A "Talisman-like" game, which target is to get all the six artifacts which are spread out "outdoors" (in the middle of the game board). Meanwhile becomes the characters better on fighting and defending themselves against monsters, guardians and opponents.
You play two different fractions and with more than two you play co-operative. According to the rules one player should be an "administrator" if you are 3 or 5 players! Probably it’s best to play with 2 players.
The combat system is pretty complicated, with a lot of dice rolls.
There’s an expansion (expert game) with some more monster quest cards, money tokens, but most important character dial-boards with all statistics about the characters, so you don’t need to use paper and pen for this.