8/29/20- Master of Monsters (1991)

Master of Monsters (1991) developed and published by Systemsoft for PC-98, Genesis, Saturn, and Playstation. No joke, when I saw screenshots of this game, I had to do a double take; it reminded me vividly of Godzilla: Monster of Monsters on NES! This game and the people who worked on it have nothing to do with that, but it does share the same kind of hexagon-tiled overworld that Japanese strategy games seem to love. Master of Monsters is all about summoning monsters to defend your stronghold, occupy towers, and conquer the enemy. That isn’t easy, and you can see from the sizzle reel that I got whooped pretty badly. There’s a nice variety of cool monsters to choose from, with that “Japan doing western fantasy” aesthetic. Combat is pretty simple, just move your unit next to an enemy and select Fight to autobattle, although there are some mechanics to make it a little more interesting. Some monsters have both close and long range attacks, although they always need to be adjacent to battle, and most will get the chance to attack multiple times. Attacks have different accuracy rates, so you can sometimes get a funny situation where two trolls swing wildly at each other only to both miss every hit. This game has surprisingly pretty music, and I found myself pretty involved in the gameplay. Be warned though, a single round (which I lost) took about an hour. It’s pretty slow, but not bad at all for a strategy title of this era.