monkey king is the kind of game people will tell you doesn't get made anymore, a style of game that might as well be its own genre at this point. it's a licenced ps2 game made on modern hardware and it's a pretty good one that reminds me a lot of the best licenced games of that era. it's also a game that brings together different countries for one big cool cross collaborative project and it makes for an interesting send-off to one of the industries coolest developers, Japan studio.

the game plays like an action platformer, think the likes of sphynx and the cursed mummy or maximo but with more of a focus on combat and the platforming being limited to a jump button and a pole swing, it's mostly on the beatemup end with some weapons you can pick up like a staff, a bench you use as a tonfa and some rocks you can throw, it's basic but its a lot of fun but it can feel super slow at the start when you're low level and don't have much combos, but it's responsive enough and very monkey feeling, dashing's animations really feel like he's a monkey and the animations are super charming, George wood would love this game. the game doesn't make much use of many of these systems in the basegame though, it does for the combat but the platforming is never all that tough or in depth and you don't have much to do with your moveset there. there's two upgrade trees also and a shop and this is your main way of progression, one tree is used to upgrade your spells (which are all one use thingies like detective vision, speed boosts, weapons or different attacks like a kick, projectiles or an AOE, they don't add much to the combat honestly but abusing the i-frames on the kick is useful) using dropped energy from enemies and the other is your combos, magic stats and health pool and this one is upgraded by finding little cute earth gods in the environment which is a great incentive to explore, these aren't too hard to find though and I was able to max out my combo stat very easily, the other stats I never felt a rush to upgrade. in a lot of ways it reminds me the most of what I think a knack 3 would have looked like, which makes sense since this is a partial Japan studio effort, the last real game they were credited on that wasn't a hackjob blue point remake (demons souls remake is one of the very few games I do dislike, maybe i'll talk about it someday, it's just a gross anti-art game and it icks me out) it has the combat, the saturated linier levels and the general vibe to it, except where knack felt like a movie game for a kids movie that didn't exist, this is based on one that does. on top of being easy it's also pretty short which is nice, 5 to 6 hours if you're good at it, maybe less, and it's a perfect length with the dlc's making it about 10 hours if you really want that, doesn't overstay its welcome at all, but you won't find much replayability outside of difficulties and getting all the final upgrades with the spells and earth gods.

the story is very basic since it is heavily based on a kids movie, the writing is fun, deshang is a great protagonist and the game is dubbed in a bunch of languages, though for me it defaulted to the british dub which was good enough (luke from Layton is here as the child tagalong), dashang and the comedic relief pig guy are super fun characters and even the villain has a cool design, though he isn't super interesting as a character. there aren't many characters beyond that, it's just a fun little adventure with the main trio and a baby and that's all it needs to be, minus the poop jokes, could have done without those. the music is nice too I guess, it's a bit of a generic OST for the most part, but that sky level with the nier music was super good and it works very well for what it is, but too many tracks just didn't stand out to me, which is a shame because the composer, Keisuke Ito is hugely talented and done tons of great OST's like shining force EXA, yakuza 3, shinobido, the toukiden games and even some of the pokemon mystery dungeon games.

it's a very pretty game, the environments aren't the most varied, jungles and forests, caves and cliffs, but you have some cool town levels as well. the port town set during dusk is a total highlight, and a fractured sky level that reminded me of bujingai for some reason and had some really nier'y music. they're all super colourful though, the jungles are so green it almost hurts to look at and the night levels look so nice and calm, it's a nice game to just walk around in. one nice thing is that the area's are super segmented, it's a very linier game with its levels, you have collectables scattered like I mentioned before and a whole crafting system based around finding and trading in items to the merchant, so you will want to explore, though the game is so easy you won't feel a massive need to if you don't want to. not as into the character or enemy designs though, outside of dashang and the villain looking cool, my roommate said that dashang looks like peanutbuttergamer (of the hit game asagao academy) though and that was very funny.

for the dlc you had a few and they're pretty much the best part of the game, first was some costumes and difficulties, easy and harder modes, a lot of you might want that harder mode if you don't like easy games but the default difficulty was just right for me to I never tested hard, the costumes look nice too, especially the tuxedo, but the star here is the rest, the two story dlc's. the first one is uprising in heaven, this takes unique mechanics from the final boss fight and basis the whole dlc around them, it's like a mix of asuras wrath and zone of the enders and it's really cool, you have a lock on dashing melee, a strong attack and a ranged attack for far away, plus a big magic spell you work your way up to by attacking the enemy, it's basic but it's super fun and its a real spectacle to see how cool and big the bosses can be, one guy has entire volcanoes on his shoulders that fire rocks at you (he's cool because you need to disable different parts of his attacks as the fight goes on) the others are a melee guy whos really fast and a bow general who you really have to get good at dodging to get to, they're varied and fun and the game ranks you based on things like doing specials and guard breaking so you have insentive to replay, it's also got a ton of really cool looking cutscenes using the drawn art style from some of the main games cutscenes, very short though, half an hour if you're being generous, so unless you want the spectacle it's difficult to reeeeeally justify without sale prices. the other is the best part of the whole game, at first i thought mind palace was just an arcade mode using recycled levels, but its absolutely not, this is a challange mode with new levels using those level themes that really flexes how good the levels can be if they were allowed to in the basegame. the basegame levels were a little boring but here its like, they're fun and nonlinier sometimes, there's whole stealth levels and real platforming you need to get decent with, there's wholley unique mechanics like the coloured switches you need to hit and belts you need to run through and puzzles and item hunts and you'll have things never seen in the basegame like traps and environmental hazards and *puzzles*, it's like this is the game they wanted to make, just don't be expecting much actual story, it's just a few still visual novel frames every 5 levels and the game also seemingly has no saving here? at least i didn't see a manual save point so i ended up one-running it, which took a good 4 hours, so its much more value than the other dlc and all the levels here are wholley unique and really pretty at times, pick this up 100% if you get the game, it's the best.

the staff working on this is kind of crazy, this was a joint venture between a bunch of studios, like Japan studio, hexadrive and oasis games. this is from what i can find the last original game Japan studio worked on, with the only ones after it seemingly being slight work on a port of death stranding (and at most some marketing materials for the basegame), a few people at most working on the awful demons souls remake and ghost of Tsushima, which again just seems to be at best consulting work, this is their last real stamp since unlike those games this does have tons of Japan studio staffers in its credits and like i said earlier with the knack comparisons, it does feel like a Japan studio game, even if just a jankier, lower budget one, it has their DNA all over it and this is a solid enough game for i think the studios legacy to end with, it's a hell of a lot better than *bluepoint demons souls*, a game that all but spits on their legacy as a studio. hexadrive should be well known enough to regular readers, they made things like the excellent silent hill: the short message, not a hero for resi 7 which was my favourite part of that game, the third birthday and even the super bomberman R games, they're a very good studio and one to keep an eye on i think, they have a lot of potential and you should expect for me to talk about them more in the future. the games director also worked on blackrockshooter, 7th dragon and onimusha, which is a weird mix of games. the last studio credited is oasis games, a studio mostly notable for mobile games and working on shenmue 3, which is the only other game on the main staffers resume it seems. i think the game is solid for what it is, it's fun and if you miss this era of licenced action game, this is one of the more solid recent ones, it'll serve you a lot better than the likes of many of outright games's works and it's a super cheap game to boot, it won't run you more than £5 for a boxed copy, a little more if you want the DLC, which does go on sale sometimes.