Each card has an aura (blue, green, red or yellow) class (healer, melee attack, ranged attack or support) type (everything from beasts to dragons to fairies) and their own ATK, HP and MP stats – which you will need to study to understand them. Your deck must be composed of at least 30 and not more than 40 cards, with only 3 of each individual card allowed. This has basic options allowing you to sort by aura or type, but is somewhat fiddly to get to grips with. You open virtual card packs using simulated moves (swiping the touchscreen to peel the pack open then flipping them by touching), after which you can change your composition in the deck builder. This takes the form of a world map, albeit one where you simply move from location to location in generally straight lines with only the odd branch off – which usually either contains money, new cards or rub points (more on this later).īuilding your deck is integral to any card game and the tools here are decent, but could be better. Structured somewhat like a linear Pokemon game, Monster Monpiece has you travelling different regions of the world, battling other card users for the aforementioned story reasons. As it stands, it not only achieves this feat but does so with a surprisingly addictive package that I genuinely enjoyed from beginning to end. Voice acting meanwhile is fully Japanese and extensive, which is a nice touch.Īs one of only a handful of card games on Vita, Monster Monpiece wouldn’t have a high bar to clear to be classed as the best on the console. There’s a few good pieces of music here that can be quite catchy, but Compile Heart have produced better works in the past and there’s nothing included that would rank among my favourite VGM. Menus could also be a little bit better designed, feeling rather workman-like, but they’re functional like much of the UI design. Which is what makes it odd that I did encounter slowdown repeatedly when there are a few cards on screen – this isn’t a title that is pushing the technical capabilities of Vita. Battles also tend to have nice animations with explosions and spells flying off as the girls pull off moves, but it is all very basic. These are unnecessary fanservice where the girls moan and lose clothing as you poke and prod at them, but they’re short and otherwise lively with effects. The models that duke it out are chibi and only barely match their card art, which comes to life during the rubbing scenes. Yet even within this there are little touches, like the backgrounds changing depending on the area you’re in (so it might be an icy lake in one area and a medieval castle the next). The world map is just a 2D sketch with animated locations you choose to move to, while the duelling arena is just a 7 x 3 grid with blue and red for each combatant. Indeed, this low budget shows throughout in other aspects of the game. Bizarrely, the NPC’s you battle are sketched without eyes which makes them feel generic and unlike the memorable opponents you battle in something like Pokemon – but of course, this is a much more budget game. ![]() ![]() 2D artwork for the conversation scenes is static with only mouths moving, but it’s nicely drawn and each of the girls has unique elements to their clothing. So there are various different elements at play here. While the majority of Monster Monpiece could pass as a PSP game, I found a certain charm to its simplistic graphics – putting aside its obvious and heavy-handed fanservice. Overall, it’s not a disaster, but I certainly wouldn’t play this one for the story. It’s not helped by the traditional Compile Heart banal conversation between the characters either, who are mostly cutesy stereotypes without much in the way of defining features. There’s a world-ending threat, the girls unite to defeat it and along the way fight in a copious amount of card battles for only vaguely plots related reasons. There’s a fairly interesting setup in Monster Monpiece and certainly there are moments of intrigue and events that caught me off guard, but overall this is a fairly vanilla story that doesn’t take any great risks or excite in any way. ![]() Along the way, their friend Elza becomes ‘Lost’ – losing her mind and attempting to start a war between the humans and monsters – and so May and Fia must recover the remaining Magus Quartz to help her recovery and save the world. The game starts with a human named May and a monster girl named Fia, who set out on an adventure to travel to each Academy and recover the Magus Quartz, which will help them defeat a great evil that has resurrected. The opening text scroll of Monster Monpiece explains how the Gods punished humans by inflicting monsters upon them, until a number of Academies were created which allowed them to coexist.
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