monark

Monark is a JRPG by Lancrase and Furyu and it is the spiritual successor to Lost Dimension with both sharing many similar motifs; gameplay and story wise. 

You can name the main character anything you want as you try to figure out what is really going on with the supernatural incidents occurring at Shin Mikado Academy. A strange mist is creeping all over the school and anyone who inhales it becomes insane. 

The gameplay is tactical based and you can place your characters and choose what action you want to go with. The school has several places to visit but be careful as the mist can make you lose control and you could end up in the infirmary. Most of the exploration really is just speak to some people for hints and to give them items and open lockers with vague clues. There is also a gameplay feature called “Ego” and you can use it to customize and improve your party member stats. There really isn’t that much enemy variety since most them look quite similar. 

The voice acting is below average and also the dialogue was subpar. The music was pretty good. Apparently, there was even some controversy about certain dialogue that was “marked as transphobic” but I couldn’t really find any said case of said “transphobia”. 

The game is very grindy and it gets repetitive after a while. The art is pretty good but the graphics look dated by Switch standards. The animation was a bit sluggish which was somewhat annoying. The story is below average and it can get convoluted from time to time. The pacing of the story gets bogged down by the amount of grinding. 

You are graded at the end of combat the better you do the more spirit shards you get. You can use spirit shards to level up and increase your stats. There is quite a bit of replay value to it. 

Overall, it was an ok game. 

It gets 3 out of 5 stars. 

You really have to enjoy Lost Dimension to really like this game.