Is this your new favourite Monster RPG?
Ever since Pokémon gained popularity in the late nineties, the rest of the gaming world has been trying to catch up and surpass the record-breaking monster catching game. With countless titles to choose from that tap into this game mechanic, it can be overwhelming to decide on your favourite. From many new indie titles who try to take a new spin on the familiar trope, to long-standing Pokémon competitors like Digimon who have tried many different formats before reaching a peak with the Digimon Stories games – they all have their own quirks and drawbacks.
With the pressure of trying to be original and the complication of The Pokémon Company’s patent on ‘sub characters’, it’s become harder and harder for developers to make unique and interesting monster catching games under shrinking parameters. The aim is to engage the player in both a familiar but also fresh way. You want your players coming away hoping to see more.
So, I picked up ‘LumenTale: Memories of Trey’ to have a try and see how it compares to other monster games I’ve played. All this said, I’ll jump right in and say that LumenTale has a lot of potential, having some fantastic ideas and interesting mechanics, but sadly it isn’t quite where it needs to be to reach the high hopes of the creators.
LumenTale is based in the fantasy world of ‘Talea’, an area separated into North and South, with high tensions between the two sides. You play as Trey, who is found unconscious in the woods by Ales, a young boy who has lost his parents and lives with his eccentric uncle who studies Animon – magical creatures that inhabit the land of Talea and who are companions to people. Lumen, who are specialist Animon users, can command multiple Animon to fight for them and provide them with valuable skills.
I find the setting to be really intriguing, and the story drew me in right off the bat. Although, some of the writing feels a bit clumsy at times, it doesn’t feel like it detracts from the pure interest of the story. Trey’s character feels a bit inconsistent, swinging between someone who has a sense of duty, and someone who cares only for his own interests. Despite this, it doesn’t really feel like poor writing, it feels more like a point of curiosity surrounding Trey as a person. I found it easy to follow Trey’s motivations about re-discovering his memories, while also moving through the world with a sense of competency rather than confusion as you might expect from this plot point.
It’s clear to me that the team had a real investment in telling the story here. It has lots of classic RPG story elements which felt nostalgic and comfortable rather than overdone or stifling. I would very much love to continue hearing this story and discover all the secrets of Talea. But, alas, I must be honest that the game will require a lot of quality of life improvements to make it enjoyable to completion.
As you might expect, the game features progressing through story in towns/villages, through wild areas where you can fight and catch Animon, and battles with Animon and other Lumen. There are blockades you need to obtain field moves to move past, shops and side-quests. Because this is all quite standard for this genre, it felt easy to understand, and I really enjoy some of the fun things that Beehive Studios have put into the game.
As a Lumen, you have a gadget called a ‘Holoken’ which you use to catch and summon your Animon. It sort of looks like a yo-yo. You can throw your Holoken with a tool called a ‘Bilia’ attached to it, which enables you to catch Animon in the overworld. Or you can throw your Holoken with a monster equipped to either defeat the target without fighting it (if your monster is strong enough), or to start a battle. It’s a neat little mechanic that I really enjoyed. You also use your Holoken to destroy breakable boxes/crates in the overworld or attach Animon of specific types to use field moves once you’ve unlocked them.
You can have up to six Animon in your team. You can select how many of them you want to be in the fight, up to four. I liked this mechanic, though I don’t think I found much utility for it. Which moves you can use is based on SP (skill points) that are shared between your team, with stronger moves using more SP than others. When you use super-effective moves (or get a critical hit), you get a TP point. When you maximise your TP, you get a bonus action, which you can use regardless of your remaining SP. So, it’s a good way to really maximise your attack power. The total TP you need to fill up your metre is equal to the number of monsters you have in the fight. Therefore, you can choose to reduce your teammates to benefit more from TP actions, or increase your team to have more power in general.
There are two main weaknesses that hold LumenTale back. The first being the user unfriendliness and the second being the poor balancing.
The main aspect of the poor user experience is the lack of clear information about some gameplay. I was playing for four hours before I realised there was a dash button, which was never introduced, there are gameplay elements that are simply not explained (Like, there is a recycling bin mechanic? Where you can put unwanted items in specifically coloured bins and get experience rewards for it – but this is never explicitly explained). There are enough parts of the game that bring up tutorial explanation boxes that it feels strange to have missed out on a lot of what would be very useful information?
Things that other games have covered, such as being able to sort your inventory, are missing from LumenTale which makes for an annoying experience at times.
One part of the game involves going into a digital world (the Anispace), which is essentially your Pokémon boxes. You can decorate the backgrounds, add furniture and place in your Animon. Which I could see being a really popular part of the game if only it was better planned and executed. It was buggy and hard to use, so I’m thankful that it seems optional.
