Recent reviews by Vageenta

This game ticks so many boxes for me that it's insane. If you like Diablo, class-building, and ( albeit limited ) creature-collecting, then this game is for you.

In my opinion, this game has so much going for it, and of course, things that could be improved upon. For such a small dev team, it's in a fantastic state. I'd honestly say it's better than some of the more recent launches and even some of the AAA games that have released since this one.

In this game, you can take control of one of four characters. There are different dialogue options for each one, and you can even switch which character you are controlling when you are loading up your game. There are a few different creatures you can shift into, and each one has some uniqueness to it. There is a lot of overlap, of course, and limitations, but you can build some pretty gnarly beasts regardless. That, for me, is the biggest focus of this game. I am a creature-collecting son of a gun. I can't get enough of the genre. Each creature also has variants that you can collect. So far, I believe I've found 5 variants of just one creature. They each have different strengths and weaknesses as well as elemental affinities.

Now to the human character. There are four prebuilt classes you can choose from. You can also build your own if none of the available classes are quite what you're looking for. I am not an expert in any of the classes, as I only have 10 hours in the game, but I'll do my best to sort of summarize them below.

The classes, as I remember them, are:

•Guardian
•Hellion
•Surge
•Hunter

You've got Guardian, which is similar to a Paladin, especially when playing with friends. That's your typical tank with the addition of some healing abilities. They can also deal some pretty heavy damage, so they're not just defensive and bulky if you don't want them to be. They also have a few abilities that grant different buffs to yourself and allies if you're playing with friends. I don't have much experience with this particular class, but I think it could be a lot of fun to play.

The Hellion is sort of like a self-healing fire soldier. You've got pyromancy abilities, self-sustain abilities, and, of course, some regular damaging abilities for your weapons. I'm not such a fan of the way the elemental damage works in this game, so my Hellion is built to be more of a self-sustaining physical attacker. I've got a lot of melee weapon-damage increases, two fire abilities, and a good bit of self-sustain. This is the class I'm most familiar with. It is definitely a glass cannon, though, so be aware of that. It's more of a berserker that can sacrifice its own HP to buff its damage output, but it has low defenses so it's pretty easy to get your butt handed to you.

The Surge is a sort of chronomancer with a little lightning mage sprinkled in there. You can control time in certain ways and do a lot of ranged electric damage. It also seems like there are some ally-buffing abilities with this one, similar to the Guardian. I haven't played with this class yet, but it seems like it would be pretty versatile. There's also an energy mechanic that can boost your stats or channel into an attack to deal huge damage. That's about all I know on this one.

The Hunter is a ranged DPS with the ability to become invisible. They're agile and more focused on sneaking around to set up traps than to use direct attacks. This isn't my playstyle, as I like to be right in an enemy's face, but I can definitely see the appeal for people who enjoy more sneaky, roguish classes. They can also use poison and bleeding abilities to whittle away at enemies, and I believe they can also summon a few different companion creatures to stand in for them while they kill from afar.

So whether you want to get kill-shots from afar, be right up in an enemy's business, shoot lightning bolts, slow down time, or outlast your enemies in a battle of attrition, this game has a class for you. And, as previously mentioned, you can even make your own custom classes by mashing some of the others together if you wanna do your own thing.

The weapons are pretty cool too. There's blunt, sharp, and piercing damage I believe. There are also elemental damage types like fire, electric, and poison. There is also a bleed damage. There isn't much to say about all of that except that enemies have different strengths and weaknesses and also have the same ability to deal any damage type that the player can. You can brute-force it like I do, or be strategic in what type of damage you want to use against different foes.

There are melee and ranged weapons. Melee has two-handed (heavy) and one-handed (light) that you can dual-wield with some penalties. Each weapon does one or more damage type. It's pretty simple, but you can find something you like, I'm sure. You can even mix it up with dual-wielding by having a sharp weapon in one hand and a blunt weapon in the other.

There are also "alterants" which function similarly to the gem sockets in Diablo. Different ones do different things, and they all have different names. Combining different ones can even give bonus effects if you put the names in a specific order. There's another game where you can do something similar, but I can't think of what it is right now.

Now, for the parts that I think are lacking a bit.

I think the game would greatly benefit from more abilities that could allow us to dual-wield heavy weapons, for example.

There could definitely be ways to expand your inventory.

