After purchasing the wonderful remake of Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap and hearing about Monster Boy, I was anticipating the new action adventure game in this setting, especially considereing the cartoon-like sprites/backgrounds. The game starts off alright with an odd story that doesn't quite make sense in the context of the 2nd, 3rd, or 5th games in the series, but the intro area hit the nostalgia button and I was anticipating something special. It started with some action, but quickly changed to be mainly a series of puzzles with a little bit of action thrown in, including the bosses that you end up fighting. Unfortunately, this is where the game starts to show some issues, with puzzles that randomly add an unexpected element that does not make sense (trial and error is definitely needed in a lot of cases), poor animations (eg. Frog swimming just rotates the sprite in an arc and looks tacked on), enemy placement that is there just to be cheap (eg. Spiders that swing out of nowhere to hit you), hitboxes that are too small (eg. The shield is all but useless unless you are perfectly in line with the enemy that shoots at you). and music that is alright but repetitive and forgettable (The music you find thorughout the land for one of the NPC characters is actually good). The graphics themselves are pretty, with high resolution backgrounds and sprites, and the switching between forms is an interesting but flawed mechanic if you don't have a proper setup. The videos where they show instant flowing between forms to solve some puzzles was impossible for me and I needed to either take a hit or find an alternate way to solve those puzzles. 2 stars is probably a bit harsh considereing I did finish the game, but I can't recommend it. Buy the Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap remake if you want something special and similar to WB 2, 3 (obviously), or 5, buy Guacamelee if you want a more consistent action puzzle experience, or wait until this game is super cheap.
