Meg’s Monster Review (Switch)

There’s always something charming about a story concerning a big monster and a tiny child, where the monster decides to protect the child from harm while helping them on their quest. The dynamics of a seemingly destructive beast being gentle and a fragile kid learning to be stronger is one that tugs at the heartstrings. Meg’s Monster promises all of that and then some in this cute RPG.

Story

You play as a Roy, a beefy monster that likes to eat Magic Tar and hang out with his pal Golan. One day though, they come across a human girl who has fallen into the Underworld. Not quite sure what to do with her, Golan suggests to just eat her and goes to do so when she suddenly starts crying. Almost immediately, things go red and a strange feeling settles over everyone. They are able to get the girl to stop crying and Golan steps away to speak with a strange person, who dubs the girl the “Harbinger of Ruin”. If the girl cries for too long, it’ll spell disaster for everyone.

With their hands tied, Roy and Golan decide to help the girl find her mom, if only to keep her from crying. From there, you go from location to location, trying to dig up clues on how to get to the surface and return Meg to her mother.

The story is simple and is as touching and heart-warming as you can possibly imagine. As is the case with games of this nature, it doesn’t do anything too crazy to set itself apart from other stories, outside of its ending. There are a couple of twists that appear, and the story does a good job of wrapping up all of your questions in a nice bow. The storytelling is very linear, with the player needing to move to designated locations in order to continue the story.

There are a couple of side quests that you can take on as well. While a couple of the early quests aren’t required by any means, if you want any of your questions answered, you’ll want to do the quests towards the end. For those particular quests, they are more story sequences rather than quests.

Gameplay

Meg’s Monster is a turn-based RPG where you take control of Roy. Given Roy’s size, it’s easy to imagine that he’s pretty much a tank that can take a lot of hits. As a result, you’ll see Meg behind him for many of the battles in the game. When Roy takes damage, Meg takes emotional damage because she doesn’t like to see Roy get hurt. Although later in the game, there will definitely be opponents that will challenge even Roy and his tank-like abilities.

The combat does feel a bit too scripted, in that there are only so many ways that you can go about attacking, defending, and healing. You have a limited amount of healing items, you have one main attack that can do increasing levels of damage depending on what attack level you use, and enemies typically telegraph their heavy hitting moves. On one hand, it can make battles feel more epic when things come down to the wire during major boss fights. But on the other hand, it feels like battles were estimates almost to the T on how they will play out.

Meg’s Monster does add some mechanics to spice up the combat, such as healing Meg, healing Roy, and interacting with combat specific items that appear. It does help to set each battle apart, as one battle you’ll be fiddling with a bomb and the next you’re scavenging through a junkyard to find scrap to throw at enemies.

Outside of combat, you’ll be able to look around at different locations and talk to characters. There doesn’t tend to be much to investigate when it comes to the environments themselves, although characters will spit out their unique dialogue if spoken to. Most of the world building is done through the main story, so outside of that, you’re going to be scrapping for crumbs.

Presentation

Meg’s Monster makes use of pixel art much in the style of Earthbound. But while it may not be as detailed as other pixel games that are on the Switch, it’s just as charming to look at. The character designs for all of the cast are also well done, with everyone standing out from one another. Even the monsters that barely show up stand on their own feet, although that’s also because there aren’t a lot of monsters that show up. But as they say, less is more.

The music is as simplistic as the art style, in that it doesn’t have a whole lot of bells and whistles. And yet, it makes its impact all the same. There are piano and string pieces out the wazoo to get you right in the mood to feel drawn in to these characters and their plights.

One thing that is a bit confusing is that saving is made obvious in the game. There is an autosave feature that appears to save after moving locations and if you finish doing any sort of action, but there wasn’t an icon that appeared to alert the player to saving. While not the end of the world, it would have been nice to at least get confirmation of when the game autosaves.

Conclusion

Meg’s Monster is a cute pixel RPG that falls into that camp of being exactly the type of game you’d expect. Charming characters, decent combat system, and a short runtime that will keep you occupied for a few hours. At first place, it seems predictable in its story beats, but does have a few twists up its sleeve to keep you entertained the whole way through. It is a title worth checking out, if these types of games are right up your alley.