A fun, easty to get into RPG with some original ideas and interesting concepts.
In this 3D RPG, Kouji Okada brings us a tale that takes place on an industrial society where jewels are used as a sorce of energy. But the more jewels are used, the more monsters appear. Your quest can be summed up into capturing jewels and vanquishing monsters.
The story focuses on Vice, a Jewel Summoner with no previous training. Vice inherited a jewel from his mother that gives him his summoning ability. Aided by two apprentice Summoners and the staff at The Order, Vice will embark on many missions to help clear the land of monsters and at the same time, find the Abomination that killed his mother.
In your traditional RPG elements, you have the three-member party and turn-based combat system. However, that's about as traditional as it's going to get, since the rest is what makes Monster Kingdom an original game.
Your party members don't take place in battle actively. Instead, and according to what gems they have equipped, it's the summoned monsters that do the dirty work. Each character has a health indicator that belongs to its summoner and a magic indicator that belongs to the monster. If a monster's magic runs out, that character will automatically summon the next jewel equipped.
There is a certain strategy to each battle, depending on what element a monster belongs to. There are eight elements separated into two main categories, Light and Dark. In the Light group, you have Fire, Wind, Thunder and Light. In the Dark group, there is Water, Ice, Earth and of course, Dark. Light elements work better against Dark and vice-versa. But there is a specific order that shows which element is stronger against other, a bit like in Magical Starsign. Fire defeats Ice, Ice is stronger against Wind, Wind is more effective versus Earth… and if you want to know the rest of the order, explore the Study Room at The Order and it will all be revealed to you.
You can have up to three jewels per character at any given time regardless of their elements (no point in having more than one of the same though), and you can switch in between monsters during battle, though you lose a turn when you summon a new one. However, only the one that finishes the battle will gain experience. As a monster gains experience and levels up, it will learn new abilities. If all the ability slots are full, you can replace one of the weaker ones. But there are other ways to improve your summoned monsters, and this is where the game gets more complex with massive amounts of customization possibilities. While monsters belong specifically to a single element, you can teach them abilities from other elements. This involves a slow fusion process (done at The Order in the Amalgamy Lab) that requires pieces of quartz and a whole lot of passing the time fighting, unless you happen to find some special item that speeds it up. But it does make up for some interesting elemental combinations under a single jewel, for example a Fire monster that can cast Ice spells or heal. You can also exchange accumulated points to reinforce your monster. AP can be exchanged for experience (to level up your jewels) or to improve a monster's stats and abilities.
The dungeon layouts are prone to exploration, some of them being quite large. Fortunately, there are save points scattered throughout, which heal you fully and reduce the need of carrying massive amounts of recovery items.
To make the exploration process even better, Vice will also learn Field Abilities that can be used on the field map. Some of these include Lure (increases random battle chances), Detect (tells you how many treasures are left) and Reveal (to make secret passages and platforms appear).
Monster Kingdom has a beautiful presentation. The backgrounds and environments are very rich, and the artwork is just fantastic, with little details in the character's expressions during dialogs. The monster designs are very well done and the animations are smooth, with some exceptions during battle where I experienced a few hiccups while using certain abilities.
The voice acting is also phenomenal, although sometimes I couldn't help but feel that there was too much talking and not enough action. That's not entirely a bad thing, since this is how you get to know the different characters, their personalities and more of the story. Along with the voice acting, sound effects and music are also top-notch.
When all is said and done, Monster Kingdom: Jewel Summoner turns out to be a really good RPG with several original ideas and interesting concepts. It's a fun adventure, easy to get into, even if you don't want to go through the complicated fusion process. Plus, it has the advantage of coming with an ad-hoc online mode to battle or trade with other players. If you have a PSP and enjoy RPGs on the go, grab yourself a copy, because we might be witnessing the birth of the modern Pokemon.
Review text part of Grrlgamer.com. Full text and screens at http://www.grrlgamer.com/review.php?g=monsterkingdomjs