A Quick Review of 9 Monkeys of Shaolin

 9 Monkeys of Shaolin was released in 2020 by Sobaka Studio. I believe it was their second game. Although many would describe it as a beat-em-up, it eschews some of the hallmarks of the genre in favour of an experience that courts more mainstream attention. With a level-based (rather than arcade) campaign, skill trees and item unlocks, and a focus on story sections, I would consider it more broadly in the 2D action genre, refuting the more specific descriptor. I enjoyed my time with it, although it was not particularly ground-breaking and in the end broke itself.

 

9 Monkeys most obvious departure from the beat-em-up formula is the prominence of its story. Not every mission is heavy on the story, but the opening prologue includes a forced loss which leads to protagonist Wei Cheng’s recovery and training in the care of Buddhist monks. Wei Cheng ultimately masters their techniques and takes a new name as he joins them, achieving first revenge and then overcoming a threat of greater scope. For all the emphasis on it, the story did not interest me much. If I compare it to Fight’N Rage, which had a more engaging story that could easily be taken out of the way, or River City Girls, which had a more amusing story that was less easily ignored, the tale of 9 Monkey is not particularly engaging or novel, instead bogging down missions (especially on replay). If part of the pitch of this game was drawing a more casual crowd to the genre with this concession, it wasn’t worth it and I doubt it proved effective.

 

More effective is the simple gameplay. Most attacks are performed with three of the face buttons, with which players can kick enemies or slash and thrust at them with Wei Cheng’s staff. Three forms of modifiers to these buttons (holding them, or holding L2 or R2 before pressing them) use a resource bar (qi, gained by fighting enemies and modified by equipable items). Qi allows Wei Cheng to use more powerful moves, giving him better combo options and control of space. His moveset is rounded out by a dodge and a parry, each of which is relatively easy to pull off for the genre but has a bit of recovery on the back end. When I got into a nice flow with my parries, I felt untouchable for the evening. But the next day, when I hit the button too early almost every time, I got picked apart by ruthless foes. There’s a good flow to the combat system, once you get comfortable, based around spacing and parrying and ensuring you don’t get surrounded. In another break from the typical beat-em-up formula, there’s no sense of lanes (outside of the level with sawblades travelling through the floor). Control of space feels like a natural challenge, although one that quickly becomes too easy. What ultimately breaks the game is the Seal of Attraction, which, with the right item loadout, has basically infinite use. Spamming one move (with no execution barrier) then carried me through every level on the hardest difficulty (although without the accompanying trophy popping, much to my chagrin). There are also four consumable items to help players, each a different flavour of tea found in breakable items throughout the stages. One restores health, two reduce and increase damage respectively, and the last temporarily gives infinite qi. They can help you through a few tough spots, but I often ended levels with a surplus of tea in my inventory.

 

Unfortunately, being a modern game, 9 Monkeys of Shaolin has a skill tree alongside its unlocks. Really, it has nine skill trees, one for each of your attacks. And each attacks’ tree has 2 components – raw damage increase, as well as upgrades to the properties of the move – longer duration, wider reach, new effects. When I had invested properly, I went from thinking enemies were a bit too tough for such a limited combo system to carving through them with ease. Discovering the Seal of Attraction tactic certainly didn’t help. It’s not like that’s a particularly difficult thing to figure out; I’m not normally someone that min-maxes or breaks games in any way. I just happened into the optimal strategy due to getting frustrated with the ghost enemies (who can typically only be damaged by qi attacks). The weaknesses of the combat system and reliance on skill tree unlocks further distance 9 Monkeys from the strengths of the beat-em-up genre.

 

Overall, 9 Monkeys of Shaolin is a fun 2D action game that serves as a fun companion to the more traditional, hardcore beat-em-ups. It’s worth at least a few hours of attention from casual players, just to see what’s there. Perhaps you could bring a friend rather than going alone as I did. If the glitched trophy had unlocked for me I might be a little happier right now, but ultimately I’m not going to recognise this game as some unheralded masterpiece. It’s a solid game that does some things well, but fails to fulfil the core appeal of the beat-em-up genre, let down by both its core combat and progression structure. With narrative sensibilities rather than arcade ones, it lacks appeal for the hardcore crowd, but is nonetheless enjoyable through most of its missions. Just hold off on the Seal of Attraction loops until you’re sure you’re done with it.

 

 

Coda:

 

Not quite half of the posts on this blog are titled with a single, eponymous game (even though my piece on Shadow of Mordor focussed a lot on Phantom Pain). I conceive of these pieces as responses, a habit started when the strength of my feelings on Uncharted: The Lost Legacy inspired me to return to writing. My need to express my feelings on it, and then on Shadow of Mordor, got me back into the habit and laid out the foundation for my words. I never conceived of these as reviews, and I never expected to do a review. Each eponymously-named piece is a response to that game, to the feelings it evoked within me. More general meditations on various subjects were initially to be titled with a single word describing the focus of the piece – see Loading and Omnibus, the sort of precursors to the true revival of this blog. This trend was stopped by my thoughts and fears for this years Resident Evil 4 Remake, as the clickbait headline was too perfect to pass up. The titling of my piece on genre was a sort of compromise, I suppose.

 

Anyway. I told you all that to say that this was not a response. 9 Monkeys of Shaolin did not inspire great passion within me. I played it for a week, then it was over. The Lost Legacy and Black Flag forced me to question the apathy they inspired within me. Shadow of Mordor had me questioning how we can push interaction with enemy characters in open world games. Mafia got me to plough through it without being interesting, a dynamic entirely worth interrogating. Nioh 2 was a case study of my disgust and despair at the ubiquity of the modern action-rpg, an opportunity to explore my hatred of numbers. There were no big ideas or core emotion to my thoughts on 9 Monkeys of Shaolin. I just wanted to spend a few words on it.