DreamRift's creative director Peter Ong previously worked on EA's innovative platformer/puzzle mash-up Henry Hatsworth and the Puzzling Adventure, and that experience is on display here. Monster Tale follows Henry Hatsworth in combining seemingly disparate game mechanics in creative new ways. But where Henry Hatsworth was a fairly straightforward (if extremely challenging) combination, Monster Tale takes a while to reveal its true depth. On the DS’s top screen, players control a little girl named Ellie, who has been transported into an expansive world filled with monsters and other transplanted humans who have come to dominate them. This part of the game resembles exploration-focused adventures like Metroid, Castlevania, and Wonder Boy in Monster World.

 

What sets Monster Tale apart from those games is its use of the DS's lower touch screen. Upon entering the new world, Ellie encounters a friendly monster named Chomp who becomes a companion on her quest. While Chomp can fight alongside Ellie and help her solve puzzles, he can also hang out in his “monster sanctuary” on the bottom screen. When he does, he becomes a kind of virtual pet, interacting with various toys (some of which double as weapons) and food items which are dropped by enemies and can be purchased from in-game stores.

 

Chomp is much more than a glorified Tamagotchi, though. The toys and food Ellie provides for him grant various stat increases which determine the course of his development. This, in turn, grants him various special abilities. As the game progresses, Chomp ages from a foundling to a teenager to an adult, with each age range having its own set of forms. It takes a bit of grinding to fully explore this system, but fortunately Chomp is lucky enough to be able to change from one stage of development to another at will. Even if he becomes an adult before you’ve discovered all of his foundling forms, you’re free to regress his age and keep working on unlocking everything.

 

What’s more, Chomp’s forms grant him elemental affinities that are shared by the other monsters in the world. They work in a kind of rock-paper-scissors system, with each element being strong against one and weak against another. Progressing through the game requires knowing what elemental affinity the monsters in a given area have, and changing Chomp’s form accordingly. On top of all this, each form also has special abilities that, if equipped for long enough, are mastered so that they can be equipped on any other form. Given Chomp’s similarities to virtual pets, this may sound a lot like Pokemon, but really it’s closer to Final Fantasy’s job system.

 

All of these mechanics are a lot of fun to explore, but they’re not, in and of themselves, what makes Monster Tale such a great sendoff for the DS. No, what really makes the game a success in this regard is that it feels like the culmination of everything that has defined the system. The elegant implementation of the “Metroidvania” and virtual pet game mechanics show how much sense the dual screens and touch controls—about which many gamers were so skeptical at the DS’s launch --- have come to make. Games like this might not exist at all if the DS hadn’t captured our imaginations.

 

Then there’s the nostalgia for mid-90s game design that has inspired the remaking of many a 16-bit RPG on the DS. It’s  present, but there’s nothing cynical about it. Rather, it serves the double purpose of making the game feel warm and familiar, despite being completely new; and providing a meta-commentary about the end of the DS’s life. The game looks and feels like it might have arrived in the waning days of the SNES or Genesis. Instead, it has come in the twilight of the DS, a system on which the aesthetics of those 16-bit consoles have seen a rebirth in the form of games like Sonic Rush and Final Fantasy IV DS, among others. 

 

Monster Tale is so good that it’s hard not to look ahead to the end of the 3DS’s life and wonder about the games that will encapsulate its best attributes. That’s a temptation we should avoid, though. Monster Tale is most enjoyable as the end of a journey that has taken place over the DS’s entire life, the product of all the successes and failures that have made the platform what it is today. Whatever new delights the 3DS has in store for us, we’ll enjoy them all the more if we take them as they come, along with all the highs and lows that are sure to accompany them.