figure out. I salute you if you can 100% it without using a guide.

The blind playthrough is a lot longer than say Steamworld Dig 2, Shantae & The Pirate's Curse & Azure Striker Gunvolt series. Even if there are some longer games, this game, in particular, doesn't have artificial filler to make the game longer as there isn't any grinding to slowly level up your character. You get rewarded with new techniques quite frequently at a steady pace.

The only real criticism is that the adventure mode is the only mode to play unlike Mega Man 11's speedruns/challenge modes. Nintendo Switch owners are also locked to 1 save per profile which is a bummer if you wanted to copy older saves and redo your favourite segments a lot sooner. I read on Wonder Boy speedrun Discord that at least the PS4 (& probably Xbox One) can support multiple saves per profile but I cannot say for sure.

Unlocking magic chests require using a certain spell a specific number of times.

Conclusion

While I was aware of the game's original existence through its announcement trailer a few years ago, Mega Man 11 took over my mind since it had a guaranteed 2018 release date, when I finally got to play this, it surpassed my expectations, the quality and attention to detail is simply incredible and if it was released in 2019, it would have been easily the Celeste of 2D Action Adventure games. Play this as soon as possible, it is one of the better if not the best retro revival video game (spiritual) sequels since Sonic Mania and A Link Between Worlds.


Monster Joy:

+ Every animal forms have decent abilities
+ Nearly every screen has a secret
+ Incredible soundtrack
+ The length of the actual game is much longer than expected in a good way, no grindy filler.
+ References to past games
+ Challenging puzzles, some are pretty clever once figured out

Monster Boy-ring

- Side quest puzzles can be too challenging for some, you really need good attention to detail on the clues.
- Only 1 save file per profile for Switch owners
- Some side quest puzzles that go uncompleted cannot be retried due to early final build bugs (played on V1.02, probably not an issue on more recent builds)

Grade: A+
Switch review code provided by FDG Entertainment