In recent years, the monster-catching genre of games has only grown more prevalent. Pokemon and Digimon set the bar high for a lot of people, and indie developers have consistently tried to capture the magic of those two franchises, to varying degrees of success. Coromon might not seem like much at first glance, but it single-handedly captures the magic of early Pokemon releases. At the same time, it also adds a few quality-of-life improvements that the main franchise should take note of.

Coromon is set in the world of Velua, a place where the global research society, Lux Solis, works to help the native Coromon of the world integrate with human society. You play as a newly hired Battle Researcher, hired by Lux Solis to help them study Coromon and protect the world from various threats. A shadow organization is growing, and Lux Solis will need your help to stop them.

As a Battle Researcher, it will be your responsibility to catch Coromon with your gauntlet and train them. Your gauntlet serves as a multi-tool that allows you use spinners (poke balls) to catch Coromon. It also allows you to add modules that can allow you to push logs and do all sorts of things to navigate the environment.

Coromon plays very similarly to Pokemon titles that came out on handheld devices. You traverse the world, catching Coromon and battling other Battle Researchers. However, there are a few twists and tweaks to the formula that really set it apart. For starters, at the beginning of the game you can not only set a preset difficulty, but you can also set various aspects of the difficulty in different ways. This allows you to make the game harder if you want, or even make certain aspects of it easier.

The developers worked hard to integrate accessibility into every bit of Coromon and it shows. Another twist is that each town area has a fast travel point either by default or that can be unlocked via a side quest. Did I mention that there are side quests? Oh yeah, all throughout the world of Velua you can do side quests for other NPCs and get a variety of rewards.

Additionally, as you do various tasks in game, you get Battle Researcher levels which provide milestone rewards. These rewards can be anything from free money, to items, and even rare spinners. This progression gives you a sense of growth that is separate from the growth of your Coromon, which I really like. In terms of battle, another quality of life addition that I like involves how Coromon utilize moves.

Instead of each move having an SP cost, the creature itself has a stamina pool. Because of this, some of your Coromon’s moves don’t cost any stamina, while others may cost various amounts. As the Coromon levels, you can increase their stats (including stamina) to make them more effective in combat. Coromon can actually level in two ways as well.

The first is standard XP leveling, which gives you stat buffs across the board. The other way to level is through Potential. Each time they level their potential, you get several stat points to use on the Coromon to build them how you want. It is a clever way of doing things and is much more satisfying than EV training in some of the later Pokemon games.

Instead of Gym battles, at set points in the game, you’ll be able to fight giant bosses known as Titan Coromon. These are required for the story and essentially serve as your gym leader battle. I really like the concept though (without spoilers) since it keeps things from being too similar to Pokemon in terms of progression.

Overall, while Coromon won’t feel like something totally new, the ideas it brings to the table to tweak the Monster-Catching genre formula are refreshing. The Nintendo Switch version plays very well and doesn’t have any kind of bugs or crashes. The amount of content in Coromon is refreshingly dense too, which really makes it feel worth the time and money.

I really hope that people won’t overlook Coromon as some “Pokemon clone” since it is an accessible game that may be great for folks who can’t play Pokemon games on console. Since Coromon is on PC as well, you could probably remap controls and do all sorts of things to make it more accessible. Either way, Coromon is a hidden gem that you won’t want to miss.

A Nintendo Switch Review Copy of Coromon was provided by Freedom Games for this review.

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Coromon

$19.99

9.5

Score

9.5/10

Pros

• A Variety of Accessibility Options
• Engaging Potential Progression System
• Fun Side Quests
• Smooth Controls
• No Bugs or Crashes