Pixel Art Game Review: Coromon

The Mechanics of Coromon Combat

Coromon is a game with combat, types, moves, and stats much like other monster-taming games such as Pokémon, Nexomon, and Temtem. In this review, we will often compare aspects of Coromon to Pokémon as we believe that it is the most popular and well-known game of the genre and many of you are probably fans of that franchise yourself. Let’s get into the types of Coromon.

Coromon Types

In this game, each Coromon has one type. The seven types are Normal, Fire, Water, Ice, Sand, Ghost, and Electric.

Coromon can learn moves of types other than their own, and there are also several offense-only types to which no specific Coromon belongs. These types are only used as the typings of moves. They are Magic, Foul, Heavy, Air, Cut, and Poison.

Here we’ve compiled a type effectiveness chart. Along the top row are the offensive types, and along the left-hand column are the defensive types. A “2” in a cell means the attacking type corresponding to that cell is super effective against the defending type corresponding to that cell and it will deal twice the normal damage. A “0.5” in a cell means that the attacking type is not very effective against the defending type and will deal half damage. A “1” in a cell means the attack will deal normal damage.

	Attacking Type
Defending Type		Normal	Fire	Water	Ice	Sand	Ghost	Electric	Magic	Foul	Heavy	Air	Cut	Poison
Normal	1	1	1	1	1	0.5	1	1	1	1	1	1	2
Fire	1	0.5	2	0.5	1	1	1	1	1	0.5	2	1	1
Water	1	0.5	0.5	2	1	1	2	1	2	1	1	1	1
Ice	1	2	0.5	0.5	0.5	1	1	1	1	2	0.5	1	0.5
Sand	1	1	2	1	0.5	1	0.5	1	0.5	1	1	1	1
Ghost	0.5	1	1	1	1	2	1	2	1	1	1	0.5	1
Electric	1	1	0.5	1	2	1	0.5	1	1	1	1	2	1

There’s an extra bonus on top of this! If a Coromon uses an attack type the same as its own, it will deal another 25% more damage. This is called Type Proficiency and functions similarly to the Same-Type Attack Bonus (STAB) in Pokémon.

Coromon Stats: Potential, Stat Allocation

Each Coromon has a spread of stats much like Pokémon. They are Attack, Defense, Special Attack, Special Defense, HP, and Speed. There is one more stat, Stamina Points (SP), but all Coromon have the same base SP except for the Titans.

Attacks which are classified as Physical deal damage based on the attacking Coromon’s physical attack stat, simply named as Attack. The damage received is affected by the defending Coromon’s Defense stat as well.

Attacks which are classified as Special deal damage based on the attacking Coromon’s Special Attack stat and the defending Coromon’s Special Defense stat.

Using moves takes up Stamina, which can be recovered by resting. Stronger attacks will take up more Stamina, while weaker attacks, boosts, and status moves will usually use less.

Each newly encountered Coromon has a single 1-21 stat which cannot be changed once it has been captured. This is its potential. Coromon with a Potential of 16 or under is considered Standard. A Coromon with a Potential from 17 to 20 is considered Potent. Finally, a Coromon with 21 points in Potential is considered Perfect. In addition, this system replaces the equivalent ‘Shiny’ system you may be familiar with from Pokémon, where a rare Coromon can be encountered with a different appearance. However, a Potent Coromon will have a unique color palette, and a Perfect Coromon will have yet another different color scheme. Finally, your ‘shiny’ monsters will always be the more powerful ones!

As you defeat other Coromon, you will not only gain EXP which increases your Coromon’s level, but they will also gain potential points. When the potential points hit certain thresholds, you are able to allocate some stat points to your Coromon’s stats. The thresholds and overall amount of points you get to allocate are based on your Coromon’s potential value and are not affected by which monsters you actually defeat.

Coromon Combat Summary

Overall, the experience of fighting in this game is quite satisfying. We are pleased to see the same kinds of systems from monster-taming games we love being simplified and improved upon in this way.

