Monster World IV (PS2, Megadrive)

Don't lie to yourself and God.  No one enjoys the Monster World series.  Maybe the Adventure Island part amuses you briefly, but not for long.

The Monster World series itself blends together for not holding my interest for more than 5 minutes.  In each of them your sword is composed of maybe two pixels.  It doesn't nearly have the friction of Ys III or Adventures of Link.  The save points are few and far between and dieing leads you back to the title screen.  That's a good way to capture my interest jerks.

But occasionally I've heard praise of Monster World IV.  I just forced the whole game down my throat.  The dungeons are entirely too long and repetitive.  The fire dungeon has you go through the exact same screen six times in a row with different enemies.  You can't even save the beginning of a dungeon.  You save in town and then have to walk back through the starting area and then into the dungeon.  Ys III let me save at any time.

None of the bosses are worth talking about outside of a god damn ghost horse with a flail because he was a bastard and a fire wave spewing bird woman because she kept running away from me.  Some of the normal enemies have shields and swords like you do, but this game has none of the high low sword play of Adventures of Link and the old man that flails swords on either side of you while jumping like a 3 year old I still don't know what to do against but get lucky hitting him.

The sprite work is about the only thing worth talking about because it's fantastic.  One of the first things you get to see is Aysha wiggling her butt while opening up a treasure chest.  I would have included pictures, but the PSP Genesis emulator didn't have a screenshot function and the screenshots taken for saves were in some encrypted format.  You missed out on pictures of the dumb as hell genie, water penii, and wolfmen.  Why you start the game fighting militant pigs and wolfmen and then proceed to fight children with swords and slimes at the end is beyond me.  The wolfmen's animation is great too.

To round out a typical review fashion the music is pretty much all remixes of one theme that wasn't very good in the first place.  Also jesus christ that is amazing boxart.  Seriously, I wish the game was anywhere near as entertaining as that boxart.  Would like a copy just to put on my shelf and say, hey look at that boxart, that's pretty good isn't it.  Now let's play Sonic 2 or Hard Corps or Aladdin instead. Aladdin actually has some tact and challenge and progression to it.  That was the worst part of MWIV.  The stages are numbing a repetitive and you don't really know when they are going to end (oh god you want them too already jesus I've done this puzzle THREE TIMES NOW). 

Though I own the Monster World Collection on PS2, I played it on an emulator because there's an English patch available, and the time I had spent with the game wasn't engaging me enough that I would force through with it in Japanese.  But I've finished it I know it never gets better and hope to dissuade anyone from playing it.