Monster Kingdom: Jewel Summoner Review - PSP

Cozy Okada is famous (as such things go) for co-creating the Megami Tensei series. This is probably the longest-running series of oddball RPGs in the business, although it’s only just shown up on the Western market – before we got Shin Megami Tensei III in America, Japanese players had enjoyed earlier games for a decade and a half.

Okada was half of the MegaTen brain trust, the other half being artist and designer Kazuma Kaneko, who helmed the series for Atlus after Okada’s departure a few games ago. Judging by Okada’s new effort as an independent, he was the “brake,” so to speak, on Kaneko’s tendencies. Since Okada left, MegaTen has only gotten stranger and stranger. Jewel Summoner, meanwhile, is a bit more conventional.

This is not necessarily a bad thing, merely an indication to be read one way or the other. If you liked the full-bore freakout of Shin Megami Tensei III, be advised that this isn’t quite so out of its metaphorical gourd. If you happened to shy away from MegaTen’s tendencies, Jewel Summoner treads more familiar fantasy territory, though there’s no risk of mistaking this game for Dragon Quest.

And Now, In the Fire Corner

Jewel Summoner is a combination dungeon hack and monster-battling adventure. That gives it a little in common with MegaTen, which always involved players using demons to fight for them. In this case, the hero is a collector of Jewels, magical objects which power the summoning of monsters. There’s a healthy dash of Pokemon thrown in as well, though – your collection of monsters can learn new abilities and evolve into new forms.

The guts of the game are complex and involving. Collecting monsters is only the start of it. Then they gain experience, acquire new abilities through a deep “amalgamy” synthesis system, and eventually become different monsters entirely. Monster evolution doesn’t follow a straight line, either – the player can control the direction of a monster’s development by choosing to beef up different elemental stats.

Players can take up to three characters into combat, each packing three monsters’ worth of Jewels at their disposal, which allows for a lot of tactical flexibility in the dungeons. Nine total monsters at the party’s disposal means that it’s easy to cover most of the elemental bases, not to mention it helps ward off the boredom of having to use the same monsters over and over.

Gotta Catch…You Know

Combat moves quickly, if not quite so quickly as the most impatient gamers might prefer. The PSP is still the PSP – although the load times aren’t terrible, they’re noticeable enough. Several seconds of waiting runs into each random dungeon encounter, and the game regularly hiccups a bit before loading the longer spell animations and sound samples in combat.

On the bright side, at least most of the battles are nice to look at. Jewel Summoner features a more restrained design style than the MegaTen RPGs, but anyone who’s played MegaTen knows that’s a relative judgment. (Kazuma Kaneko’s artwork for those games is arguably the most bizarre in the business.) The monsters designs here are creative, detailed takes on all kinds of different well-known fantasy archetypes. Many of them are familiar, but nothing’s taken straight out of your old Dungeons & Dragons manuals, and the 3D animation that brings them to life is nice and smooth, so long as the load times don’t interrupt.

The character designs (the human characters, that is) could have used a little less creativity, though. Most of the supporting cast is too colorful by half – they tend to clash with the background in a lot of the conversation sequences.

In general, the narrative side of the game didn’t need to stick its head up so high. Frankly, this game talks too much, and with dialogue that’s likely to come across as bland and repetitive to any veteran of more than a couple RPGs. The conversation sequences are full of talking heads slowly blipping on and off the screen to deliver dull pronouncements, while the player steadily taps on the circle button in hopes that the game will return to the action at some point.

Put ‘Em On Ice

After bashing through some especially brutal introductory training sequences, it gets easier to ignore the characters and the story in favor of building a cool monster collection. Once the game takes the training wheels off, you can pick and choose more of what you’d personally like to do, and progress at your own pace while you’re doing it. Beyond the main quest, there’s a seriously deep selection of dungeons to explore and different monsters to fine-tune.

Players looking for another MegaTen may still be disappointed, of course – if you want more of those out-there visuals and dark fantasy themes, then go ahead and stick with Atlus’ own home-grown games. If a more grown-up Pokemon sounds like a good time, though, Jewel Summoner’s a great choice for spending some time with your PSP.

Article by: D.F. Smith