Monark reaches for grandeur but settles for diversion – Review

gamepur.com:

Monark is caught between worlds of play. At once, it feels like a follow-up to massive, genre-defining hits like Persona 5 and a plucky smaller-budget JRPG inspired by modern classics. Its distinctive, anime gothic key art languishes in the cel-shade of its more conventional 3D models. Its unique take on tactical RPG combat gets tiresome and empty over dozens of hours. Its characters are anime stock, only given subversion in flickers and whispers. Monark constantly strains within the confines of expectation, unable to push its ambitions through.

The game opens with a cutscene depicting regular life at the secretive Shin Mikado Academy. Quickly, everything goes to hell. A strange magic barrier seals the school off from the rest of the world. A maddening mist descends over much of the academy. This chaos is the result of pact bearers, regular human beings who seal promises with Daemons from the Otherworld. These Monarks, each represented by one of the seven deadly sins, grant obscene power in exchange for the distortion of the world.

Rescued by his little sister Chiyo, the player-named protagonist finds that he too is a pact-bearer. Instead of one of the deadly sins, he is bound to the mysterious entity Vanitas. This makes him an enemy of the academy, but also potentially its greatest asset. His powers enable him to combat the pact bearers haunting the campus. With this in mind, the dean recruits the protagonist as part of the “true student council,” and tasks him with defeating the villainous pact bearers. As he proceeds on his mission, the dean’s motivations, and the school’s true nature, are drawn into question.

Self evidently, Monark pulls from a long history of Japanese school-based horror media such as