Monster Rancher 1 & 2 DX

For it's time, this game was absolutely awesome and it's great to see the game playable again. Realistically, it's not aged well and there's been minimal effort put into this re-release, so I can't imagine it bringing in new players. The price is way too high for the low amount of effort that went into this release, many of the features don't work as intended. The game is still great fun though in my opinion, it's simplistic compared to most games these days but there aren't many games of it's type now to compete with. The controls are a little clunky and there isn't much info provided for the effects of choices, so there's a lot of trial and error if you aren't checking any guides. I think a remake would be amazing but I'm thankful we got this re-release so I could finally finish the game that I never could when I was a kid.

Currently going through the first game, while never having played the games before. This is a surprisingly deep Pokemon-adjacent game. Instead of catching and leveling up new mons, you can have one at a time while freezing older ones for combining or reviving later on. The loop in the first game goes something like this: work a bit (gain a bit of money while raising the monster's stats), rest (lowers fatigue), training (spending multiple weeks raising a stat by a lot), and battling (tournaments where your monster fights other monsters in a gauntlet. There are several hidden stats on your monster, with only a few being visible or trackable in the first game. Fatigue is usually signaled by your helper's advice and the monster's panting. There are happy and upset effects that positively or negatively affect your stance towards even or firm, which affect how effectively your monster completes work tasks. An even stance is how you almost never fail tasks. The most important stat is age, which can be decreased with safe management and giving it meat each month. When a monster gets too old, it will pass away, but like I mentioned before, you can freeze them and they won't die. The tournaments are what everything else builds up to. You have letter grades from E to S, with each letter getting harder and harder. Certain tournaments are "official", which promote you to the next letter grade if you win. Winning a tournament requires you to do better than every other monster. You don't have to win every match. You just have to have a better win loss ratio than every other competitor. The stat requirements for each tier go higher and higher, until you will hit walls and will have to work over and over again. Different monsters will have better min maxed statlines than what I started with, which was the dinosaur. Having the most optimal things to target imo are offense, dodge/defense, and accuracy. All rounder builds are possible, but take a lot longer to build, which eats into your mon's lifespan. Battles are real time, where you can move the monster left and right to both be in specific positions to use different attacks, and to avoid specific attacks of your opponent. On one hand, real time battles are much more engaging than nearly ever other monster catching/raising game, but at the same time can be frustrating due to the positioning combined with rng. I like it more than I dislike it. This game is great with an asterisk. One one hand, it's a deep and engaging monster game with a nice combo of simplicity and complication. On another hand, it has things you need to track that can be placed into a routine, but can also be lost track of. Someone playing completely blind might not know about lifespan at all, and will assume that they have all the time in the world with a specific monster, only for it to die suddenly. If you want something better than Pokemon with 3D graphics that isn't Palworld, this might be for you. If you want pure turn based with multiple party members and region roaming, look somewhere else.

Best game I ever had a pet die in. Cried for like 10 days. But try to beat a 500kg stone ♥♥♥♥.

Nostalgia overload. I played Monster Rancher 2 when I was a kid on PlayStation 1. I still remember playing it from morning to afternoon during weekends when my parents let us. I would train my monsters non-stop. Sometimes, as a kid, I didn't know they could vanish, but lesson learned. I picked Mochi as my main during that time, and now I am playing it again. This game is worth it. Very enjoyable, a bit repetitive, but you can see your progress, which I really love, and the progress isn't fast either.

Love these games. Hope we can get 3.

its time for your nuts oil.

my childhood game, it's so sad they `killed` this IP I was always prefer monster rancher than pokemon (digimon still way better, but I am not pokemon fan, so monster rancher is much superior than pokemon - in my opinion)