Monarchy Review

I love anything that involves strategy in gaming, yet I haven’t engaged with many side-scrolling iterations yet. For me, it is the excitement of managing resources, starting from nothing, and building up to attack or defend. Monarchy is a game that caught my eye recently and has been on consoles and PC for just under a month now. This is a new title from Brain Seal Ltd, the mastermind team behind the Dark Quest series of games. In this new experience, we have a strategy game that is simplistic in design but brings enough immersion within its 10 hours or so to have a great time.

Play At Your Own Pace

Immediately off the bat, I realised there was no tutorial which I feel is needed in any strategy game. This resulted in me scratching my head for a little while and spending some time learning the game mechanics and gaining a sense of what I was required to do. There is no storyline to follow here and the game lacks narration, it would have been nice to learn more about certain aspects of the environments or converse with NPCs to hear their thoughts or stories. Scouting the land quickly gives you a sense of direction and what tasks you need to achieve to move forward with the game.

Collecting coins gives you the flexibility to get working on building bases, fleshing out troops and being prepared for attacks from enemies. Building is restricted to certain areas and it would have been useful to have the freedom to build wherever you like, but this is just a personal suggestion on my part. Unfortunately, your monarch has no attack functionality, so you have to use your strategy within structures and troop management to keep yourself alive. You do have an archer on standby who will accompany you, but if he or she is killed then you’re on your lonesome. This in turn makes life a little harder for yourself but brings intensity to your further decision-making.

Visuals & Audio

I adore the visuals in Monarchy and the warm array of cartoon aesthetics complements the excellent gameplay mechanics. What I enjoyed is watching the backdrop of each area you’re working on blossom and change with the evolution of the actions you choose. Admittedly there was some mindless wandering around from myself in the early game figuring out what to do as there are no visual clues as such. This is where a tutorial would have come in handy. Audio is as I expected, minimal sound effects but they work as intended with a great soundtrack to suit the mood and atmosphere.

Final Thoughts

Monarchy is a fun game for quick casual sessions or seeing everything possible in a couple of longer waves of gameplay. It is a relaxing time that never becomes difficult to understand or overbearing which makes it perfect for all abilities of gamers. My six-year-old son enjoyed watching me play and kept coming up with suggestions on what to do next and he had his little planning brain on. It may be a little too simplistic for the hardcore strategy fans out there like myself and I did feel myself pining for more during several segments of the game. But the experience stands on its own two feet with a lovely cute vibe to its art style and great foundations if the developers want to add more in future.