It’s kind of hard to believe that it’s been twenty-four years since the initial release of Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee; a game I have very fond memories of renting from Blockbuster any chance I got and putting hours into. It’s 2026, and with a new Godzilla film on the horizon, we have a remake of a Godzilla game dropping that same week. Godzilla fans have never eaten so good.
Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee Remastered is exactly what you want from a Godzilla game: you get to be the big man himself and beat up other giant monsters in a city you can tear apart. It’s a simple game that years later still puts a big smile on my face as I rip a building off the ground to chuck across the map at Rodan, annoyingly flying through the air. This remake stays pretty faithful to the original, with most of the foundations entirely untouched while still adding some nice updates.
As a 3D brawler, the game is pretty straightforward: pick a monster, pick a mode, and go town smashing. Solo has three modes to play with: Adventure, Destruction, and Survival. Adventure will see you facing off against a variety of monsters, all culminating in a final bout with MechaGodzilla (this time replaced with the original Mecha). Survival throws you against multiple waves of monsters, and you try to survive wave after wave till you’re inevitably beaten. Finally, Destruction lets you gleefully smash up a city for a high score. The core package is pretty intact from the original release, which is nice to see, as it didn’t really need much changing.
New with this release, however, is the ability to level up each character. Everyone has a variety of stats, some of which are represented by icons that aren’t entirely clear, but honestly we’re just here to smash shit. A monster’s level really only matters when you play the harder versions of Adventure mode, which feature stronger opponents. Though I will say, the obtuseness of the level system is a bit confusing at times. For example, every monster has a Rage Attack it can do, but it’s locked for every character initially, and it’s not clear what you need to do to unlock it. I have it unlocked for Gigan, for example, but I’ve played Kiryu significantly more than him, and it’s still locked on Kiryu (who, by the way, has thankfully replaced MechaGodzilla 2). Thankfully none of this matters in co-op versus mode, since it’s unlocked by default and levels don’t matter; it’s just a weird quirk of solo mode.
The game is still an absolute blast to play through, and I had forgotten how much depth the combat could have. Everyone plays more or less the same, but there are slight enough differences that you’ll eventually settle on your favorites. Gigan, for example, has a really cool teleport maneuver that can make him a tricky opponent to go up against, and King Ghidorah can fly up into the air, making some attacks miss him entirely. The game also looks gorgeous on modern hardware, with great destruction effects as you smash apart the city you’re fighting in.
All of this is really cool, but the fun really stops when it’s time to unlock most of the game’s content. To unlock new characters or maps, you have to go through multiple steps: first you need to fulfill a gameplay requirement like finishing the campaign with a certain amount of characters, or winning a match on a map five times; then you unlock the “research” for that item, which then needs to be heavily grinded for.
For example, to unlock Rodan, you need to first unlock 8 different map arenas, and then once you do that you’ll unlock the “Supersonic Flight” research that will require you to grind 18k XP to then unlock Rodan. To make matters worse, you can only focus on one research item at a time, and some characters like Orga require a staggering 25k XP to unlock. This turns unlocking everyone into a massive chore when I should be enjoying the game.
Just for reference, I’ve put maybe 15 or 20 hours into the game and am still missing almost half the roster. I’ve played through Adventure mode with multiple characters (twice with some), leveled up most I them a good bit, done countless waves in Survival mode with multiple characters, and played a good amount of Destruction. The fact that I’ve done all this and still haven’t gotten Rodan, original MechaGodzilla, Mecha King Ghidorah, Destoroyah, and Orga is a bit ridiculous.
The original game was super simple: beat the game with a certain character to unlock another. If you wanted King Ghidorah, you’d have to beat the game with Megalon. Or if you wanted Rodan, you’d have to beat the game with Gigan. Effortlessly to the point. This new unlock system feels like the developers were worried about playtime longevity and came up with this way to artificially force players to play more. For a game that lives very much in the “pick up and play” style, it’s kind of working against itself.
Thankfully, hidden in the settings is “Tournament Mode”, which, when flipped on, allows you to have every character and map unlocked, but locks you to local Versus mode and disables gaining research XP. You’ll still have to spend hours grinding to play as characters in solo mode, but thankfully it means you can easily access all the characters if you want to have a friend over or bring the game to someone’s house.
Good
The Final Word
Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee Remastered is a fantastic remake, but it’s unfortunately held back by an unlock system that demands too much of your time.
