Well that took way too long to come out. The first Monster Rancher DS game came out in japan in 2007, and a second one came out in 2008. On the american side of the world, nothing. Surprisingly, 2 years later, it was announced for the US. Not the first game that came out in japan, but the second one, so one of them was skipped (which is probably a good thing).

After the announcement, it was said to come out in March… and then it was delayed a month, and then it was delayed 2 months, and then it was delayed another month, just to be delayed another 2 weeks. Damn! I have no idea why it was delayed so much… and it did change publishers on the way which is pretty weird. But finally the wait is over and we can play the game!

Monster Rancher isn’t a series I played a lot of… I played Monster Rancher Advance a bit, and Monster Rancher Advance 2 a LOT, but I haven’t played any of the PS1/PS2 versions of the series, so I missed the novelty of summoning monsters using any disc you could find in your home. But still, I loved playing the GBA games in the series, they remain as my most played games on the system.

So… read on and see if the huge amount of wait was worth it!

Developer: Cing
Publisher: UFO Interactive
Date of Release: August 3rd 2010
Platforms: Nintendo DS

Genre: Monster-Raising Simulator
Rated E for Everyone

Presentation/Translation
Well there is some big improvements in regards to the presentation compared to the other Monster Rancher games I played… on the GBA. I can’t really compare to the PS1/2 games, but I can say that this game has a much better presentation than the GBA games. IN the GBA game, a monster with a sub-species was just a variety of color palette swaps. In this one, like in the Playstation games, the monsters change shape and such depending on their sub-species. For example, any type of monster that has Pixie as a sub-breed get hair and wings, having a dragon sub-breed gives the monster scales and a more ferocious dragon-like face, etc. This is a very nice feature, much better than just different colors. The rest of the game looks par for the course. The very few environments look good, the game isn’t very colorful other than a few things (monsters and certain elements in menus are colorful but that’s it), and the big anime-style sprites are well drawn. It’s not a great-looking game other than the monster designs, but it’s not too bad looking.

The sounds are also pretty basic stuff. A few different “screams” for each monster types, lame hit sounds when your attacks hit in battle, and menu sounds. Some attacks sound good, but it’s very basic. Nothing more to say really.

The game doesn’t have much of a story. I mean, there’s something about trying to find a Star Rock that can grant any wish… but that’s fairly unimportant. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t any text. And, despite the really long time it took to have it published here, there’s still translation errors. For example, 2 of the “happy birthday” songs, one by Colt (AKA the assistant from Monster Rancher Advance 2) and one by Cleo, have completely messed up sentence structure, and Colt’s even has a whole text box with just 2 question marks and the current monster’s name, rather than lyrics… Kinda lazy work there.

Gameplay
People will wrongly mistake this game for a Pokemon rip-off. That couldn’t be much further from the truth. Rather than a standard RPG with a unique building system like in Pokemon where the goal is to collect a lot of those monsters (though the goals differ if you’re crazy and play in tournaments), Monster Rancher is more of a simulator experience than an RPG experience. The monster collecting is a very secondary element of the game. Here, the goal is to train monsters, one by one, and try to get them as high in the rankings as possible before it gets old and dies (or gets frozen, which is the better option since a frozen monster can be used for combinations). Then try again with more monsters until you finally conquer the ranks from E to SSS.

Training
Training a monster is rather simple. Each year is separated in months, which are separated in 4 weeks each. Every week, you have a few actions you can do in your Ranch. You can choose one of 10 trainings, each which affect either a single stat, or that raise 2 stats and lower a third one. Monsters can fail trainings, complete them normal, complete them exceedingly well (giving a better stat boost) or cheat to complete them (like using a ladder to climb a mountain). If trainings go well or badly, you can praise or scold your monster, which can change his attitude towards you. And training increases fatigue and stress levels. You can also make your monster rest to lower its fatigue and stress levels. Too high fatigue or stress makes for an unhappy and ineffective monster. You can also sign up for battles (which I’ll explain later) and give the monster items, which can lower fatigue/stress, increase stats and various other effects.

There are various stats to increase. Power boosts your physical attack strength. Intelligence boosts “mental” attack strength. Skill increases accuracy. Speed increases evasion. Defense makes you more resistant to attacks. Life is just HP, though it also makes you last longer on Errantries and Drills. Each of those are essential in battle.

At the beginning of each month, you can give food to your monster. Each food type has various properties. Low and high calorie, good against stress/fatigue and various other things. And each monster has a type of food it likes or dislikes. Feeding a monster properly is a big part of making a good monster. Making it too fat isn’t good, but making it too skinny is just as bad.

Outside of the ranch, there are a few things you can do. You can go to the Academy to make new monsters, either by drawing images, talking into the DS’ microphone or, once you unlock new monster breeds, by writing words (some monsters can only be made if you have a big enough ranch). You can go to the Lab to freeze monsters (which you should always do when the monster you’re training is getting too old… don’t worry, the game notifies you), unfreeze monsters and, more importantly, combine frozen monsters to make stronger monsters. Combining monsters is highly important, as it is basically the only way to get monsters strong enough to get further than S grade. The market sells various items which can be useful. The Guide is probably the most important in regards to training monsters though, as this is where you can do Drills (as well as Errantry or fighting Wild Monsters).

