The Monster Breeder

On paper this seems like an incredible game, but in practice it's incredibly clunky and extremely time-consuming. Perhaps if this was marked as early access or cost only half as much as it currently does I may be more lenient on it, but what I experienced so far really didn't live up to my expectations. This is clearly a passionate project and I can see that a lot of thought went into many detailed aspects of the game, but there's also a lot about the game that I didn't really sign up for, such as hiring characters, buying and sorting equipment and crafting. I wanted something like Impossible Creatures but with turn-based combat and more freedom and depth, but this feels like something entirely different, and maybe that's a personal issue.

I have over 170 hours in the game. Its a great game. Love it. Why am I leaving a thumbs down? Everytime the Dev updates the game, you lose your save file. I have meticulously clawed (no pun intended) my way close to the top, just starting to breed powerful monsters, just starting to reap the sweet fruits of my labor, only to have it all wiped clean. Twice. Done wasting my time and happy to change my review if the Dev announces post-update save compatibility. Till then, Goodbye Monster Breeder, I hope to finish you one day. Edit: The dev was super quick in immediately working on the issue. It has been resolved and all is well. I will now strongly recommend this game. I was particularly impressed with how dedicated this dev seems to be, seemingly working non-stop to fix the problem after I reported it.

Don't bother leveling your monsters too high, as soon as i got to about lvl 15 they where crippled whenever they fight. nevermind that i manual battled and they didn't take any dmg, apparently you are not allowed to have favourites. Actually ruined this game for me, sad i can't refund.

I love this game. It has its flaws, but the game is unique and addictive enough that I overlook them. Pros: 1. Addictive gameplay loop (Buy / breed monsters, send them to battle, level them up, crossbreed for the best traits.) You'll dump plenty of hours into this game to make it worth the cost. 2. While it uses skinner box techniques for the addiction aspect, it also frequently has terrain you can use to your advantage to require some amount of skill. 3. Helpful if small community. 4. Novel game idea, which is why you'll overlook all the flaws. You're not going to find something like this elsewhere. 5. Different classes / difficulties for more replay-ability. 6. Bug free as far as I can tell. Cons: 1. User interface is the worst I've ever seen, no joke. I tried the demo and quit before a single turn because it was so unintuitive. Fortunately, my brother plays and talked me into suffering through it. 2. You'll get carpal tunnel playing this game. I'm not kidding. The user interface is so bad, there's tons and tons of clicking. It's sad because a few simple QoL tweaks would solve this. 2. The camera positioning is beyond horrible. If you get motion sick, you'll often have to close your eyes on the enemies turn if you're in a cavern because the camera will spin around a lot to ensure that you get the worst possible angle rather than simply translating the camera while maintaining the POV. I have never seen camera control this bad in any game. 3rd person 3D has never made anyone motion sick... until now haha. I guess the dev wins that distinction. 3. Graphics are bad, but not horrible. Think Kenshi. 4. Potion descriptions are detailed when you buy them, but not always when they're in your inventory, so you'll often need to remember what things like "Resilience" do, or you'll need to search the community board. 5. You have to play a long time before you get into the crossbreeding part of the game. You'll need upgraded tiers of the breeding building to have monsters that live for more any length of time otherwise. This gives you something to stretch for, but it also means that you'll spend more time doing human gladiator matches and regular breeding for a while. This gives you a chance to learn the breeding mechanics at a simple level first though, so I don't know that I'd consider it a huge con.

このゲームは私の知る限りで、とても素晴らしいキメラ育成シミュ要素を持っています。 複数の生物を交配させて生まれるのは、ランダムに部位を受け継いだキメラです。 交配では特性を受け継ぎ、より恐ろしいモンスターを作ることができます。 ――合成された生物―― このゲームの特徴的なキメラ育成の要素は ・違う生物同士の交配（これによって能力だけではなく、"見た目"もランダムに引き継ぎます。もっと恐ろしいモンスターを作りたい場合は、その特徴を持った生物を手に入れる必要があります。 ・切除と移植（キメラ技術を上げ切っていないためまだやってません。確認できる要素では能力値的なボーナスなどはあります。 ・ゲームタイトルイラストの違う部位をそれぞれおもったキメラは「誇張表現化」と思っていましたがちがいました。前足はアレ、後ろ脚はコレと違う部位を持ってたりしてワクワクします。 ――剣闘士―― そしてこれらで作り上げたペットモンスターを基本ゲームシステムである『グラディエーターシミュ』で遊べます。 自分のお手製のキメラモンスターが熟練の剣闘士に倒されたり、または簡単に倒したりするのはとても興奮できます。 そして、これらの剣闘士要素は『簡易戦闘（勝利や敗北が予測されている。ただしモンスターが負傷や死亡したりはする。』によって時間がない方でも楽しめます。 戦闘がスキップできないのはランダムイベントや探索した場所での戦闘くらいです。 このゲームはとてもオススメです。 根幹のゲームシステムだけでいえば、その時点で私にって神ゲーでした。