The potential system feels much more streamlined than the equivalent Individual Value and Effort Value system in Pokémon. It allows you to customize your Coromon without the need for ridiculous numbers of specific monsters being hunted or anything like that. We can just play the game and build out our Coromon’s stats the way we want them. Also, your shiny Coromon will always be the Potent and Perfect variants which are much more powerful when they awaken their potential.

When you catch a Coromon that’s already a fairly high level, unfortunately, an amount of potential has already been awakened in them which means the stats were distributed randomly. This means later into the story, the Coromon you get will have a chunk of randomized stat points before you start leveling them up yourself.

Fortunately, the developers of the game have mentioned implementing a way of resetting these distributed stat points, which would resolve this issue.

The systems in this game when taken as a whole feel like an improvement upon the systems of older monster-taming games, and at least for the story-driven gameplay, they are more satisfying and allow you to play with intent.

The Story and Art

We feel some heavy nostalgia seeing the pixel art in this game as well as the sounds and music. Even for a pair of fresh eyes, there’s really a blast from the past coming through, which is unexpected, to say the least. It may be because of the old-school pixel art with animated sprites, or it may just be the vibe of the soundtrack, but this game feels like a classic the moment you dive into it.

Enjoying The Story

You might expect that the story of Coromon is just like that of older Nintendo DS-era Pokémon games. This is not at all true. The game has a great character customization system which even allows you to add things like facial hair to your ambiguously-aged protagonist.

At the beginning of the game, you start a research job to extract the essence of the Titans. Some sort of blue alien creatures have come to the world and infect the Coromon with ‘Dark Magic’. You are tasked with defeating each of the Titans and collecting their essences, and can choose between three Coromon – a fire type, a water type, and an ice type – to accompany you on the first leg of your journey.

There are some very interesting characters you will meet throughout the story, and there is a lot of evil running amok that you must vanquish. Fending off the world from alien invaders isn’t something we thought we would be doing in a monster-taming game, but it’s there!

The biggest drawback we can find with the gameplay and story of the game is that there isn’t much to do in the post-game except shiny hunt or play PVP. It’s very cool that PVP is even an option, we didn’t expect that at all! The developers have stated that they plan to expand the post-game a little bit, so if they do release a free update with more post-game content, there won’t be much to complain about!

The Pixel Art and the Music

Coromon is a pixel art game, and many of its graphical features look old-school and classic. It’s just simple enough to look retro, yet modernized enough to be easy to look at and inoffensive to the eyes.

Our favorite part of the graphics is the animated character sprites. Every Coromon has what appears at first to be a simple pixel art sprite, but as soon as you see them in battle they come to life! They will dip their heads down, open their mouths, blink, flex their muscles, or sometimes even lightning and other elemental effects will show up on the sprites!

If we were to describe the music of Coromon, it’s like a Pokémon soundtrack, but like a newer one. There aren’t many electronic sounds, most of the tracks sound acoustic and instrumental. They remind us of the music from old JRPGs like Legend of Dragoon and Final Fantasy.

Every track is either bright and colorful or epic and ambient. They convey a wide array of moods and feelings, but they fit the world very well and give us a sense of nostalgia even throughout our first listens through the tracks. There are some very ambient, almost psychedelic tracks for the Inbetween Realm, a funky electronic tune debuting the alien invaders, and a bright Sitar-driven tune for Darudic, Town of Sandstorms (funny reference, too!).

Is Coromon Worth Buying?

Coromon is a game that has decisively taken aim at one of the largest video game franchises of all time – Pokémon. While it will likely have little to no effect on the broad worldwide dominance of the Pokémon franchise, it is a crisp rendition of the genre that makes us wish for more.  At only $19.99 it’s worth paying full price for, and it’s out on Steam, Nintendo Switch, and even mobile (which it’s reportedly cheaper on).

Overall, the satisfying gameplay, charming world and art, and fun experience all around make Coromon a must-buy for fans of Pokémon.

And with the end of this pixel art game review comes more pixel art love! Join the community of pixelated friends in our Discord and Tiktok channels, and participate in our Discord contests! Click on the links below now!