It would be nice to have a quick-swap system where we can have different loadouts (especially with the beast transformations), because as it is, you have to go into your equipment and manually change your beast, equipment for it, and what ranged ability you're using. It doesn't pause while you do this, either, so if you need to swap in combat, good luck. This is tricky because there are forms that are more useful for travel purposes, and ones that are more useful for combat. So if you're going along in a form you use more for travel, so you may not have kitted it out with combat abilities (looking at you, crocolisk), and suddenly encounter an enemy that you need to beat, it can be a pain because you have to run away, equip your combat beast, then run back. It's an inconvenience more than anything, so it would be nice to have a quick-swap system.

The camera is also a little wonky at times and could benefit from some tweaks. It would also be neat to have a first-person view, but I understand this game isn't really meant for that sort of thing.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head, but overall, I definitely cannot recommend this game enough. It is so fun to run around in the world and fight things and do quests and just exist in the game. Like I said at the beginning; if you like class-building, creature-collecting, shapeshifting, and games similar to Diablo, then this is one you might wanna give a chance to.

This game is beautiful and a ton of fun if you enjoy coming up with strategies, synergies, and team builds.

The monsters are all pretty useful when you figure out the right combination of other monsters to go with them. That's the beauty of it, too, I think; all monsters can be useful and powerful. They're all viable options and pairing them with complementary monsters unlocks their true potentials. This is a game where you really can use your favorites, even if they're perceived as weak on their own.

The art is phenomenal. I love pixel games, so maybe I'm biased on this, but the backgrounds, monsters, and characters are so beautiful and well-made. The way everything moves, the way the monsters' attacks look, all of it is gorgeous.

The story is pretty good, too, especially the further you go and the more NPC dialogue you manage to unlock. It's interesting to figure out who your character really is and the ulterior motives of other characters you'll encounter. They all have a reason for being there. Every one of them has a role to play in your formation. You don't even have to have a typical healer, tank, damage combo. With the right abilities and traits, you could have a full team of tanky healers, debuffing tanks, damage-dealers that have self-sustain with regenerative abilities. I'd love to see some abilities or traits that make your monsters heal or shield off of dealing damage. Vampiric and Vanguard abilities and traits would make for some very interesting combinations.

The upgrades are just a bit lacking. Something that upgrades our void blitz, for example, would be great. Maybe we can do more to certain elements, or increase it by one point of poise damage to the monster we select. Heck, there could be an upgrade where we take one poise damage from all three enemies instead of the two from a single one. And it could be sort of like skills where you can only pick one of them to avoid becoming too overpowered. It would also be super cool if the monsters' positions had some sort of effect. Like, the one in the middle is more likely to be targeted, so you'd want to place your tank there, or something. Maybe there could be different offenses and defenses based on ranged vs melee attacks. Though I suppose the majority of the attacks are more focused on range.

I also have to nitpick the game's length. I know it's meant to be a roguelike, but I do hope there is more content added in the future. More zones, champions, events, etc. Even an endless mode would be awesome. I haven't completed all of the content available, of course, but it does seem like it's a bit short. I am definitely biased on this, of course, because I grew up in the era where games took weeks or months of your time to finish ( Legend of Dragoon, Arc The Lad, Xenosaga, etc. ), and I prefer a game that takes some time to work through. They're rare these days, unfortunately. But you could really take your time and explore and unlock so many things in Monster Sanctuary, and I feel like this game could benefit from having a bit of longevity to it as well.

The ending seems quite abrupt when you defeat the final boss, and I am left sitting there wondering if that's it. I know it's in early access, so there is going to be more content added, so I'm holding out hope that we get areas beyond the current final boss where we have to go deeper and try to stop the corruption at its core. Maybe we could have corrupted variants of monsters with higher chances to spawn the deeper we go.

I would absolutely recommend this to anyone who enjoys dungeon-crawlers, creature-collectors, roguelikes, crafting synergies between creatures, and games that have pixel-art. It's awesome for what it has so far, and I'm very excited for what comes next.

The modding is a joke. The game cost money for the same thing with slightly better textures. It's just been a money grab and I fell for it. Any mod can just break at any time and prevent you from playing on modded servers. I've been trying for, like, an hour to install ONE mod. The new modding tool is garbage. Put it back on workshop. It's just a sh!ttier version of ASE. Uninstalling this garbage.