Drills bring you to a board game type of thing. Before going there, you choose which “area” you’ll be doing the drill at, which determines what stats you’ll be training (any stat+life). You roll a dice, move your monster, and the space you land on determines what happens to your monster. Some tiles raise your monster’s stats, others slightly reduce the stats. Others raise or lower your number of remaining dice rolls. The red tiles make you fight a wild monster, which raises your stats if you win, and takes away one die roll if you lose.

Errantry is where you go to an area of the world to explore, by directing your monster in the environment (using the touch screen). You can find items, which is good, but Errantry are massively useful for one thing: in Errantries, you actually find items required to create/unlock new breeds of monsters. This gives items that are used while combining monsters, (and then let you make those monsters using magic words in the Academy) so using strong monsters in the combination is pretty important.

Battle
The battle system is actually quite simple. You have this “side-scrolling” field, where you can move your monster left and right. Pressing up and down changes the current moveset, as you can equip 2 movesets on your monster. Pressing A launches an attack. Which attack is used is determined by how far away you are from the enemy. Each moveset has 3 slots for attack: one for long-range, one for medium-range and one for close-range. If you have a slot where you don’t have an attack equipped, you get a “Defense Panel”. When you’re on that panel, you get increased speed and slightly increased Guts recovery rate.

Before using an attack, you see the accuracy of the attack in percentage, determined by the attack’s own accuracy stat (called Skill rate), your Skill stat, and your enemy’s Speed stat. The other number you have to worry about in battle is the Guts count. Each attack has an amount of Guts that is required to use the attack. Guts goes up slowly in the course of the battle, so you have to try managing your Guts count as well as possible to not leave yourself defenseless for too long. Some attacks can lower Guts when they hit so you have to be careful for those.

I think one problem with the battle system is the fact that it’s very slow at first. You only start with a few attacks, sometimes even just one, and your stats are so low that your accuracy is terrible, so battles usually last until the timer ends instead of with a KO. But, when your monster starts being strong, the battles become a lot more fun. But, otherwise, it’s a very simple battle system, and it’s not really the main point of the game, it’s just a “here’s the result of your training” sort of thing. And it also IS training, as you get random stat boosts wether you win or lose a tournament so there’s always incentive to fight in tournaments (other than money/items).

And, each few months, an “official” tournament happens, where you can register your monster to fight in and get to a higher grade. The higher your grade, the more things you can do (more drills and errantries, for example, but there’s more) and you get access to tougher tournaments.

Depth
I only talked about the basics of training and battle, but that’s because my review would be WAY too long if I ended up talking about everything. Basically, if you want to go really crazy with the game, there’s tons of things to do. You have to find the best way to train your monsters while expanding their lifespan as well as you can. People found ways to train monsters without having them rest ever (using items in a certain sequence), or ways to make very balanced and relatively high stats at relatively young ages. While the game’s basic gameplay is rather simple, it has a lot of depth. I didn’t even mention that there’s ways to get stats higher than the “maximum” of 999, or different ways of combining monsters. Or that monsters can negatively react to you if you don’t train them properly, like not listening to you at all, or even running away from the ranch. There’s so much I could mention, and that’s one of the great parts of the game.

If you’re really looking for something deep to dig your teeth into, definitely check this one out.

Overall
I really like this game. It’s tons of fun, figuring out the best ways to train monsters while keeping their lifespan high is actually pretty challenging and then the actual fights are also pretty challenging. Because I was pretty good at Monster Rancher Advance 2, I sort of under-estimated this game, and, when I got to S grade the first time, I got my ass kicked, despite thinking my monster would be more than powerful enough. And then I learn that it gets even harder? Damn. Unless you’re a master at the game, getting to the end will take quite some time.

One thing that annoys me is how short monsters live. Despite me trying my best not to over-stress a monster and just being super nice with it, without spoiling it of course, and always acting fast when it got weight problems, I’ve never had one lasting 3 years or more, despite seeing people having their monsters living up to 5 years. Which is pretty pathetic when you last 1500 years at least(don’t know which year you can actually reach, as I’m nowhere near that far), without anyone in the story ever aging.

I highly suggest at least trying this game. It’s not something everyone will get into, but, if you do, you’ll be addicted to it for a long time. There’s a lot to do, and a lot of ways to do it. While I was quite annoyed at how long it took for it to come out, and how much delay it got after being announced for an American release, I am quite satisfied with what we got.

Pros and Cons
Pros
- Monsters change shape altogether depending on their sub-breed
- Breeding monsters, figuring out the best way to train them as good as possible while letting them live long, is really fun and challenging
- There’s a lot of depth if you look into it enough
- Incredibly addictive
- Touch screen controls are only an option, so you can control most of the game with the D-pad and buttons if you want to

Cons
- Some might find the battle system a bit too slow (though that becomes a moot point when you get strong enough)
- Slightly repetitive

The Save Factor
The game costs 30$, and, considering the potential depth of the game, it’s more than worth the price. But, if you’re only planning on checking it out, or aren’t too sure about it, the soft spot would be 20$.

jobocan ds, Games, Handheld, Review