Monster Battling RPG with Entertaining Story
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.