Monster Kingdom: Jewel Summoner is a turn based monster battling RPG.
But for once there is a story that keeps you entertained. You play as
Vice, a monster hunter who is tracking down an evil Abomination that
killed his mother. Almost immediately you meet a mysterious man who
seems to take an interest in Vice and what he is doing. To be able to
continue his search for the killer of his mother, Vice has to join the
Order. The Order is a group of people who can summon monsters from
jewels and fight the Abominations that are causing havoc across the
land. Vice will soon realize not everything is the way it seems...he
will have to figure out who is truly a friend and who is foe.
The story in Jewel Summoner really kept me hooked. I wanted to know
what would be Vice's next step to find his mother's killer, who is
really an enemy and who is hiding their true intentions, and what was
really going on with the world. Sometimes the dialog could get quite
long in certain areas but if you are really interested in the
characters it wasn't bad at all. The voice acting was very good in this
game, probably one of the better ones I have heard for the PSP.
The gameplay is turn based. Your monsters do the fighting, each has
their own Jewel Points bar. The Jewel Points (JP) bar is like a mana
bar. Each action your monsters take uses some of the JP. When your JP
runs out, the monster will be switched out with one of your others.
Your Life Points (LP) however, is shared by all of your monsters,
switching one monster for the other will not heal you. Monsters with
healing spells and items are the only way to heal during battle. Each
monster can have up to 5 attack/abilities. During the majority of your
battling youll be accompanied by 2 other party members. Each member can
have 3 monsters ready for battle . You can pick and choose which
monsters you take for each mission by visiting the Jewel Bank in the
Order.
There are 110 monsters in the game and can be caught using prisms. It
is similar to pokeballs in Pokemon. Weaken the monster and use a prism
to catch them. The monsters can be added to the current active battling
monsters or sent to storage in the Jewel Bank to use later. Each
monster is aligned with a certain element: Light, Dark, Fire, Water,
Thunder, Wind, Stone, and Ice. The elements can allow you to have an
advantage in battle. For example, using a Thunder monster on a Water
monster will cause massive damage. Using Thunder on a Stone monster
however will hit for a low amount of damage.
Certain monsters can evolve using Amalgamy. Amalgamy is a system that
allows you to use quartz and fuse it with your monster's jewel. The
quartz can evolve the monster, add ability slots, or teach them a new
attack or ability. There are quartz that relate to each of the elements
that monsters are aligned to. However there is no rule on what ability
a monster can learn. So if you have a fire monster and want it to learn
some water attacks, you'll just need to fuse water quartz into the
monster's jewel. Amalgamy can add a lot of flexibility to your monsters
and can help protect the weaknesses of their element alignment.
I really enjoy this game and there is one reason why it did not, could
not, score any higher for me. There are slight pauses in the battle
sequences. I believe it is the system reading the umd but it would
cause the action to pause every so often in some battles. This included
pauses in dialog when in battle. This did not happen often, only in
battles and not in every battle. Although it was annoying it was
certainly not game breaking. It shouldn't happen though which is why
the score was lowered for it.
Overall this is a great game. The story is entertaining and keeps you
interested in the characters and world. The monsters look great
graphically. There is plenty of customization and types of monsters to
choose from. I recommend this game to anyone looking for a fun monster
battling RPG for their PSP and will not be bothered by the slight
pauses in some of the battles.
