Monster Monpiece Review – Monster Card Game

I was browsing through some of the titles on Keymailer from Idea Factory International when I came across a game I hadn’t heard of before, Monster Monpiece. It was a video game made as a card game with many unique art pieces from the Compile Heart and Japanese Idea Factory teams. My interest piqued, I just had to had to try the game and see what it was all about

Game Name: Monster Monpiece
Platform(s): PlayStation Vita, PC (Reviewed)
Developer(s): Compile Heart
Publisher(s): Idea Factory International
Release Date: March 14, 2017
Price: $9.99

Monster Monpiece starts you in the shoes of character called May, once she gets assigned a beast partner to help her with her training as a Beast Master. Being a Beast Master has you using a variety of monsters to fight against other Beast Masters or other beasts in general. Combat is in the form of a card game.

The Good

Monster Monpiece itches one specific itch I have in gaming, satisfying card game combat. You flip a coin in combat to decide if you or your opponent goes first. Red is the enemy, blue is you. You begin the game with five cards in your hand. Each turn you gain three mana and you draw a card. Each card in the deck has a cost of mana. It is best to make your deck have good cards but also cards that don’t cost a lot of mana to use. You can play a single card per turn.

A card can have four roles, Melee, Ranger, Buffer, Or Healer. Melee units usually have high attack but low hp. Rangers usually have low attack and low hp but they can attack from more than a space away. Buffers have low hp and low attack but they can increase the attack of the card in front of them. Healers usually have a low attack but higher hp. They don’t do a lot of damage but they can heal the card in front of them depending on if they have MP left.

There are three lanes where combat takes place, once you place a card on the field, it turns into a character. After the first turn, they will move one space forward until they hit the enemy Headquarters or another character on the lane. If it is an enemy they will attack the character, if an ally the character will just stop there. The goal is to get the enemy Headquarters fortitude to zero. If your Headquarters fortitude reaches zero you lose.

Monster Monpiece has a lot of fun in the combat but another great part of the game is the deck-making ideas. If you play the same color three times in a row, every unit on the field gets a boost to their health and attack points. You also get an added boon to your Mana pool. There is also a fusion mechanic. Each card has a species (Beast, Dragon, Demi-Human, etc), you can combine the species to increase their stats by the stats of the card you fused it with.

In my experience, it is best to run a double-color deck with a limited amount of species so you can fuse cards. Having two colors makes it easier to guarantee you will have the color you need to get the most out of the color boosts.

As you progress the game you get access to more packs and cards in the game. You can use the money you gain from battles to grab packs. The higher rarity packs cost more money. The cards themselves however are not the best they can be until they teach you about the rub mechanic.

You gain rub points for winning battles. These rub points can be spent to start the rubbing mechanic. You then get the ability to rub the artwork. You click on certain spots of the card to get them to react. You have to get their gauge to the max for the rub to be successful. This then evolves the card to become a new artwork that has new stats for the card.

The Bad

Monster Monpiece does have some questionable decisions in my opinion in some of the afterthoughts of the design. The evolution mechanic is certainly fan service and I don’t mind that, but what the card evolves into can feel a bit random. A card I use for its low-cost usability for instance, once evolved can suddenly become a monster that costs double the mana to get a few extra attack and health points. I then have to remove the evolved version to use the old card version and hope I have a duplicate of the card. This was the main reason I wouldn’t bulk-evolve duplicate cards at the same time. You can never be sure what stats change or why. I would have liked it better if I knew what stats would get changed before attempting to rub the card.

If you want to get the best packs without playing the story and unlocking the packs, you can. All it requires is real money. There is an online storefront for the game that allows you to buy packs and in-game resources. On the one hand, I didn’t touch the storefront since it is all PvE, but on the other hand, it is weird you can buy seal stones and currency all the same with real money.

That also adds another sad reality to the game though. There is no PvP on the version of Monster Monpiece that I played. Supposedly there is an online mode you can play on the PlayStation Vita version but I doubt there is a lot of demand for that version currently. I imagine there would be more demand for it on the PC version. I would prefer it if they removed the online storefront for resources and implemented that to host at the bare minimum a peer-to-peer connection added to the game that lets you play with friends.

The Verdict

After looking at the price of Monster Monpiece on Steam, I am baffled by how good the game is to play. The mechanics of the game system run pretty deep. You get hours and hours of enjoyment if you are a big fan of card games and it scratches that itch of deck-building. I highly recommend picking up this game if you are a fan of the Idea Factory art style or just card games in general.

Monster Monpiece is available on PC.

Review Disclosure Statement: Monster Monpiece was provided to us by Idea Factory International for review purposes. For more information on how we review video games and other media/technology, please review our Review Guideline/Scoring Policy.

Affiliate Link Disclosure: One or more of the links above contain affiliate links, which means at no additional cost to you, we may receive a commission should you click through and purchase the item.