Nintendo Switch – Heroes of Monkey Tavern #47

Its so close to being a good game…

Heroes of Monkey Tavern – Nintendo Switch – Released: 11/7/17 – $9.99

Short Review (Review copy provided by Developer)

I really like playing this game but the controls make it very hard to recommend. Monkey Tavern keeps calling me back to walk through another floor of a dungeon and I like every minute of it. The only issue is the controls which if you haven’t played the demo go try it out yourself. I would love to recommend this game and having a demo means it is easy for me to tell people to see the issue firsthand. The controls are weird but after seeing it is a straight port of a PC game I can see the issue. The Switch like many other games aren’t built for PC controls certainly for a game that has you control 4 characters at the same time. After learning the controls…. It works like rather well. It takes a lot of time to get used to it and I outline what each button does int he gameplay section. I recommend this game if you need that itch to be scratched and you like how the demo feels. Just remember that it does take a while but once I got used to it, I loved playing through the dungeons.

Icon needs some works but it does open with it:

Story

A group of heroes are in a bar called “The Monkey Tavern” but funds are running low. They are asked to go into a dungeon and they will be paid for their services. As heroes you try on the challenge to go into the dungeon…. yeah, that’s all the story we get.

Gameplay

Now this is where I highly highly recommend checking out the demo. The game has very weird controls that take a lot of time to get used to. Originally this review was ready about two weeks after release but I decided to wait until I had more time to really sit down and play the game. This meant waiting for a good week of no other games to review and focusing on controls. After that it was smooth sailing! There is a lot to cover but I’ll give a short introduction on who the controls work. Each button is important so I won’t be covering them in great detail but learning how each button works in a run is very important. D-pad moves you characters, left analog stick up/down will use your health/mana pot, L/R will rotate your characters, ZL/ZR will change between your characters, A will attack with your right weapon, B will attack with your left weapon, X will open up your character menu, A in the character menu will select your item, the minus button will bring up a map, the plus button will pause the game. That I believe covers everything but as you can tell the controls can be a lot certainly when you are in battle. This means having to press ZL/ZR and either A/B all the time during a fight. This is why I highly recommend the demo since after you get those down packed you are good to go for dungeon crawling!

Personal Experience

This game was pretty great! I found it fun running through the dungeons once I got used to the controls which is why the review took so long to come out since I didn’t want to give my first impressions and ran through it several times. The first time I would say pass but after a few trips, the controls were solid in my hands and I didn’t make any noob mistakes. It is a game that takes a lot of time to get used to but worth it in my opinion. Nothing crazy going on just good dungeon crawling fun. You got the big enemies that will one or two shot you, you got the running away while blasting things from a distance, you got the running away and getting cornered. It is a standard dungeon crawler with no bells or whistles which is greatly appreciated in an era of games that always want to go above and beyond. 

Final Thoughts

I would say go buy it! If you tried the demo and saw that the controls don’t bother you that much go for it. I liked playing it but I do like dungeon crawler games so a bit biased.

UPDATE: 5/30/18

I would give this game a 8 out of 10!

Trailer: (This is the PS4 trailer but I didn’t see any difference in the two versions)

End Credits

Tried to post many reviews this week but then I got really sick and had to be in bed for most of the week. More reviews will be coming out this week! Superbeat review will be coming tomorrow!

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