Another unfriendly element was the AniWiki (functionally: Pokédex) which shows a list of the Animon that you’ve discovered and caught. There is no way to sort or search through your AniWiki, it only shows the monsters in one of 3 sets of organisations – which, again, aren’t explained or labelled. Some monsters in the AniWiki have stars next to them, but I couldn’t work out why. The other aspect of this is that when you encounter Animon, you are encouraged to scan them to find their weaknesses and fill out the AniWiki information. You can scan each Animon three times (described in the AniWiki as ‘research level’ – though never called this anywhere else). Again, this isn’t explained, and even worse, it’s not really possible to check how many times you’ve scanned an Animon while you are fighting them. It feels like an oversight to add this mechanic in and then not add some small indicator within battles.
I have a lot of praise for the battle system, but the balancing does feel off. The monsters have your classic stats of HP, Attack, Defence, Special Attack, Special Defence and Agility. When monsters level up, you get stat points to allocate to these as you choose. I like the idea of this for some games but it feels somewhat pointless here when it’s far more likely you will just forget you need to do this and end up with a monster much weaker than it needs to be (again, no information regarding stat points, I just had to find this out in the menu). I also never needed to allocate Agility to my monsters as they were almost always faster than the opponents. I found the healing moves to be totally useless; it was always better to spend your turn using a potion to heal because the healing moves didn’t really recover much HP and ended up being a waste of SP. Some aspects such as critical hits (which are only highlighted with yellow numbers – no sound effect or written text), move and quirk effects (which aren’t always clear what is happening when they happen) and the fact using items or scanning Animon costs SP – really need to be made accessible, explained and have more clarity.
There are two ways to use the Holoken, either locked to cardinal directions as you move or by using the right stick, but the game seems to randomly switch between them (which feels like a glitch). It feels as though there should be an option to select your preferred control method that was missed out. I found holding R and using the right stick in the same hand to be difficult and hard to aim. It would have made more sense to me to use ZL or L on the opposite side.
There is another bug where an extra Animon is added to your battle team when you select any less than 4 monsters. It feels like this is a relic from a previous version of the game (prior to Nintendo’s patent) as this happens only when you equip a monster to your Holoken to start a fight. If the monster is not in your team, it adds that monster to the first slot. But if you choose a monster that is in your team, it just adds an extra monster in that you didn’t pick. This was annoying and doesn’t seem intentional. It made me feel like I had no control over what I was doing and made me lose interest in managing my team.
Despite the issues I came across, I found so many elements of this game truly enjoyable. I really liked the Animon designs. I was always excited to find a new monster or see my Animon evolve into something surprising and cool. Some elements of the game that focused better on playability were well thought out, such as the battle system. The battle UI was clean and easy to understand, it took some getting used to, but the SP and TP systems were good. I liked the “Traits” that monsters have, where you can add an additional effect onto their moves for +1 SP. It made for a fun and interesting battle. I also really love the concept of hidden elements, where some individuals of a species will have an additional element rather than just the ones they have by default. However, I’m not totally certain what the elements are for (I think the moves have same-type attack bonuses?). I also see from the loading screen tips that weather effects will have a lot of complex and interesting effects in battle, which seems like a cool mechanic.
I thought their way around Nintendo’s ‘Sub-Character’ patent was creative. You can choose one of your Animon to follow behind you on the overworld, which is just fun and cute and I know Pokémon players have been begging for this to be standard. Although the following Animon doesn’t do anything independently (which would breach the patent), it is just nice to have it there.
As mentioned, I think the Holoken is a fun tool and the mechanic surrounding field moves, meaning that when you need to plan your Animon to go into different areas with you it feels like a challenge without being pointless or frustrating.
The art in the game is gorgeous. Specifically, the title screen and the character profile art is well done and fits wel. There are also trading cards in game which feature beautiful art of each of the monsters with credited artists, which I really loved. My one critique of the art is very small, the resolution on the textures isn’t really standardised and it felt a bit jarring at first. However! It was easy to get used to and did not detract from the game at all.
The music is also really good. Each track feels like it fits together and made to fit the scene it is part of. I’d say this is some of the best sound design I’ve seen in games in recent years, I have high praise for it.
Verdict
Truth is, I’m enjoying LumenTale much more than I’ve enjoyed a lot of monster catching games. I could see myself drawing fan art and chatting to other fans about the vast world and deep story. In all likeliness I will work through this game to the end, but I personally feel like there are so many quality of life improvements needed (many not mentioned here), that make it hard for me to get really invested in the gameplay. If the team bring out an update that fixes the majority of these issues I’d definitely be sinking hours and hours into this game.
If you enjoy monster catching RPGs and want to see a unique take on it, I’d say give LumenTale a shot. But maybe hold out to see if they fix some of these things first, so you aren’t disappointed.
Where to Buy
- Nintendo eShop
#AffiliateLinks – Prices correct at time of publishing.
Credits
Written by Gnot Thorne
Edited by Mark McAllister
Graphic Template by Paul L. Russell
A copy of this game was provided by the publisher for this review.