Demo Double Feature: Monark and Kirby

Kirby and the Forgotten Land

You all remember that Breath of the Wild-looking Kirby game that was announced around the same time as that Breath of the Wild-looking Sonic game? Well, Kirby dropped a demo where you can take him through the abandoned real-worldish cityscape you saw in the sizzle reel.

But as detailed as those vistas might look, Kirby of the Wild this is not. The stages remain self contained with few ways of straying from the beaten path, wide as it may be. If we were comparing the game to Mario rather than Zelda, this is a Super Mario 3D World rather than a Super Mario Odyssey. You play the level to the end and go on to the next one.

…and yes, the demo lets you eat a car. And a vending machine. And an unusually large traffic cone.

It’s hard to believe this is Kirby’s first 3D platformer (Thank you, Kirby’s Air Ride for making the qualification necessary), and it seems to lack the polish that 3D games in Nintendo’s other core franchises have. Distant enemies blatantly skip animation frames until you get closer to them. The camera controls take some real coaxing to clear the corners. And either my depth perception is going or Kirby’s just plain harder to square up with enemies than Mario and Link are. Perhaps it’s just the demo speaking, and everything will be fine when it’s done done.

The demo’s two stages and a boss seem to be enough to get a feel for the core gameplay loop, get the gist of the call to adventure and the new twists that look to be front and center of the main game.

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Monark

A bunch of former MegaTen devs pooled their experience to make a fresh(ish) take on their familiar formulae. Naturally, I was curious.

Monark is nakedly unashamed about what it is. The demo is simply the first 3 hours of the actual game, which consists of 5 required combats (the first one killing a no-name dude on the first turn just to let you know the actual main character is unusually good) and 2+ hours of cutscenes. If you loved 13 Sentinels, you’ll be right at home here.

Though to say that combat is the primary focus of the gameplay wouldn’t be quite right. It’s often optional; used as an opportunity to level up if you’re feeling weak or inflicted as a punishment for screwing up while you’re exploring. Or just plain murdering you because you couldn’t help but dial random numbers on your phone.

The setting is par for the course; Monark drops you in a private school with a sprawling campus besieged by supernatural forces that are made worse by the physical manifestations of the personality flaws and unresolved traumas of a key student in each building. Each location is slowly overtaken by a mist that drives the students stuck in it crazy. While they (usually) don’t attack you when you explore, they form puzzle-like obstacles that you must deal with to advance. Traveling through the mist, figuring out how the various students there are broken and using that knowledge to nudge them out of the way seems to be where you’ll spend most of your not-cutscene time.

As you encounter the physical manifestations of the personality flaws, you do the game’s only required combats. Monark takes a turn-based tactical approach here, with several flourishes based upon the psychological/supernatural/low-key horror setting. There’s not much variety to the enemies early on, and the fights are over in a handful of rounds. There’s not a lot of meat to it; but it’s enough to keep them from getting monotonous. Though I supposed the speed and rarity of fights might be what’s actually doing the heavy lifting, there.

If you like a visual novel with very occasional combat and adventure games for dungeons, and also like answering a lot of personality test questions, this may be the game you’ve been waiting for all your life. Monark is brutally honest about who it is and leans right into it, so don’t even bother trying it out if this doesn’t sound profoundly interesting to you.