I wanted to play this game so badly, and I wanted to love it. I really did. I only got about an hour in before the stuttering and lagging and near-crashing drove me to giving up and refunding my purchase.

At a glance, it looks so cute and fun. But it's painful to try to slog through the drawn-out tutorial and then dealing with all of the performance-related issues on top of that. It just isn't in a state to be played right now. It needs a LOT of work done to it so it's playable and it needs content added. It feels very empty and hollow as-is, even just an hour in.

There doesn't seem to be much substance. Maybe I'm wrong, but it just didn't feel like a completed game. There also aren't many character customization options and the clothes look awkward on some of the bodies.

I can't, in good faith, recommend this game in its current state. Maybe if the devs put in the work needed to make it perform decently, it would be a different story. That alone is enough to warrant a do-not-play rating.

This game is fricking great. I absolutely love it. The story is phenomenal, the boss fights are interesting, and the type match-ups are also really neat. It's not difficult to learn, and it's got a lot of content. I'm not even finished with it yet, but I can't recommend it enough!

terraria is so cool, place block, swing sword, eat burger, big eyeball come and blink on you until you die, tentacle man w/ a spine hanging out vibes in the bg while his multiple eyes in incorrect places zap you with lasers n stuff. 12/10 probably the best ever

I can't recommend the game right now. Not in its current state. I've had it for years. I'm very impulsive. I bought it as such, impulsively, and while I don't necessarily regret it, I sometimes wish I had waited.

However, even now, 3 years after I purchased it and last played it, there hasn't been any real noticeable changes. It crashes much more frequently now than it did 3 years ago, but... Aside from some decorations ( which don't do much aside from make your map look a bit better and gain some scenery points with its players ), nothing has changed, that I can tell.

I poked around for about 2 hours the other day, and aside from what I mentioned, there wasn't anything new or exciting or engaging going on.

All that being said, I do think this game is fun to go into and mess around for an hour or two here and there. But. BUT. I do not think it is worth the price given the current content ( or lack thereof ). I like that there is a roadmap and whatnot, but I do wish the dev team was a bit bigger and more ambitious and driven to deliver a product worth that $25. I didn't pay that much, I don't believe, back when I got it, but it definitely isn't worth that much right this minute.

I would love to see...

•More customization

•More assets

•More enemy types

•Visible progression of the player's characters ( i.e. changing armor, weapons, hairstyles as they move through towns, and just general player customization )

•More customization of the terrain

•Randomly generated maps

•Mounts

•Skill animations ( or animations in general )

•A chat log where you can see what the players are talking about

•A chat log for the mods/devs to speak about the game and changes they've made or other development related things

•More progression in general

•More flora/fauna that could be passive, timid, or even dangerous ( but not necessarily enemy ) NPCs, just creatures and plants and terrains that you may want to give a wide berth to, unless you're adequately equipped, leveled, or otherwise confident in your skills, i.e. wolves, man-eating plants, bears, etc, that won't actively seek out players, but will attack if provoked

•Potentially a co-op mode? I think it could be fun to design a game with someone else, or perhaps a vs. mode with two+ factions against each other, i.e. WoW.

•Dungeons

•Placeable treasures/loot that players can find or gain from enemies

•Gear with random drop chances from enemies, elites, the previously mentioned dungeons, etc.

•Different types of paths and greater freedom with their placements

•Secrets/Easter eggs we can put in for players to discover and potentially gain rare loot/achievements from

•Achievements for the players!

That's probably not scratching the surface of ideas I have about the game, but that's a general idea of things that have crossed my mind in the two hours I've recently put into the game again after 3 years of not touching it.

It has so much potential, and I would love it if the team would take on more devs and put a little more work into it.

Sorry for the long-winded review.

TL;DR

I like this game a lot and can see great potential in it, but I can't, in its current state, recommend it to other people. There just isn't enough content of any sort to make it worth the price.

sus

This game is a hidden gem. We got it for free on the Epic store back when the pandemic was in full swing, played it just to check it out, bought all the DLC on Epic, then bought the game AND all the DLC again on Steam. We always have a great time with it and I'd definitely recommend this to anyone who likes dungeon-crawler-esque games and a class system and all that jazz. There are also different races that have different interactions with NPCs throughout the world, different food needs, and different pros and cons overall. It's a wonderful game and I hope more people get into it. It definitely deserves all the love in the universe.

dinosaurs are cool