Monark Review – Personabut

Developer: FuRyu Corporation

Publisher: NIS America

Platforms: PS4, PS5, PC, and Nintendo Switch (reviewed)

Release Date: Feb. 22, 2022

Many years ago, fellow gaming website Rock Paper Shotgun coined the term “Minecraftbut” for titles that emulated said game, as their descriptions would often begin with “It’s Minecraft, but…” Well, I’m going to co-opt that concept and coin my own term, “Personabut,” as in “Monark is Persona, but bad.”

Now, this is a difficult game to review. I’m a big fan of urban JRPGs with a high school backdrop, and although this game functions well on a technical level, with a decent, minimalistic aesthetic, and… serviceable combat, I was miserable during my time with it. Bored to tears to such an extent, I often had to pull my eyes away from the screen to stare at the white wall in my bedroom, for just a moment’s respite. I’ll attempt to ascertain why this is, and to do so, I will need to draw comparisons to two other series: Shin Megami Tensei and Persona. I know what you’re probably thinking: “Oh, it’s not fair to compare this game to those ones; it should just be judged on its own merits!” I hear you loud and clear, strawman. However, when the game ITSELF draws these comparisons, baiting players with a marketing campaign that boils down to “developed by ex-Shin Megami Tensei devs,” I believe this to be fair game.

When the game begins, you’re prompted with questions that determine your Ego points, represented by the seven deadly sins. Here’s my results.

First, let’s discuss the story. You play as a faceless protagonist, waking up with amnesia at Shin Mikado Academy, a school surrounded by a mysterious barrier, with hallways filled by a strange mist that turns the students mad. After answering an unknown phone call, you and a few friends get transported into the Otherworld. There, you encounter several enemy Daemons and a Fluffy Mascot Character™️ named Vanitas, a creature known as a Monark. After making a pact with him (becoming a Pactbearer), you awaken to your Imagigear, magic heart powers that allow you to fight enemies in the Otherworld. From that point forward, the story becomes as rote and formulaic as humanly possible; I’m actually convinced it’s impossible to write a more by-the-numbers JRPG. Your goal becomes to meet and defeat Pactbearers around the school, who are plaguing the hallways with mist. You’ll meet ally Pactbearers along the way, team up with them to take down that chapter’s big bad Pactbearer, rinse and repeat. You’ll be combing up and down the most repetitive, sterile school hallways, less interesting than wherever you went to school in real life. These hallways don’t have enemies, just light environmental puzzles that will take only a little more time to solve than the time actually put into creating them.

Okay, the overly verbose student made me laugh.

Monark has a few clever pieces of dialogue here and there; in fact, it sometimes feels like it’s trying a little too hard. Vanitas speaks in rhyme and alliteration, which you can tell they put a lot of effort into. The only problem is that I just don’t care. These characters drone on, and on, and on, and on, and on for so mercilessly long, with minutes upon minutes of banal, homogeneous dialogue. They clearly wanted to present a story like Persona, but missed the fundamentals of what makes that series good. For one, Persona knows how to tell a story; a damn good story, as a matter of fact. Said series often paces itself for the first couple hours with cutscenes, setting up the conflict, characters, and rules of the world, rather than just giving the protagonist his powers within the first 15 minutes. The series knows how to tell a joke, how to inject as much life, style, and personality into a scene as possible. Even though Persona IS formulaic, it never feels that way, thanks to variety present in the experience. You can’t just give a bunch of high schoolers magic heart powers and a Fluffy Mascot Character™️, have them take on a rogue’s gallery of tragic villains, and call it there. You need to remember the care, nuance, and attention to detail needed in crafting every element of design. I can tell some effort was put into this… it’s just not good.

They tried.

If there’s one positive to the story’s presentation, it’s the English voice acting. They casted a damn fine lineup of talented voice actors, and while they may not be able to elevate the material, I still love them anyway. While I can’t find an official cast list yet, I’m pretty sure your first companion is played by Carrie Keranen, who I best know as Mahiru Koizumi, from a much better high school-based, ontological mystery game, Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair (she also played Misato Katsuragi in the not-so-great Netflix dub of Neon Genesis Evangelion). I’m also 99% sure that Dr. Kakeru is played by the dude who played Jeralt from Fire Emblem: Three Houses. Now, why am I fluffing this review with unnecessary information? Look, I’m grasping at straws for things to say about this game, so cut me some slack.

