Dawn of the Monsters Reviews

As a fan of the kaiju genre, this game checks all of the boxes. Could not have picked a better first game for my Steam account.

Tokusatsu themed beat-em ups are quite rare. King of Monsters 2 for the NeoGeo comes to mind, even though that game had very little to offer aside from some nice sprite work and music. Dawn of the Monsters seems to have taken inspiration from that game, but is easy to tell that its developers saw many areas to improve upon and the end result is a very solid beat em up title despite a few flaws. The story is relatively simple but is interesting nonetheless. Giant monsters (known as Nephilim) have invaded and ravaged earth for nearly three decades and humanity has stablished the Defense Alliance Worldwide Network (DAWN) in an attempt to take earth back from the monster menace. The line of defense is made up of the typical staples of the Tokusatsu genre: Megadon (Fire Kaiju), Ganira (Water Kaiju), Tempest Galahad (Giant Robot), Aegis Prime (Giant Superhero) and Meteor Temujin (Megazord type). Unlike most games in the beat-em up genre, there is a strong focus on the game story which is presented in fully voiced, comic book-like panels and the ocasional animated cutscene. Visually speaking, the game features solid comic book like visuals, which seem to have taken inspiration from Hellboy. The sense of scale is great and there is a nice variety of stages to explore. Sound wise, the game is hard to rate. The music is definitely fitting to the dramatic vibe the developers were going for, but is not very exciting. Voice work is great however and dual audio (english/japanese) is available. Sound effects are fitting, but you'll want to fiddle with the sound settings since the default level for these is rather low. Gameplay wise, the game is quite a lot more varied and complex that it lets on at first impression. Characters feature unique special and super moves and differ greatly from each other while focussing on power, speed, defense or range. There are also a handful of advanced techniques such as parrying, last minute dodges and move cancelling for those players that are willing to put in the time to practice them in order to step up their game. And there is also the augmentations, which are basically perks you can equip on your characters in order to increase their base stats, power up their special techniques or add some wacky effects such as turning foes into time bombs. You'll find out that there is plenty of room for experimentation as you to unlock more augmentations in order to come up with your own strategy to use with your favorite character. The game does feature some rough edges though. The game is divided into regions made up of many missions, so you'll end up fighting on similar looking areas for quite a while. There are some bugs here and there, which depending on your setup may be easily ignored or not. Also, you'll find the game lacks modes to keep playing once you are done with the main campaign, unless you own the DLC which adds extra missions, new game plus modes and an arcade mode (which gives you a faster and more streamlined version of the main campaign). Last but not least, some players may find somewhat odd that this is one of the few beat-em ups where you can't jump (perhaps the developers couldn't find a way it wouldn't look incredibly silly?). In summary, this is a great beat-em up title and a great tribute to the Tokusatsu genre. If you are a fan of giant monsters and robots, this is an easy purchase. If you are simply looking for a solid beat-em up that differs greatly from the many other great titles in the genre such as Fight'n Rage and SOR4, this one is a solid choice as well. Be sure to try it!