![]() ![]() In fact, though it may well be the most conventional part of this deeply strange game, it’s still quite interesting. I should clarify at this point that Monark doesn’t have a bad combat system by any means. Monark’s combat is so partitioned off from everything else in the game that it feels dropped in, whereas with most JRPGs developers work hard to try to make the enemies and combat system a consistent and integrated part of the rest of the experience. All of this might sound like an abstract difference to the standard JRPG, but you do really feel it in action. Once you start the combat, you can continually replay battles until you’ve had enough, meaning that you never need to return to the “real world” until you’re done grinding. Then, just before the boss, I spend a short while (never too long) fighting enemy after enemy by dialling into this otherworld. I found my preferred approach was to simply ignore all combat as I explored an area, solved its puzzles and followed along with the narrative. If you’re not levelled enough that battle is going to be overwhelming, but again, it’s entirely up to you when you do this, and it takes place in an entirely distinct space from the rest of the game. Here, too, the boss battles happen in an entirely different realm, and involves reaching the end of a dungeon area, finding a modem-like phone, and then dialling it using your own phone. Of course, you will need to level up, because eventually, you are going to have to fight a boss battle to progress the narrative. So, for the most part, assuming you can avoid your pursuers, then there’s no pressing urgency to whisk yourself over to a battle scene that looks like it came from a completely different game. If they catch you, you simply get knocked out. If you prompt them to accept the call, then they’re whisked away to a battle in a very different dimension that doesn’t even remotely resemble the “real world.” If you don’t answer the call, the people that roam the mist-enshrouded halls will go berserk and chase you… but even if they catch you, they don’t attack, and you don’t fight them. Instead, there are times when your avatar’s mobile phone will ring. There are no random battles, or even enemies on the map, as you might expect from a JRPG. What I mean by this is that the combat is almost completely separate and modular to the rest of the game. It’s there, but it also feels like it was dropped in deep into development, and only after someone high up realised that without it they were selling something that was going to be as appealing to the gaming audience as a video recording of the recital of Freud would be to the cinema audience. I’m not entirely sure the combat was planned for Monark at all.
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