Falling in line with many titles under the Atlus name, Master of the Monster Lair is a quirky take on the RPG genre. It abandons a number of the typical staples of the genre and swaps them for new ideas; some successful, others not.

The premise of the game involves digging out dungeons in order to attract monsters (and tourism) to the main character's home town. The story functions as little more than a purpose to do what you are doing, which is digging caves and building homes for monsters in order to fight them.

The progression of the game is quite odd. In many ways it bears stronger similarities to a Harvest Moon title than it does a dungeon-based RPG. At the start of each game day players can stock up on necessary items, including magic items, weapons, and room sets to build in the tunnels of the dungeon. Following the stocking period, players enter the dungeon and begin digging with their magical talking shovel. The purpose of digging is simply to create areas to place monster rooms, which depending on the room type will attract different monsters on subsequent days. The entire process proves to be extremely cyclical. Players want to attract monsters in order to defeat them, which in turn nets them new weapons and items that allow them to attract and defeat new monsters.

Given the situation, a significant amount of effort is put into digging hallways on each floor in order to put the proper number of rooms in the right areas to attract the most monsters. In this regard, building dungeons feels similar to a game like Harvest Moon. The departure from the Harvest Moon formula comes when players encounter the block on the grid of the dungeon that is adjacent to a monster room. This will bring the monsters out of their rooms, front and center for a battle. It is here that players will use their item arsenal and magic spells to defeat monsters and obtain new gear and cash. Battling is nothing out of the ordinary, and is nearly identical to older Dragon Quest titles.

Typically battles are a three-on-one affair due to the way you orient the monster rooms. Your talking shovel explains early on that you want to architect monster rooms to scare out the most monsters into a single battle. This turns out to feel slightly prohibitive, as it encourages floors to be built in a certain regard for maximum efficiency. For those with greater patience, the dungeon can be built out in any structure desired; the only effect is that it will take a greater number of days in order to reach the floor's goals.

Following a day in the dungeon, a hearty meal is in line. Oddly enough, meals serve as your means of leveling up. Furthermore, the meals you select force a leveling of different skills. As such, fighting monsters only indirectly cause players to level up; defeating more or less monsters only means a different or more plentiful set of ingredients to choose from when preparing your level up meal. Due to the limited number of enemies a player can encounter in a day, this unconventional system works and allows players to improve the parts they find most vital for dungeon excursions.

Master of the Monster Lair makes for a moderately enjoyable blend of old school RPG mechanics and Harvest Moon-type gameplay. Depending on personality, players will either grow tired of the unchanging formula after a few hours of gameplay, or identify with the sometimes tedious tasks and become addicted. In either case, the game is an interesting diversion from the typical RPG fare and makes for a fun experience at least for a little while.