Egg Monster Hero

Egg Monster Hero
Role Playing Game - Nintendo DS
Battery Backup - 3 saves
1 player / 8 player WLAN

For those who have followed the Nintendo DS when it first came out, Egg Monster Hero might sound familiar. Being Square Enix's first DS game, it gathered a bit of attention, no doubt due to it showing up on Nintendo.com's US release list. But it's been several years now and still no translation. That's a shame, because EMH is a pretty interesting game for many reasons.

The story begins with a prince being dumped on a foreign island, in order to train and learn responsibility. Along the way, you'll meet the residents of the island. One of them will even develop some feelings for you... The island houses the Katori Kingdom, and being there envelops you into their war.

Egg Monster Hero was developed by Neverland Co. (Lufia series, Chaos Seed, Lodoss DC, even some involvement in Grandia), whom I have great respect for. In EMH, you walk around in typical jRPG fashion. If you bump into the visible enemies, an encounter is initiated. But they did away with the traditional RPG systems in favor of something only the DS can do: touch & scratch. Your prince and the enemy are on opposite sides of the touchpad screen. Surrounding each of the characters is an army of <= 20 (depending on your health). So in this enclosed arena, you play bumper cars until one of you remain standing. This is done by brushing your character/army in the direction of your opponent. Faster brushing is rewarded by doing heavier damage. The formation of your army can be customized to match your style.

But this game isn't Touch & Scratch Hero. You also have EP (egg points?) to summon an Egg Monster. When you do this, the game switches to a turn-based style of play. A portrait of your Egg Monster is displayed on the touch screen, divided into 9 sections. Touch one of the 9 squares to initiate an attack. Some of the squares will do nothing. Others will unleash massive damage. Enemies are also able to summon Egg Monsters. In that case, you will also need to select which of THEIR nine boxes to attack. Each enemy has at least one weak point. They also have a strong point, where they immediately counterattack. By playing around with your attacks and targeting different points of the enemy, you will become familiar with the ins and outs of the Egg Monsters. But watch out... if your Egg Monster dies, its corresponding Egg is destroyed, meaning you can no longer summon. There are only two places in the game where an Egg can be restored, so use them wisely.

The Egg Monsters are key to the game, because they are much more powerful than your army. When you use an Egg Monster to defeat an enemy, you will actually gain experience points for that Egg. When an Egg is leveled, you gain an additional monster for that Egg (up to 10). There is no leveling for your army, however you will be able to boost your stats by collecting items.

Egg Monster Hero is part of the Square's Hanjuku Hero parody series. As such, EMH has very wacky humor. The dialog choices can be pretty amusing - one of the story items you'll need to find is an Axe to cut wood. But when you come across it, you have a choice of picking it up, ignoring it or JASON. Jason? Think hockey mask serial killer. That's the kind of game EMH is. The style of the game also is meant to mimic a performing arts theater. There is an audience on the bottom screen, and the audience will randomly chatter constantly while you move around on the top screen. Bosses, once defeated, will also join the audience and make comments. It's really quite amusing.

But there are some drawbacks: The touch & scratch battles are just asking to put real scratches on your touch screen. You think Ouendan circles are bad? At least Ouendan doesn't demand heavy scratching every couple minutes. The user interface could also use some work. You can only move with the D-pad, and can only interact with objects with the buttons. That means you'll have to be playing with both hands, with a stylus between your fingers. It's constant switching between regular controls and stylus controls. In addition, the Egg Monster battles all come down to strict trial & error/memorization. There is some logic to the strong attacks and enemy weakpoints, but it is not always apparent.

Egg Monster Hero is great for what it is. It's a unique take on a DS RPG, with some gaming additions not seen before in other jRPGs. There's a lot of Egg Monsters to play with and figure out. Also the scratch battles are a bit more interesting than the usual type of action RPGs where you just jam on the attack button. And the humor here really made me realize that Square is so much better when they don't take themselves seriously. The dialog is definitely a high point. Sometimes the jokes were corny, but it sure beats the pretentious emo stuff they have in their main games. I imagine a lot of the nifty details would be lost on someone who doesn't understand Japanese. If you do, get ready for a fun romp.