An evil force is threatening to take over a fantasy land, and the only one who can save the day is you! Play as a Keeper, and use your magical skills and your army of trained monsters to search for treasures, catch new creatures, and battle the bad guys in this Pokemon-inspired RPG downloadable for iPad.

When you first start the game, you choose between a boy or girl keeper. You can then venture to different areas, each with three missions each. These missions might be to battle a certain character, capture a certain kind of monster, or enter a dungeon. Each time you complete a mission you earn a star. Earn enough stars to unlock new areas to explore and more missions to complete.

Your keeper won’t be battling by themselves, though. Whenever you meet up with a rival keeper or enemy, or during random counters in tall grass or in dungeons, you’ll have to fight a monster. Luckily your keeper has a team of monsters who will fight for you. Battles are turned-based one-on-one RPG fare. You can choose a physical attack, a magic elemental spell, a move that’ll raise your attack or lower the opponent’s defense, or use a super move that costs gems. Certain monsters are weak against other types, so grass monsters are weak against fire, for instance. If you come up against a monster in the wild and whittle its hit points down low enough, you can use a Capture Box to catch them and have them fight on your side. If this sounds a lot like Pokemon, that’s because it really is similar!

Your keeper isn’t totally useless, though. Outside of battle, you’ll use the touch screen to guide your character around the areas, talking to people and exploring nooks and crannies. Use special stones collected to power up your magic staff and help you explore more areas. For instance, use fire stones to burn down thorny plants blocking your way, and also to light up dark dungeons. Water orbs can be used to put out fires, and there are other elemental stones that can help you trigger switches and open paths to more treasure. In this way, the exploration aspects are kind of like a Zelda game.

You even have your own monster ranch where your critters can rest over time and refill their energy. At your ranch, you can build structures that can help you create items like healing potions over time. Only problem I have with this game is that it relies too much on tablet gaming pet peeves I have. For instance, in order to evolve a monster, you must spend a lot of a certain type of gem that is really hard to earn. The only way to really do this is to spend real money to buy gems so you can make your monsters stronger. Plus the game isn’t quite as well-paced or rewarding as Pokemon, and the monster designs aren’t as good either. Even so, the game does have a higher air of quality about it over other tablet style games.

Kid Factor:

Violence is very minimal in Monster Legacy. When monsters battle, they just run or jump into each other to attack, or send blasts of elemental magic. Defeated characters just run away. Reading skill is a must for all the text, and parental supervision is recommended for in-game purchases. The game isn’t as rewarding or as fun as Pokemon, but if your kids can’t get enough monster catching and battling games, they’ll enjoy this one anyway.

Tags: Game Reviews