PN Review: Monster Combine TD (3DS Eshop)

Monster Combine TD is a new Tower Defense game available on the 3DS eshop. When you begin you watch a short prologue scene telling you the story of a colossal school of witchcraft and wizardry that’s guarded by 4 gates. One day a very prestigious wizard warns everyone in the nearby land of a vision he had of the schools impending doom, but no one believes him. This of course leads to the destruction of the school, which should make all those people who didn’t listen to that crazy old wizard feel pretty stupid. Anyways, you are now tasked with going back in time to prevent this cataclysm from happening.

Main Menu screen

Johnny the janitors office

When you appear in this mythical land your greeted by the schools janitor, Johnny. He gets you through the basics of the game during some short tutorial levels, which I found very helpful in figuring out how everything works. When you begin each level of the game you must choose which cards you want in your deck. You can only choose a certain amount so you have to be a bit strategic seeing as you don’t know what order you will be playing them in. There are 2 different types of cards to choose from, Monster cards and cards you can use to upgrade your monsters.

Watch out for spikes lava pits and tar while on the battlefield they can slow you down or take away quite a bit of health by just passing over them. There are also healing springs you can put your monsters on that will slowly regenerate their health.

The upper screen shows the types of enemies you will encounter in this level while the lower screen lets you customize your deck to your liking.

When you think of how the gameplay itself is set up, think of Plants vs Zombies. The levels are made so you can move your monsters around like game pieces. Each square on the board is accessible unless there is an obstruction in the way like spikes or boulders. Wherever you see the summoning circle on the board is where you will place your cards thus summing a loyal monster to do all of your bidding. You use the stylus to move your creatures wherever you’d like them to go on the battlefield or you can upgrade them by using another card. These cards will transform your monsters into shiny new monsters with super helpful abilities like long range attacks, shields and many more. Not to mention you can combine 2 upgrade cards into one monster and make it even stronger.

Your cards are show on the lower screen, the blue bar indicates how much time you have left before another card appears.

You can upgrade the number of cards you can have in your deck or reduce the time it takes new cards to appear with experience points.

One thing I did not like is that after you use a card (seen on the right side of the screenshot above) you must wait a certain amount of time before another card respawns. This makes it difficult to get past the first few monsters if your not dealt at least one monster card, which happened to me numerous times. I had to keep pausing and restarting the level because I’d get a bunch of upgrade cards but no monsters to upgrade, leaving my castle vulnerable for around 18-20 seconds (That’s how long it takes for a card to respawn when you use one). This gives your enemies a good head start so it would be nice if one card slot was just specified for monsters only.  There’s a shuffle button that will give you 4 new cards at one time but you still have to wait for them.

Your allies will help you with tips and magic abilities, like lightning which hits all enemies on the screen at once.

This is just one of the many zany characters you’ll come across throughout the game .

 That was really the only downfall for me. I’m sure some would say the graphics are a tad boring but I enjoy the cartoon style of everything. The people in the game friends or foes are all very interesting in their own way. Each with different personalities and whacky styles. The dialogue can drag a bit but you can easily skip it by pressing the start button, I will say some of it is pretty funny to read through though. You can also speed up levels by holding down the L button which helps because some of the monsters move very slowly. This game isn’t winning any awards in the soundtrack department but I found the music fitting to the scenery and theme.

While Tower Defense games are gaining popularity (some more than others) Monster Combine TD offers a fresh new gameplay design. There’s plenty of levels to play through and even a cool Monster gallery where you can view pictures and info of all the different creatures you’ve seen while progressing. The Collavier Corporation has also listed some extra levels for you to download on their website once you finished the  main game! So if you love mythical lands, magic and monsters then head over to the 3DS eShop and download Monster Combine TD for a very fair price of $3.99.