The Last Monsters

This game is so so SO awesome! I love pretty much everything about it. I love that my monsters are my companions with names, and the game requires some level of care from me. everything was thought out so well, even down to the options in building your avatar. If you see The Last Monsters, Give it a try. You will be super impressed!!

(Edit: This game died in 2020. Dev team split and there are no updates.) Great game, allows for a decent degree of freedom and customization, while encouraging collection to unlock new moves and gene upgrades to enhance your team with. This is NOT the monster raising game you grew up with. It's more in line with one of the banned pokemon episodes that showed just what happens when wildlife has superpowers. Life is gritty, dark and brutal, and while your taming gauntlet will save you in emergencies, your whole team can die. Nights are an onslaught of enemies that spawn on a timer with every encounter. Kill all of the enemies on your screen or gamble on the endless hordes on a rare spawn showing up to capture. Dawdle without preparation, and you will be overwhelmed. The only way you can keep your team from dying on a loss is by building a bond with them. Succeed and they can hang on through one loss, two for your oldest, closest companions before they are lost forever. This isn't a Souls game, you do have a decent shot if you're careful, but no one is there to hold your hand. This is not your kid's game.

This game wishes it could have been Palworld.

Not nearly as buggy as I originally expected, a really wonderfully fleshed out start to an amazing mashup of genres and game mechanics. If you are interested in games of survival/monster collecting and battling, I implore you give this bad boy a test drive! Love: *Dynamic maps, Day/night cycle and Weather system that affects battle/wild mons **Difficulty is very scaleable! Numerous different settings that can be adjusted at start and mid-game, including "nuzlocke" style play. This is generally speaking a more difficult styled game on default settings, I like that a lot. ***Battle System is unique and very complex, intensifies greatly in complexity the more monsters come onto the field. ****I personally love the monster designs. In your monster-PC-hub-storage thingy they appear as adorable 8-bit sprites Room for Improvement: *Graphics/art could be spruced up for some monsters. Some look a little more....rough around the edges than others. **Maybe the battle system is new to me but it seems at times a TAD bit overwhelming. This might be as simple as redoing some battlefield UI and layout to be easier to take in. Either way I still really have fun learning it and it hasn't become too tedious for me, -yet- ***Text boxes appear blank sometimes and for me unfortunately it was the battle tutorial, but I can easily revisit the tavern to read it again, or any general game info (which is super helpful in the game's current state!). ****General accessibility like better menus and GUI would be helpful, some commands like exiting menus are confusing and have you button mashing to find the right screen. *****Controller support would be sick It's in Alpha so there are obvious things that will be improved upon/change assuming development continues. I'll keep playing and update if anything changes in my experience :-]