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»Monster Kingdom: Jewel Summoner
"Ever wish you could play Pokémon on your PSP legally? Well, you can't."
Ever since the Pokémon explosion several years ago, video game
companies have tried to mimic it. We’ve seen Digimon, Monster Rancher,
Jade Cocoon, Monster Hunter and countless other games try to catch in
on Game Freak’s freaky game’s success. Well, time to add another one
onto the pile. Monster Kingdom: Jewel Summoner is another of those
games, and admittedly, it isn’t so bad. It has a few problems, but
otherwise, Gaia pumped out a pretty decent game. Still, a Poké-killer,
it ain’t.
In Monster Kingdom, you take on the role of an Abomination Hunter by
the name of Vice. Several years ago, when Vice was a mere child, his
mother was snatched up and killed by a horrible winged creature - an
Abomination. Still haunted by this traumatic incident, Vice has sworn
revenge on all Abominations and seeks to become a Jewel Summoner, a
person with the ability to summon monsters from jewels in order to
battle the horrible Abominations, with the sole intent of avenging his
mother. Armed with Schatten, a monster who originated from the jewel
his mother left, Vice travels to a village by the name of Aleh Muza,
which is currently plagued with Abominations. There he meets a
mysterious man, who leads him into a conflict with a group of trainees
from a group called the Order, an official group of Jewel Summoners.
Vice’s unorthodox style of Jewel summoning is a point of interest with
the order, and when they examine his precious heirloom Jewel, it is
absorbed into a large mysterious object known as the Monolith. Now,
left with little other choice, Vice has reluctantly joined up with the
Order trainees and begins learning the way of the Jewel Summoners.
Needless to say, the basic gameplay of Monster Kingdom can be summed up
in two aspects: the towns and dungeon-crawling. Basically, the towns
somewhat annoy me, because they aren’t so much towns as they are maps,
upon which you simply drag a cursor around to go to certain areas.
Sure, it saves time, but it also kind of detracts from the look and
feel of the game. I mean, I didn’t like the menu set-up of the towns in
Biomotor Unitron or Evolution: Eternal Dungeons, so why would I like
this? It feels especially lazy, considering the fact that this game is
for the PSP, rather than the NGPC. Anyway, most villages contain
residential areas, which you can enter and talk to the people who dwell
within, who appear in the form of still portraits of the background,
which you can cycle through. Shops act in a similar manner, just
initiating a menu, but that’s generally more common in most games, so
I’m okay with it.
Now let’s move onto the dungeon crawling. The movement style in these
portions of the game world is much more what you’d be accustomed to
when playing most RPGs, free movement throughout the area. Basically,
during these portions of the game, you navigate throughout the dungeon,
collecting items, enacting story events and encountering monsters…at
random. This is where the battle portion comes in, and the system is a
weird mix between Pokémon and your typical turn-based RPG. Basically,
each member of your party calls out one monster, in order to battle the
opponent. Each party member can only have a certain amount of monsters
equipped to them. During a member’s turn, they can choose to attack,
use an item, guard, escape from battle, or swap out their monster for
another one. Once a member’s monster is defeated, the member is ejected
from battle, period. Also, when a monster runs out of JP (the game’s
equivalent to MP), they are removed from battle and replaced with
another monster, if one is available.
Anyway, as I said earlier, the battles are basically turn-based, though
there is a nice twist on the idea, known as the Flexible Turn Battle
system, where the turn order is decided dynamically all throughout the
battle. Also, much like in Pokémon, you can capture enemy monsters and
use them when they are weakened to a certain point (which is denoted by
their stance), by using Prisms, which come in various elements. In
order to properly capture a monster, you must use the corresponding
elemental Prism, which make the act of capturing a bit more strategic
than in the Pokémon games, where the Pokéballs can capture most
enemies, regardless of their element.
Furthermore, you can also enhance and upgrade your monsters through a
variety of ways. First off, there’s the traditional level-up system,
which adds to your monster’s stats, and at certain levels adds a new
attack to their repertoire, though each monster can only have 4 attacks
at once, the number eventually moves up to 5. Next off, there’s the
Amalgamy system, which has a number of uses. First off, there’s the
fusion system, which lets you fuse your jewels with various elements of
quartz, which adds to their power and abilities, and if you fuse
together certain amounts of quartz to a certain jewel, eventually the
shape will change and the monster will go through an evolution, based
on the attributes that have been added to it. There’s also
Reinforcement Amalgamy, which allows you to use Amalgamy Points to
upgrade your jewel’s abilities or stats, depends on which of the two
Meisters you go to: Jerro takes care of reinforcing abilities, while
Mikaela reinforces your jewel’s stats.
All-in-all, these new features add a bit of class and originality to
Jewel Summoner’s somewhat banal system of gameplay, but there’s also
quite a bit of slowdown at certain portions of the game, mainly in the
battle sequences, which somewhat drops the fun factor.
The graphics aren’t much special…but that doesn’t mean that they’re bad
either. Basically, they’re pretty much what you’d expect in a typical
PSP game. The 3D models of the monsters are nice to look at, but at
times, things get somewhat laggy. The main character models are a bit
less detailed, but you hardly see them up close, so who cares? As for
the dialogue scenes, the characters are drawn in a 2D, anime-inspired
style that is typically associated with RPGs. The neat part, though, is
that the characters are somewhat animated while doing this, moving
their mouths in somewhat of a sync with the dialogue. However, the town
scenes look kinda bland, as they just have characters standing there,
drawn portrait-style, which is a little disappointing, as I would’ve
liked to have seen more use of the character sprites. Oh well.
The soundtrack in this game is great, as it should be, all things
considered. I mean, if you group together many of the greatest video
game composers of all time, including Shinji Hosoe, Yasunori Mitsuda,
Yoko Shimomura and many others, what else would you expect? Needless to
say, there is some great music in Jewel Summoner. The sound effects are
pretty much generic though, and the voice acting ranges between good
and bad at times. All in all, great sound.
As for replay, there is some. If any of your friends own Monster
Kingdom, you can either trade jewels with them or battle your monsters
against them, so that’s multiplayer support. The game’s also pretty fun
despite the generic aspects and the slowdown, but these definitely take
away from the game’s overall replayability. Still, if you’ve got a PSP,
are looking for a good monster-sim game, and aren’t willing to buy a DS
until Pokémon Diamond/Pearl comes out, pick up Monster Kingdom: Jewel
Summoner. It may not offer many new qualities, but overall it’s a
pretty decent game.
Article by: Wolfdogg
Posted on: Feb. 13th, 2007 |
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Review Recap |
| Gameplay |
| Basically a cross between monster-raising RPGs and traditional ones, though there are a few unique features, which add to the flavor. Still, the lag time kind of detracts from the fun. |
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Graphics |
| Nothing impressive for the PSP, but the character designs look nice. |
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Sound |
| A great soundtrack composed by some of the greatest video game composers ever. Sound effects and voice acting are about average, though. |
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Replay Value |
| The multiplayer aspects of the game are nice, and there’s a bit of fun factor, but the game’s slowdown and generic qualities take away some of the game’s lasting factor. |
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