First off, thanks to Bilibili's "You Xian Kan" event for the invitation, which allowed me to try out Monster Fantasy a few days ago.
Although Monster Fantasy is an indie game developed by a small team, its ambitions are considerable—the gameplay includes "Monster Hunter"-style co-op hunting, blends in "Animal Crossing"-style simulation management, and even features a pet-catching system.
Moreover, according to the development team, Monster Fantasy is positioned as a title that "allows different types of players to enjoy together." When playing online with friends, players can specialize in combat, gathering, production, and construction; when playing solo, you can choose to handle Everythinggj yourself or focus solely on your preferred gameplay, leaving other aspects to NPCs...
With so much content, it's naturally impossible to experience Everythinggj in just one or two hours of demo play. Therefore, this demo session primarily focused on the game's co-op hunting gameplay. The Demo featured four combat classes, including the "Warrior, Mage, Archer" trio fitting the game's Western fantasy style, as well as the "Long Sword User" beloved by co-op players—the Blade.
So, what else is there to say?
Blade, activate!
On the Blade, you can see many familiar mechanics and action sets, such as the Qi Blade Gauge, Sharpening, Rising Slash, Iai Slash, and Foresight. However, Monster Fantasy rearranges and combines these mechanics and actions on the character, adding plenty of new elements, ultimately forming a unique yet coherent action experience for the Blade.
The Blade has two core mechanics—"Qi Blade Level" and "Phantom."
The "Qi Blade Level" mechanic works as we're familiar with: attacking and other actions fill the Qi Blade Gauge, which can then be used to sharpen the blade with specific moves. However, the difference is that when the Qi Blade Level reaches Tier 3 (Red Blade), the Blade unleashes a "Dimensional Slash" and switches to Demon Mode, drawing a short sword from the waist to fight with dual blades. In Demon Mode, the Blade gains a new set of actions, significantly boosting mobility and damage output.
Let's discuss another mechanic: "Phantom." When the Blade uses actions that interact with monster attacks, such as "Foresight" or "Swallow Return" which can sharpen the blade, a successful hit generates a Phantom at the original position. All generated Phantoms will launch additional attacks and disappear when the Blade executes the Dimensional Slash to switch stances.
The Blade's damage rotation is built upon these two core mechanics.
In Single Blade stance, the Blade needs to quickly fill the Qi gauge to sharpen the blade and enter the high-performance Dual Blade stance for damage output. The "Dimensional Slash" executed during stance switching deals high burst damage, and the more Phantoms present, the higher the burst damage, making it easier to stagger or even knock down monsters directly. This allows the Blade to immediately secure a prime window for damage output upon entering Dual Blade stance.
The "Phantom" mechanic ensures that high-risk maneuvers like "Foresight" and "Swallow Return" yield equally high rewards. Thus, in Single Blade stance, mastering these risky moves to sharpen your blade and create openings for output in Demon Mode becomes essential for every Blade player. In short, the Blade is a photogenic class, perfectly suited for players who enjoy aggressive, high-risk playstyles.
Unlike the Blade, who dances on the edge of danger, the Warrior focuses on integrating offense and defense, featuring a charge mechanic similar to "charging the Charge Blade."
Simply put, the Warrior's basic attacks build energy, and once the energy bar is full, it increases the Defense Level by one tier. The higher the Defense Level, the greater the damage reduction and knockback resistance during defense. The maximum Defense Level is three tiers, but the final tier can only be accumulated through successful Perfect Guards.
Defense Level not only enhances defensive capabilities but also serves as a resource for offense—Warriors can consume Defense Levels to unleash high-damage moves akin to "Release Slash," and with multiple layers of Defense Level, they can chain into follow-up attacks.
You might think that while the Warrior integrates offense and defense, failing to master the timing for Perfect Guard would result in poor performance in both aspects. From this perspective, the Warrior isn't a class suitable for players who struggle with action mechanics...
But what if I told you that most Warrior moves have Perfect Guard windows? Triggering a Perfect Guard grants super armor, negates damage, and instantly adds a layer of Defense Level. Furthermore, the "Shield Bash" derived from holding up the shield is a zero-frame startup move with continuous Perfect Guard windows—a true crutch ability.
Although I only briefly experienced the Warrior class near the end of the demo, without enough time to master optimal damage rotations in normal stance or understand the precise windows for Perfect Guard on most moves, I managed to defeat a high-difficulty monster in one life by adopting a turtle strategy: holding up the shield in normal stance, stacking layers through Shield Bash, and punishing recovery frames with Release Slashes. Admittedly, this approach is somewhat ugly, but it works, and the EX Curry Beam effect of "Release Slash" looks quite cool.
As for the remaining two classes, due to time constraints, I didn't get to experience them firsthand, so I won't comment on them here.
From my experience with the Blade and Warrior, Monster Fantasy's design for melee classes, while drawing inspiration from other co-op games, doesn't just copy-paste mechanics but incorporates its own understanding. Even though many classes share similar-looking moves, you can genuinely feel that they serve distinct action mechanics during actual gameplay.
However, currently, some class abilities seem overly powerful, possibly due to considerations for the Demo's showcase attributes. Besides the aforementioned "Shield Bash," take the Blade's "Moon Stance" as an example. "Moon Stance" is the preparatory motion for Foresight, and its duration is so long that you can mindlessly spam it, waiting for the monster to attack and trigger Foresight automatically.
Of course, the above impressions are based solely on the Demo version released for the "You Xian Kan" event and do not represent the final quality. Currently, the game is still in early development, and the actual content will depend on the official release. Moreover, these issues are minor and can be easily resolved through simple numerical adjustments later on.
To be honest, while Monster Fantasy's co-op gameplay is solid and offers room for deep exploration, it still lags behind its predecessors in areas that heavily rely on technical mastery, such as "impact feedback."
Fortunately, as a multi-genre title, Monster Fantasy isn't trying to compete head-to-head in areas where others excel.
Starting a few years ago, we generally described games like Monster Fantasy, which combine multiple gameplay styles, as "stitch monsters." But after this period of development and the excellent performance of many such games, the connotation of this concept in the player community has shifted from purely derogatory to a more neutral label.
As the development team themselves stated, Monster Fantasy is a game that "allows different types of players to enjoy together." If Monster Fantasy achieves this, it will surely become a popular choice for friends to play together online.
As for how Monster Fantasy will perform after its full development, let's wait and see.
