In a world where seemingly every other mobile game is trying to emulate the massive gacha success of Genshin Impact, Mongil: Star Dive was still able to grab my attention. While the game’s first trailer dropped in February, Netmarble’s latest creation really splashed onto the scene during last month’s State of Unreal showcase.
Mongil: Star Dive, where ‘Mongil’ is short for ‘monster taming’ in Korean, is a mobile ARPG with fantasy elements from the creators of games like Marvel: Future Fight and Solo Leveling: Arise. It also seems to be a spiritual successor to the studio’s very first title, Monster Taming, which launched in 2013. We’ve described it in the past as Genshin Impact meets Pokémon, and from my experience of the most recent closed beta, that feels pretty accurate.
You play as two adventurers named Cloud and Verna who, during a standard outing into the wilderness, stumble across an adorable black cat-like creature called Nyanners, and get involved in a much larger mystery surrounding magical seeds that cause local monsters to become aggressive. The story premise is simple, but it’s a formula that works well, and Cloud’s affinity for befriending monsters is a refreshing change to the usual ‘slay everything’ mindset of most fantasy RPG protagonists.
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