Monkey Hero ReviewThe Legend of Zelda, quite possibly one of the most popular series that includes adventure with hints of RPG elements. The way the games were created were simply a piece of magnificence that dazzled with awesome and timeless music, simple yet engaging controls, and most importantly, a superb story to immerse yourself into the world of Hyrule. That is how an adventure game should be created, with everyone (including the villagers) full of character, items that are used more than once and can be used in more ways than other, actual creativity used in its dungeon layout to give the satisfaction to the player for solving the puzzle. The Legend of Zelda games are of the finest quality to do this in a third person perspective. Then there are rip-offs like The Adventure of Monkey Hero.
Monkey Hero....how to describe this? Imagine the Legend of Zelda, a Link to the Past. Now imagine that the game is riddles with a low frame rate, and it prone to lagging. Imagine all the dungeons long, tedious, and unsatisfying. Imagine all the fun taken out of the game, that it was a dull, monotonous adventure of unrealistic and terrible character development. In fact, just imagine everything in the game as plain "BAD", apart from the music. That is Monkey Hero. Can't imagine Link to the Past being bad? Then you just need to play this game to understand.
I mean, just like all other games, it starts off fairly good, but it's when you get to know the game up close and personal and shows its true colours that really the game terrible. I'm prepared to say it. This game is terrible, not to mention hugely disappointing. This game came out after a fair few Zelda games came out, and the developers thought it would be a good idea to rival that sort of game design and create Monkey Hero. Of course, they based their main idea too much on the Legend of Zelda and lost focus on making something original of their own. With that said, let me give you several reasons not to play this game.
The story is pretty linear, but unlike a Link to the past, you need to read the instruction booklet to know the story, and even then, the story told in game is poorly executed (as in, zero back story and very little and weak structure to the story as you play). There are three worlds, the waking world, the dream world and the nightmare world. Apparently, the Nightmare king wants to destroy the order and balance of all three worlds and create total chaos! So he goes and steals the Magic Storybook of Dreams. A sage of the Dream king creates a Monkey Hero out of stone to stop him, but apparently we don;t see that at the beginning of the game. In fact I got the impression the guy was a low pay slave to begin with. Apparently, the game didn't think a back story to all this would be enriching for the player, and decided "get dem into play sooner those long cut-scenes are boring moar play :D" ....-sighs-
Another thing to note is that at the beginning, there's a demo of the game, and it shows events that happen after the beginning of the game has started. It wouldn't make sense to you unless if you have at least finished the first "dungeon", and I use the term lightly. Anyway, as you make it through the pre-dungeon of learning stuff and stuff, you get your first weapon, a bamboo staff (ASDFGHJKL; STAFFS! :DDD), which after a while, you can use a hover ability to kinda "hover" over gaps. You have to really annoyingly hold down the attack button and wait for it to charge for a moment. What happened to just using a different button for it?
So the Nightmare king decided to attack and to steal the Magic Storybook, which, as you get out of the dungeon with your new weapon and poor attempts to try and bring mystery into its graphics, he is nearly done. The Sage tells you to make it to the library (Because we all keep a very important book in a place where anyone can just waltz in and book it out. Don't forget to take over the world before it's due in) You go over and fight him. The first boss is fighting the Nightmare king himself, but apparently defeating him doesn't kill him. Noooo.... He tears eight pages of the book and scatters them all over the place. the Sage tells you this and that he needs to tell you something. You enter the Dogo and he tells you that you have a destiny to fulfill, but will only tell you if you collect all eight pieces of the storybook. And so your adventure begins.
Well, not only is the story weak, but also all the build up towards it, and doesn't redeem itself with any form of development later on in the game. And now I'm stuck with this review. Just like the game, it offers no funnel to where you're supposed to go. You could be OCD like me and decide to go and explore everywhere you can before the next dungeon, which causes you to explore a huge area with little to no restrictions. It's good for an adventure game to offer a huge area to explore, but not pretty much the entire game to begin with. Sure, most dungeons need an item to advance into them, but besides that, you got a free roaming pass. With so much, you have to limit yourself to go where you think you're supposed to go (somewhere close), and you might actually miss a really neat item which was intended for the players that explore. It's just not done right. It should be allowed to be searched section by section, not the entire world and locked out dungeons. With this review I feel I have so much I want to complain about this game, so much so I might miss a few things.
