#monsterconreview

10/1/26

Here are my thoughts on the Monster Prom's 4th installment, Monster Con! Note: I have not played through every secret ending like I hoped but I do have 43 hours on the game which I think is more than enough to form an opinion.

THE WRITING

The humour has improved. It no longer sucks like in Roadtrip and it's back to its regular comedy like in Monster Camp. The game takes place in a con and uses a lot of internet and fandom slang which I think they use pretty well. There hasn't been a single time where I cringed at the dialogue which isn't something I can say about other pieces of media.

The writing in the past games has fallen off (Roadtrip especially... most of the events were just boringly long to get through) but here I think it's made a bit of a comeback. The events are definitely more entertaining than Roadtrip.

Sometimes however, a few of the events can feel on-the-nose about its messaging about capitalism and businesses, especially the events with the business women characters.

THE CHARACTERS

At first, I did think Omen was a carbon copy of that aggressive, competitive RO that has violent tendencies but ultimately is a tsundere which I thought was tired for this franchise already (Damien, Aaravi) however they do enough with her character to make her different, specifically with her whole reformed villain arc. She's also pretty entertaining as there's lots of events of her adjusting to the modern world.

Nico is a little boring and is probably the most underdeveloped character in the cast. They're basically Scott except nerdy and it's thembo not himbo. They sometimes come off as pretty annoying too.

Doug is also boring but he's slightly better in writing than Nico thanks to having a concrete flaw. However, he's still lacking and needs to be fleshed out more.

April is just written alright, although I do feel she's missing something and she feels flat sometimes but overall, is an entertaining and relatable character. I like her.

Liam is just... Liam? I don't know. There's nothing really to say on this part except that it's still the same classic Liam like from Prom. Though I am not a Liam super fan so there might be some changes I haven't noticed.

I feel very much the same with Zoe as I do with Liam.

The side characters are very fun and I like them a lot (except for Bruce, he's just okay).

THE ART

This section will be short.

The game is noticeably much more vibrant than the others. Like Roadtrip, it has little icons for one-off characters in events, different sized CGs, and lots of characters.

There's also seems to be more CGs and sprites for certain love interests too. (Maybe spoiler? It's Liam and Nico.)

THE GAMEPLAY

I think they really nailed the balance in the game mechanics. The blind boxes are much better than their drinks counterpart in Monster Camp. You still have some control over what kind of effect you'd get while still also having that randomness that makes it more fun. In regular runs, even ones for grinding, I feel more safer using the blind boxes whereas in Monster Camp, I'd just spam the emotion smoothie every single time to instantly win.

It's more easier to get successful secret endings than the past games for sure. Now, they only perform a stat check at the very last event of the plotline instead of every event which I think is a good choice.

Likewise, it's also much easier to replay secret endings thanks to the date mechanics allowing you replay one after going through that plotline once. I think this was a very good decision on their part than before where you had to solely rely on RNG to get a certain plotline started.

That being said, some secret endings rely on quite a bit of RNG. I couldn't get one Doug secret ending to start after 6 different runs and I decided not to bother at all. I love playing through all of the secret endings (100% in Prom, Camp, and nearly Roadtrip except for the EOTR route) but this one was just oddly difficult to play through. I suppose I got sick of trying.

Stat management in this game is much better than the past games. Before, it was possible to get one event wrong and just keep losing stats all the time but in here, now those stats are simply redirected.

Unfortunately, the trend of the MonProm games getting longer and longer (in runs) has not ended with Con. Usually a short game in Monster Camp singleplayer would take me about 40 minutes, reading silently, whereas a game here with the same settings would be around an hour long. When it's a multiplayer game, rest assured you can expect to finish that run in more than one sitting which I think is a negative.

The length of the games are much more consistent across the board. It doesn't really matter how many players are in one run because you still experience the same amount of events any way. Personally, I don't like it because it makes singleplayer far too easy to win and takes forever but view this as you will. Not to mention, it's very hard to convince someone to play with you when a single game takes over 2 hours (if you're reading out every line which of course you are).

The date mechanics are a little neat. However, you must be careful with the guest dates. When you look into the guest dates, you're likely fall with one of them and have to starve for the rest of your life scraping, replaying their route whilst fighting off rats on the street because it is certain these characters will never be dateable again (cough cough Nanase).

There's a few bugs here and there but they're not absolutely unbearable. Although, on two separate occasions, it didn't make a save for run I had which is infuriating to say the least. It's still best to play a whole run in one sitting if possible.

CONCLUSION

Overall, I'd recommend the game. The writing is fun and entertaining again like Camp and Prom but with Roadtrip's style of many character icons and custom CGs while having new things to talk about without coming off as out of touch. The gameplay is the best I've seen in this franchise though, there are still quite a few flaws which are worth mentioning. The flaws in question are the length of the runs, a few of the ROs lacking depth, and certain secret endings just being near impossible to get due to RNG.