Monster RPG 2 is a role-playing game in the tradition of classic Japanese 2D console RPGs like Lufia II, Final Fantasy Adventure / Mystic Quest or Breath of Fire. Like its archetypes the game is using a low resolution, pixelated graphics and chipsound music.
The story begins when Eny and her brother Tiggy come back from collecting mushrooms in the woods and Tiggy sees a staff lying around near the road. When he picks up that staff he immediately becomes possessed by an evil power, attacks his sister and puts her into the jail of his new castle. Eny takes up the quest to free her brother from the evil force and destroy the staff once and for all. During the course of the game various people will join Eny on her quest, creating a party with up to four members. There is no option to select the party members, they will join and leave the group automatically.
Like most classical RPGs from the SNES era the game has three different views: A top down view to explore the lands and towns, an isometric view for the battle screen and a map view for long distance travels.The exploration view is the main view, used to walk around in the world, talk to characters and interact with the environment. As long as the main character is visible the exploration view can be adjusted to look around without moving, for example to check if passages have a dead end or to discover chests. Enemies are not visible in this exploration view, instead those appear in random encounters when the character is moving. Battles are turn-based, the order in one round is determined by the “speed” attribute of both the characters and enemies. During battle it’s possible to attack, cast a spell, use an item, defend yourself or try to flee; winning a battle will gain you money and experience points. From time to time you will also have to fight mandatory boss battles.
The game includes several mini-games, for example an arcade-racer like boat travel (shooting incoming crabs and sharks) or defending a castle with a bow. Finishing these mini-games will give your characters a significant amount of money and experience points. The experience points can be spent to increase any of seven attributes like health points, attack, magic defense or luck; the game does not increase any attributes automatically during a level up and also does not set any limits, so it’s the players responsibility to keep the character stats balanced.