The graphics are really disappointing. As the game starts up, really impressive 3D graphics, that are FF VII quality, pop up in a animation. They even have facial expressions. But as you start the game, you get what? Dull 32-bit graphics? Okay, it's a 32-bit system, but the Link to the Past was 16-bit, but looked a million times better. Not only because it was bright and vibrant and everything stood out, but because it was smooth as well. This game suffers from lag when too much stuff comes on the screen, which is really disappointing to see in a disk based game. Not everything is at it's optimum frame rate, which really gets my goat. Apart from that, the animations themselves are good enough for the system, but several games on this system have done loads better.
The enemies are plain, uncreative, and pretty easy to defeat. Some are even just recoloured versions of the same enemy, only stronger. Because this game has dodgy hit detection, you're going to get hit sooner or later. Peaches are your health instead of hearts, and finding giant peaches to increase your maximum health are pretty common. You often find them before you fight a boss, instead of after you defeat them... Gah! That's not how it works! That's not rewarding! You are meant to fight the boss, be a bawes, and get rewarded with more health and progress in the game. However...
The bosses are pretty fun, I'll admit it. Not all the bosses, but some are quite good to fight against, and one is even quite challenging. The final boss is also very rich in unique ways to defeat him, and has surprisingly a lot of variety. It was a shame not all the bosses, or enemies for that matter, were given the same treatment. Such a thing would have at least made the game enjoyable, with a highlight to look forward to.
Another thing that is surprisingly good about this game is the music. It's calm when it wants to, soothing in tranquil places, and awesomely epic during boss fights. I love the boss fight music, it's so incredible and catchy. Even though the rest of the game was pretty pathetic, the music really made up for those dry spots. Okay, not enough to make the game enjoyable, but at least they did something right. I enjoyed how simple the instruments were when composing these pieces, which tied in with the culture and style of the time within the game, especially the drums. They did a good job there.
The controls aren't all that bad, but the way items result to those controls are a different matter entirely. The dash ability you get when you get your first staff limits yourself to going in a direct straight line. Any movement left or right will cancel it out. The super hook (TOTALLY not ripping off the grapple hook...) doesn't always work the way you want it to if you are too close to the hook or at an odd angel, and a switch won't flick unless you are in the dead centre of the entire thing.
In all honesty, the variety of weapons are nice. You get firecrackers (like Links bombs), spears (like Links arrows) and exploding spears (Which make a HUGE explosion), but you can buy more later on in the game. Apart from that, your default weapon, the staff, can be upgraded four times (or more accurately, replaced four times). There's the bone staff from a side quest, a dragon bone staff for 500 coins somewhere, a metal staff that you get eventually, and the Dream Staff, the strongest staff around. You need to collect 20 Dream Crystals in order to obtain it, but these things are so hard to find. Even near the end of the game, you get this item that is supposed to help you find new, undiscovered stuff, but it hasn't helped get those last 4 dream crystals. I even looked online for a walk through, and it's quite possible no-one has obtained all the crystals yet. The Dream Staff better be super powerful...
Overall, I give this game a 2.3/10 It is really disappointing to see this game exists for adventure games. I mean, at first, it seems a decent game, but as you continue to play this game, it gets more tedious and boring as it goes along. The Karma Tower is the only good "dungeon" because of its sense of humour. Everywhere else is dull and unappealing. The characters in the villages and such are so boring and the text boxes are so slow...ugh...The dungeons are not well planned out and the puzzles are way too easy. Everything just piles together to create something that just doesn't work out right. The ending is hugely unsatisfying, and there's terrible (well, more terrible than normal) rap to add the rotten cherry on top to my view on this game. This game really is not worth playing. If you are curious about it, then don't. Just...forget this game existed. If you think it might be fun, it isn't. Trust me. It might be worth 15 hours of game play, but it's 15 hours you'll want back.
Graphics
4 Sound
9 Addictive
3 Depth
4 Story
2 Difficulty
5
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