Juka and the Monophonic Menace (Game Boy Advance)

GameSpot editors' review

• CNET editors' rating: 3.0 stars Good
  Detailed editors' rating
  Overall score: 6.3 (3.0 stars)

• Reviewed by:
  Frank Provo
• Reviewed on: 02/14/2007
• Updated on: 06/22/2007
• Released on: 10/24/2006
• Originally published on GameSpot: Juka and the Monophonic Menace (Game Boy Advance) Review

If you've played through a role-playing game before, you may be too skilled to fully appreciate Juka and the Monophonic Menace. Even though Orbital Media's take on the genre is aesthetically pleasing and contains a couple of interesting gameplay ideas that might appeal to experienced players, the game is clearly intended for a less-experienced audience. The game involves the same kinds of enemy encounters, puzzles, and collect-a-thon quests found in the majority of action RPGs, except that everything has been made easygoing and straightforward. Combat situations and puzzles don't require much in the way of finger acrobatics or intellect. Nor is there ever a question of what to do or where to go next, because characters in the game are constantly telling you what your next course of action is.

The story takes place in the land of Obla, where the austere people lived a peaceful existence until robots began appearing and taking people away. Soldiers tried in vain to stop the robots, but they were no match for the sonically charged attacks of the machines. A young alchemist, named Juka, eventually learns that his staff can absorb and reflect the robots' attacks back at them, so he volunteers to seek out and stop whomever or whatever is behind the robots. As Juka, you must travel the land, talk to people, defeat the robots you come across, and use potions to transform the environment around you...so that you can collect the objects necessary to reach and ultimately defeat the monophonic menace.

There's actually quite a bit that you can do as Juka, but what you can do at any given moment is limited by the kinds of creatures and structures in the surrounding environment. Juka can walk around, pull himself up from petite ledges, swim in the many rivers and lakes around Obla, and pull switches to open doors and activate elevator platforms. The majority of trees and plants can be shaken to yield the ingredients that you'll need for making the potions that Juka can use against certain enemies and in designated spots around the environment. When you encounter an enemy robot or soldier, you can use Juka's staff to capture and reflect the robot's shots or use a sleep potion to put the soldier to sleep. Other potions interact with structures in the environment and allow you to do things like rearrange rock walls and revive ancient technology. While it may seem like you can do all sorts of fun things as Juka, the reality is that most areas contain only a couple of enemies or a single environmental obstacle to surmount, and very few areas give you the opportunity to put multiple talents to use. The notable exceptions are the minigame challenges and boss fights that happen periodically. They're not especially difficult, but they do tend to bring all of Juka's abilities into play. It's too bad the rest of the game isn't like those challenges and fights.

You must avoid or knock out living enemies with sleep potions. But if you come across robot enemies, which are more plentiful, you must destroy them with a two-step process that involves Juka's staff. First, you have to swing Juka's staff at nearby shots that match the symbols indicated in the display at the bottom of the screen. Then, once you've collected all of the indicated symbols, you can reflect the amassed ball of energy back at the enemy robot. It's a neat concept early in the game, when you need to grab only one or two symbols to trash a robot, but it becomes tedious when you later have to collect as many as four symbols and do so multiple times just to get rid of a single robot. Enemy robots don't move very fast or attack with much frequency, which means battles aren't difficult. However, the battles are time-consuming because of all the waiting and dodging that's involved in gathering the right pattern of symbols.

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