We don’t know about you, but we’ve never been big fans of the monster-catcher genre. Regardless, we just couldn’t ignore Beehive Studios’ latest project. LumenTale: Memories of Trey features breathtaking pixel art and combat that offers a lot more than simple button mashing. Are the technical hiccups big enough to give us a headache, though?
Catching and Clunky Timing
We hope JRPGs are your jam, because that’s exactly what you’re getting here. Playing as a protagonist with amnesia, you move through a war-wrecked region catching creatures called Animon. Coming to this with a fresh outsider’s perspective, this looks like classic Pokémon mixed with old-school Final Fantasy.
You can catch these so-called Animon creatures in two different ways: you can either initiate a turn-based battle to weaken them, or just chuck Holokens—the game’s capsule-like capture devices—at them in the real-time overworld. Both ways are cool!
However, that overworld catching relies on a timing mini-game, and it’s designed in a way that felt a bit clunky and punishing to us. For some reason—and it could be totally us—the rhythm felt weirdly off. As a result, we whiffed a ton of catches. But when you do finally make a catch, all your frustrations melt away, and you feel like it was all somehow worth it.
Out in the field, we used our Animon’s abilities to break rocks or cross gaps. We stopped at fountains to craft and cook. When we needed a break, we hung out in a pocket dimension where we could drop furniture and customize a room just for our team. It breaks up the pacing nicely and gives off a very chill vibe. And then, combat happens.
Shared SP and Free Turns
Combat is brilliant.
You get standard 1v1 duels, but the 4v4 team battles are the true highlight. During these battles, you aren’t allowed to spam your heaviest attacks whenever you want. No, no. The game forces you to use a shared SP pool for all four active monsters. So, please don’t make the same initial mistakes we did, where we blew all our SP on one massive hit with our lead Animon and then stared pitifully at the rest of the team for the remainder of the turn. LumenTale: Memories of Trey is a game where you actually have to budget your moves.
There’s also a TP meter to keep track of.
Whenever you hit an enemy’s weakness, the meter fills up. Once it caps out, you get a free, zero-SP extra action. Yes, we thought the exact same thing: standard grinding is turned into a genuinely satisfying puzzle where you’re constantly trying to chain weaknesses together to trigger that free turn. You can’t spam it, but every time it happens, it’s glorious!
Gotta catch ’em all!
There are around 140 Animon spread across 13 elemental types. Plus, they have emotional “traits” you can activate for bonus effects at the cost of extra SP. The depth is absolutely there, so if you start playing this game and you fancy it, you’ll be set for a while!
Technical Hiccups and Menu Headaches
Not everything is as we would personally want it to be, especially the UI. To us, navigating the menus feels like a nightmare and is wildly frustrating. We weren’t even able to tell if a stat was physical or special during a battle, which occasionally threw a wrench into our strategy during tighter 4v4 matches.
The elemental weakness chart is also bizarrely flipped sideways and super hard to read, making us click through a dozen tabs just to switch between learning a move and adjusting a stat. There were a lot of bugs during our early time with it as well, but most seem to have been squashed by now.
LumenTale: Memories of Trey is a good game, especially if you enjoy gorgeous pixel art and classic monster-collecting RPG mechanics with a unique spin. We aren’t usually fans of this type of melting pot, and yet we enjoyed it immensely.
ID Card
- Developer: Beehive Studios
- Publisher: Team17
- Platforms: PC (Steam), Nintendo Switch
- Release Date: May 26, 2026
- Genre: Monster Collector RPG
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