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A gem in the rough

  • Peticks
  • 02/07/2014 08:49 PM
  • 1338 views
The Book Of Monsters

Ohh... mystical!

Many children grow up expected to take over the family business. It just happens that in the book of monsters that business is hunting and selling rare monsters! James and his Sister Abby live near new biltmore town with their father Jimmy, an veteran monster hunter. James and Abby soon set off together in the hope of becoming masters of the art of monster hunting!

The book of monsters, to me, represents a good game which is in need of some polishing and extending to become a great game, but a good game none the less.

Gameplay
In The book of monsters gameplay is, as you may be able to guess, orientated around combat. The combat system is very well polished, Fights seem neither too frequent nor to sparse, too long nor too short, too simple nor too complex, too... well you get the idea.

Come at us, slime!

HOWEVER, there are still a few issues.
The first issue which comes out right at you is when the whole game just crashes requiring you to restart from your last save!!! Oh how infuriating this got early on (though It seemed to happen less and less as the story progressed) . So long as you save often though this can be reduced from game wrecking to a minor irritation.

The second problem is escaping from monsters. If you get into a fight and then run away then no matter what you do the monster will immediately start combat with you a second time. You are just about able to move 1 square every 2 fights but it is a huge pain, mainly because it’s something that could be fixed so simply by making combat not trigger until a couple of seconds after your last fight.

The final problem is cheap 'roids. Yep an infinite number of permanent stat boosts for sale at 200 gold prices... This is a personal bugbear of mine as it means you can zoom through the game with only a tiny amount of fighting. Combat becomes so totally broken that bosses can be killed in 1 shot. Training levels becomes pointless. By all means have stat boosts in game, but make them expensive, limited or only available as drops. Don’t just hand them out in vast numbers for hardly any gold!


Story:
The book of monsters story follows 2 young monster hunters traveling the land with the intention of honing their monster hunting skills, while doing some good of course. I found the story to be of extremely high quality during the start and of very good quality as it progressed. Very enjoyable dialog and plot. (I also loved the Harlem shakes shock appearance lowering the seriousness of the situation beautifully XP)

Presentation

Graphics:
Graphics are very very well done. Although a few enemies are highly pixelated, I’m looking at you hornets!, it strangely seemed to only add to the charm of the game. The maps are very well designed too, again capturing the goldilocks zone of being neither to complex and long nor to simple and short. However, there are a few problems caused by solidness of some objects and event triggering. Couple of examples bellow (though there are many more)


Sup

Audio:
Audio in The book of monsters is highly custom and used very appropriately and well. The track choices are competent and suitable for the location, helping to bring out the charm of the game.

Summary
3.5 might seem a harsh score to give a game that was rather enjoyable to play, but I felt it just lacked a professional feel. Its like the games still in beta testing, It works but it is full of minor bugs that just detract from the overall experience.

Final comments

This game deserves a high score but is just let down by a large number of things requiring small fixes. If some of the bugs were squashed then I would give it a 4 at least.

Posts

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Wow, thanks for the review. I admit it would have been a better game if I had more patience to test it more. This game's programming was a lot more complex then I'm normally comfortable with hence got confused a lot with the switches. So I kinda rush the end a bit. But no excuses, next time I'll make a better one. :)
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