I first heard about Heroes of the Monkey Tavern back in late November when I was perusing the Nintendo eShop for demos on the Switch. What drew me to this title, was in fact the silliness of the name. I also really liked the idea of play an "old school" dungeon crawler, something that I enjoyed about Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey that I haven't really experienced much since (at least in my little corner of video gaming, although it is very reminiscent of exploring dungeons in Ultima: Exodus on the NES). The trailer also played a deciding factor; yes, I also know about Eye of the Beholder, I just have not played it yet.
So I played the demo, which consisted of the first floor in the game, which isn't as expansive as some of the later dungeon floors, but does contain a pretty good overview of how the game operates, at least as much as I have come to realize that is. After really liking the demo, I ended up buying the game a few weeks back, shortly before Conklederp and I left for Christmas in SoCal.
What I love about HotMT, is that it really feels like playing Dungeons & Dragons; hopefully I won't have to go up against any dragons though. The game is pretty easy to operate once you realize that the directional buttons on the left Joy-Con are what you use to both move within the game space, as well as navigating the menus. The left Joy-Con joystick is used to use either healing or mana potions, and only recently have I been finding myself accidentally hitting either up or down on the joystick and mistakingly using up one of the not at all common potions. Thankfully though, hit points and mana are automatically regenerated, otherwise the game that was developed would be almost too difficult.
Something I have yet to figure out though, is what to do with a deceased character. From what I can tell, once they are dead, they are dead. I have not come across any resurrection spells and. . .well, I have not tried going back down to each floor and exiting the dungeon completely to see if you can "return" and have your character resurrected. That might work. I also have not found out what to do with extra weapons and armor that I no longer need. Do I just hold onto them and let them clog up my inventory? And your inventory screen (as seen above) is exactly what I was hoping it would be. And as one might expect, not all equipment can be equipped by everyone. And speaking of equipment, while there are ranged weapons, I do not know if ranged battle is a thing in this game. And now that I think about it, I do not know if you are able to un-equip and re-equip gear while in combat, and I am pretty sure that you can still be attacked while in the inventory screen, which makes the un-equip/re-equip question null since moving around the inventory screen is not as fast as you would want it to be in a stressing situation, like combat.
Speaking of combat, fighting is easily one of the most stressful portions of this game, at least for me. Battles happen in real time and you have four characters to control, each with two hands which are controlled by pressing either the A or B button. But only after you select that character with the ZLeft or ZRight button. Occasionally, I will find that I accidentally pressed the B button on teh cleric when I mean to press A in order to heal the Paladin. Or I will press the R bumper button (which has you rotate to the right) instead of ZR. The game also punishes you if you try to run away while engaged with an enemy (basically invoking an opportunity of attack, like in D&D), mainly so that you cannot perform hit and run attacks. Because the way most of the rooms and hallways are laid out, I have not come across an instance where I have had to fight more than one enemy at a time, and I really think that that would quickly be the end of me, especially in the later floors when my cleric and elementalist (wizard) are nearly drained of mana and have to wait for it to recharge.
You know, after three hours, I apparently have a lot more questions about how the game works than I would have thought. Although the last time I played, I did discover something that I thought was pretty cool. If you have the map open and you go through an area that you have not yet explored, that section of the map is drawn in for you in real time, accompanied by the sound of the lines being drawn. This sound is only heard if you have the map open, as opposed to when you are normally exploring. And let us just take a minute to admire the old school-ness of the the map for the above floor. Something about the layout of this floor of the dungeon just does not make a lick of sense, from the perspective of someone designing how this built structure should actually function, but I really do not care. While going through the dungeon, it is not something that I actively think about though, until I look at the map and just wonder.
Well, I guess this article turned into half First Impressions, half Game Review. The point is, I really like what Heroes of the Monkey Tavern is as opposed to what it is not. It is not story heavy RPG with dialogue options, branching story points, morality meter, or even named characters. It really is just an old school-esque dungeon crawl that looks and plays really well on the Switch. But if the Switch is not your thing, it is also available through Steam, and on the PlayStation 4. I would say that it is definitely worth whatever you end up paying for it.
~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Drop the Hourglass of Time
P.S. I should also mention that I love the fact that their icon on the Switch is exactly what you see on their Nintendo page. It's just the company logo. And I really appreciate this, considering all of the shit that was given to Snake Pass and SteamWorld Dig 2 among many others. It is not the most attractive looking icon considering all of the unused white space, but I love it. I like to think that solo developer Cédric Maussion presented the icon to Nintendo and hasn't looked back. I also have not looked into to see if there is in fact an outcry about the logo, but for all I know, people love it and here I am loving it too.
P.P.S. It should be noted that after writing this article, that a few things happened that I talked about above. First off, I ran into a situation that pitted me against two enemies at one time. There was no way around this as the encounter happened in a room with my exit cut off. Secondly, after said encounter, I discovered that small single-serve fountains containing magical water have the ability to revive dead companions. I had come across these before but was unsure what their purpose was. Lastly, before it was posted, Heroes of the Monkey Tavern received an update that did in fact update their icon on the Switch (see above right). I see it not so much as an improvement, but a re-imagining, and along the same lines.
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