MONSTER SANCTUARY FORGOTTEN WORLD DLC Is Everything You Could Want In DLC

I was recently given a copy of Monster Sanctuary by developer Mo Rai Games and publisher Team17 with the Forgotten World DLC to review and the DLC did not disappoint. Overall, the game itself had some drawbacks for me and what I like in a game, but if it is your style you will really like it. So let’s jump in.

Monster Sanctuary is a monster collecting game with metroidvania style world exploring gameplay and a highly strategic battle system. I really liked the metroidvania aspect of it, each monster you have will help you overcome different world obstacles and I really like that element. You will always have a monster running around with you who’s ability you can access, but switching your monsters is very easy to do and you can switch over to ones that are not in your current battling team of 6. I appreciate that you always have access to all your monsters for easy switching around to build a team suitable for your needs.

Here is the drawback of the game for me, there are an overwhelming number of options for team building. The fighting mechanics are reliant upon synergizing your team and getting them to work very well together, not just individually. Each monster has a skill tree that offers a lot of options on how you want to build them up. I appreciate the variety this offers, but for me it is way too much to keep track of. There are tons of skills, attacks, buffs, and debuffs that all work intricately together, and if you enjoy this level of depth to your games then this is really well done. For me, I just like surface level kind of skill point allocation so I can move on quickly so this was a drawback for me. The hardest part really is if you don’t optimize your team, you will not get very far in the game as either the champion monsters will take an extremely long time to defeat, or you’ll fight other monster keepers who will trounce you every time. There’s definitely some trial and error in team building, but it’s good once you get things really fine tuned to suit your needs.

The Forgotten World is a good extension for the game. Not only do you get a whole world to explore, you get some more lore that will hopefully lead to more DLC in the future. I liked the look of the world too, especially the new monsters. I’m a sucker for dinosaurs, so to have these new monsters be very prehistoric and dinosaur like was a big win. As far as DLC goes, this was really excellent and better yet, it was a free update to the game. It is accessible from Horizon beach in the game, you just need a monster that allows you to swim and a monster that has the ability to materialize invisible platforms. 

As far as DLC goes, this is about as good as it can get. While I ultimately got too hung up on how complicated the battle system is, as far as ranking Forgotten Worlds for how well it does as a DLC, it definitely gets a 10/10.