A mere twenty weeks after covering Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap, I've found myself back in Monster World for the legally distinct adventures of Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom. While both games directly homage the Westone series, which underwent many litigiously-motivated name changes of its own back in its time that ranged from Adventure Island to The Dynastic Hero to Bikkuriman World, The Dragon's Trap was simply a graphical remaster of a Master System game; Monster Boy, conversely, is a brand new entry in the series. In spirit, at least.

Retaining the same shapeshifting animal forms of Dragon's Trap, Monster Boy has the titular hero cursed to a mostly useless transmogrification (a pig that has a distinct resemblance to the cigar-chomping porcine shopkeepers of the original games, complete with eyepatch) before fighting bosses and acquiring new forms, the abilities of each opening up the world just a skosh in true explormer style. As well as all these returning animal forms - which includes a little snake for small gaps, a frog knight for easier swimming and tongue hookshot swinging, or a lion knight for a brutal block-smashing charge move - there's a huge array of equipment and collectibles to find. This includes the newly revamped magic system, which also brings back Wonder Boy's spell arsenal - fireballs, boomerangs, lightning, bombs, and tornadoes - but has scattered multiple truffles in well-hidden locations that each increase your stock, allowing for more spell uses before a recharge is needed. There's a truly staggering amount of gear and treasures and upgrades and wealth to find, and the in-game map is at least somewhat cooperative when it comes to finding them: locations of interest are marked on the map with question marks, and then a translucent image of the found object once acquired to help you keep track if you decide to check a guide for what you're missing. The game helpfully anticipates us collectathon completionists, however: there's a means of adding as-yet-undiscovered treasure icons to your map that's relatively expensive and only becomes accessible late-game after you've acquired the final form. This expense is a good way to incentivise players to search on their own, but a lifeline if they really don't have a clue where to start looking for some vital upgrade or another.

Arguably, Monster Boy's best feature is one it shares with the Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap remake: a lavish, hand-drawn artistic rendition of the setting and characters, with an excellent musical score to boot from high-profile composers Yuzo Koshiro (Streets of Rage, early Ys), Motoi Sakuraba (Tales, almost every tri-Ace RPG) and Michiru Yamane (Castlevania, Suikoden). A large part of the game's assets, both visual and musical, are lifted or inspired by the earlier Wonder Boy series but still feel fresh in their new forms here. (Or, well, they would feel fresh were it not for The Dragon Trap's equally impeccable Disneyfied take on this decades-old franchise.) Unfortunately, this style can also create some undesirable visual ambiguity with regards to hitboxes and other gameplay-centric mechanics; while I'm sure overall many would prefer this stylish hand-drawn approach to the overly familiar 16-bit pixel art, the latter is at least much better at communicating the language of video games and the boundaries between sprites and other active parts of the game world. Sounds like a minor gripe, but when lining up the shield to reflect enemy attacks or maneuvering around hazards in small corridors, it's a problem that soon makes itself apparent.

Even so, some visual confusion-related frustration is a small price to pay for a gorgeously rendered cartoon world with a catchy soundtrack and more explormer quality-of-life nirvana than you can shake an ice sword at. The world of Monster Boy (helpfully named Monster World, as it was in previous Wonder Boy games past) is truly enormous, but filled with warps and shortcuts to make traversal easier, as well as a teleport wand that lets you create town portals that stay active afterwards, allowing you to jump right back to where you were if you need to hit the vendors for a health refill or more spell charges. It's also never not challenging, in part because of the simplistic way it minimizes things like equipment stats: enemies and traps always hit hard, so you have to fairly skillful to get past most of the game's regions and particularly its bosses. The spells and different forms help with the latter, and there are plenty of checkpoints and elixir items (which act like fairies, bringing you back upon death) available. My completionist tendencies tend to take over and end up making the game too easy by giving myself way too much health or firepower to fall back on; rarely is that a problem here, and if I'm backtracking it's only to ensure I'm best able to weather the trials and tribulations to come.

If you're a fan of explormers, this is possibly one of the best ones to come along in a while, combining a huge variety of powers and upgrades and never once easing up on the challenge it presents. Areas are varied both in their look and the type of obstacles they have in store (most are built around whichever new items/forms you'll find there), the presentation is amazing, and though it feels a little stuck in the past with its adherence to the conventions of a franchise created almost 35 years ago, it's never bereft of ideas and surprises. I'm having a blast with it, at least whenever it isn't kicking my ass.

Rating: 4 out of 5. (Downgraded to 4 due to the obnoxious second obstacle course. Absolute trash.)