Star Dive could get Pokémon fans into gacha games

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.

The first thing that stands out to me about Mongil: Star Dive is just how beautifully animated it is. The characters are detailed and expressive, the combat is sleek and natural, and some of the cutscenes truly blew me away. I was, however, playing the beta on my PC, and I do have some concerns about how people are meant to fit such a large, graphically intensive game on their mobile devices. Having said that, Netmarble is in the business of mobile games, so I’m sure this is already something the studio is working on.

While the medieval Europe-inspired setting and character design are reminiscent of games like Genshin Impact, the combat itself is much closer to the tag battle combo systems of Zenless Zone Zero and Wuthering Waves. I personally find this kind of combat a lot more challenging, as my reaction times are slow and I’m bad at remembering the extra tag-in and tag-out moves, but something about this system clicked a little better for me. It might come down to the fact that, even when you switch out, the previous character remains on the field with you for a few seconds, so it feels more like a team fight and there’s less pressure on me to perfect combos if I want to succeed.

Then, there’s the monster taming aspect. When you defeat monsters out in the wild, you can use Nyanners to, uh, absorb their souls (which is a bit dark if you think about it too hard) and convert them into Monsterlings. The more times you ‘catch’ a creature, the more buffs you learn about it and the more benefits you get when you use its Monsterling, which scratches the Pokédex completionist part of my brain. These Puyo-ified versions of the creatures act like artifacts or relics in other gacha games, offering specific element or class bonuses. They hang on a string on your character’s waist, and while this does lead to a lot of gratuitous butt shots, I love how they look like a little plushie dango.

Mongil: Star Dive also lets you combine two Monsterlings, even if they’re different species, to create a new Monsterling with a combination of the parents’ effects. This system of stat rerolling feels a lot friendlier than grinding dungeons, but I wish that combining two different Monsterlings could create a new creature that you can’t find in the overworld. However, Monsterlings aren’t the only equipment set that you need to worry about. There are also four pieces of armor and something separate called Relics. I didn’t get to dive too deep into these concepts during my time in the beta, but the sheer number of equippable items worries me a bit.

Now, we’re operating under the assumption that Mongil: Star Dive is a gacha game, and every aspect of it points to that being the case, but the closed beta didn’t actually feature a banner system of any kind. Instead, I incrementally added new members to my party via story events and quest completion, so I could play around with a range of classes and elements. I would have liked to see how the gacha system works in this beta test, but I guess I’ll have to wait and see.

Overall, I really enjoyed my experience in Mongil: Star Dive’s closed beta. The fantasy world felt familiar but fresh, unique elements like the mashing in cutscenes and the Temple Run-esque chase minigame surprised me, and the character designs and visuals are gorgeous. I feel like this has the potential to fill a niche in the ARPG space for people who are into fantasy anime games, but find the open world of Genshin Impact overwhelming. I can’t wait to see where Netmarble takes the game next.

While you wait for the next Mongil: Star Dive beta test, why not take a look at some of the new mobile games and new Switch games coming this year? We’ve also got plenty of other gacha game content, like our Genshin Impact tier list, Honkai Star Rail codes, and Zenless Zone Zero events pages.