At least he’s honest.

Oh right, maybe I should mention… the combat. Hoo boy, where do I begin? Mechanically, it’s alright. It plays like a turn-based strategy game, only without a grid. You move your units around the Otherworld map, attack enemies, use buffs/debuffs, position allies to assist with your attacks, and counter after being attacked when in range (all of this applies to the enemy units as well). You have the option to defer a unit’s turn to a unit that’s already moved, which does allow for an okay amount of strategy. Doing so will raise the deferee’s MAD gauge, which is a bar that signifies how close you are to madness, also accrued when using certain skills and while roaming the mist-filled hallways of the school (where it will result in a game over if not alleviated). Once said gauge reaches 100% while in combat, you’ll lose control of the unit as they attack both foe and ally, before dying in 3 turns (which will end your game if this happens to the protagonist). One way to offset this is by raising the unit’s AWAKE gauge, which can be done through using the Resolve skill on your turn, or by taking damage; when this gauge reaches 100%, your unit will experience Awakening, which will supercharge them and allow for the use of an incredibly powerful attack. Having both 100% MAD and 100% AWAKE will lead to Enlightenment, which gives you an even greater buff and negates the negative aspects of MAD. Strangely, when you hit 100% MAD, you can still raise the Awaken gauge through other means, yet it appears that once you achieve 100% AWAKE, you can no longer raise your MAD gauge until Awakening is over (I have no clue why this is).

Combat was so uninteresting, I actually forgot to take screenshots. I had to reload an older save (to avoid spoilers), just to grab this one.

All this is to say that it’s not very fun and extremely difficult. Even once I switched it to casual mode, it’s a brutal experience. There’s not many opportunities to grind either, meaning you’ll often be under-leveled. Let me tell you that it’s not a pleasant experience dredging through a dozen of the same skeleton Daemons for 15 minutes, in the same-y environments, only to die to the boss and start everything over. This game sells itself on the Shin Megami Tensei connection, but you wanna know the difference? SMT is hella hard, but it’s FUN. I know, what a novel concept. SMT has variety, and offers many avenues for the player to get better and improve their chances of surviving a tough battle. Everytime I die in SMT, I still have fun, and take it as a sign that I need to change my approach. Whenever I die in Monark, I shove my face into a pillow and loudly groan, because now I need to do it all over again. There’s not much freedom given to do things differently; very little room for experimentation, soap opera-level repetition, and less variety than jury duty. Sure, you’ve got tons of skills you can acquire through spending SPIRIT points on your units, but which of those skills makes the game fun?

Dramatic writing.

Maybe I just haven’t found the fun yet. Maybe I need to invest even more dozens of hours into it, and replay the mind numbing story for different choices, to earn the game’s golden ending. Or perhaps I can instead play a game that respects my time and intelligence. I am not exaggerating, or accentuating the negative, for the sake of sensationalism; I am being 100% honest when I say that this is one of the most boring games I have ever witnessed, and I was literally just playing PAW Patrol Mighty Pups Save Adventure Bay with my nephew. Perhaps none of this would bother you, and maybe you’d even have a good time, but for me to sugarcoat it or obfuscate my own experience would be to risk my “journalistic integrity.” I despise this game from the deepest depths of my being, and I do not recommend it to anyone.

Overall, not too bad.

3/10

Wow, these screenshots are soooo boring.

P.S. Amidst ranting atop my soapbox, I neglected to inform you all about Monark’s performance on Switch. It’s quite good during gameplay, usually running at a rock-solid 30fps. The pre-rendered cutscenes often suffered from copious amounts of screen tearing, seemingly at random; I tried rewatching an affected cutscene, and it ran well the second time. The game performs solidly on Switch, although I still don’t recommend it on any platform.