So, looking at the reviews, most of them are prior to the combat adjustment, so I'm making mine with that in mind. I have to say, first and foremost, the update really needs to just adjust the stats in the game - or at least give you some kind of big, obvious warning. If you didn't see the update, didn't play the game before, etc, you'd never know; the option is hidden, well, in the options, and is on by default. This is a problem because according to the announcement about it, the game looks at the higher of two skills - skills that you might, otherwise, be intrinsically inclined to raise both of for a defensive character (dodge and parry). This is quite a waste of training and just seems like ... a simple oversight? I don't know. That being said, it doesn't surprise me; the game is not, well, good at explaining or introducing its systems. Do you like old, convoluted games that require your to RTFM and also go see what other people have said about it just to make sure you're not missing anything? This is one of those games. And the thing is, I like those games. So keep that in mind when reading my review. And what's here is pretty good, but it's also very jank. I don't know - I played Monsterseed on PSX so I'm definitely one of those people who have a very, very high tolerance for jank. Examples of what I mean: The moment you start out, the game throws a quest at you. You have enough money to finish this quest without combat, and you realistically probably should go that route, but it's VERY unclear that you need to just exit out of the quest text and wait a turn to be able to get out of combat but complete it easily. There's one option on the quest text (attack) and it could have been very easy to add a secondary, clearer option ("Wait to buy the eggs") or something to make it clearer. Alchemy is very important, but it's not actually clear what the best path to leveling your alchemist is. Do you just make the easiest potions over and over? Do you make the hardest ones? Which ones, actually, are the 'hardest' ones? Are poisons better than potions? Do apprentices hinder the alchemist's growth? Who knows? Not me! Blacksmithing feels a little ... out of place? You can get Good gear from tournaments that sometimes are even easy enough for 4 spiked rats to win. Are there better gears? Should you invest in making it? Bet you'd love to know the answers, but none for you. Speaking of the NPCs, getting 'good' ones is really ... really annoying. Don't bother with low INT ones - they're functionally useless, and will never have a high enough base skill to actually make what you want, so why do they exist? They're literally nothing but a trap for newbies - and junk to take up the rolls for things you might actually want. You can't just go and find someone, you can't pay money to actively recruit... you're just stuck waiting, forever. And if you're in a region where the starting text says something isn't as good - haha. Brother, you listen to that, because I've got a file where my alchemist has gained some 40 skill points and I don't even *have* a blacksmith yet. You want an intelligence over 25? Screw you, no blacksmiths for you. There's also something to be said that isn't jank per se but personal taste: I *hate* that you have no option to not use slaves. I don't want to. I don't like it. I should be allowed to hire more apprentices or just general workers and pay them. If you know what you're doing it's easy enough to make money to do so, but no - if I want maximum efficiency, if I want to fill up those slots? I can't hire a second alchemist or a couple more apprentices. I HAVE to buy slaves, and that just sits wrong with me. Upgrades to your facilities aren't really clearly marked as such; books and runestones and scrolls are reusable, but you wouldn't really ... know that? And it's not super intuitive, since other things (ingredients and potions and foods) are one time uses. But they are! Combat is kinda funny. The update is great, comparatively; I do enjoy knowing I'm going to hit something and it's not gonna be a 2% heck-fest for the next half hour. However, maps are set up oddly in many instances (with one entrance in the enemy's favor) and the enemy will not move until you're within their range; while okay, that's fine for the rogue druids or whatever, it is kind of silly for a bunch of feral panthers, you know? It feels bad. At least the update did make my human characters feel better - I can actually hit things, and depending on the current level of my monsters, they actually can do significantly more damage. I know they'll age out eventually, but still. Nice. It gets a thumbs up. The UI is uh. It's something. It feels like something out of the early 2000s, maybe older. It's messy, unintuitive, requires too many clicks... Like, in order to buy something, you click it, then you click another box and input your number, then click again to put it into your cart. Then you keep doing that until you're done, then you click buy. Except all of these buttons are spread across the whole screen, and it just feels like it's fighting you. There's a reason why shopping sites have little cart icons and let you adjust values while you're putting things IN the cart, you know? Combat controls are ... weird too. You move the camera with the LMB, but you also LMB to select a character. If you LMB anywhere after selecting, you immediately unselect ... Right click is how you action. It feels messy? I'm constantly unselecting. Maybe that's just a me thing. If you're someone who enjoys your monsters and doesn't want to view them as fodder - this game isn't for you. Go play Monster Rancher 2 DX. All your monsters are fodder. You have no choice - even if you have a max lifespan, the stupid damage capacity will get you. Having a lifetime damage cap does supply another stat to raise, I guess, sure, but I don't like it. I don't even have a good ... I don't know, critique for it - I just Think It's Bad. Your monster is already limited in usefulness if it has low stats, and it's limited in time by lifespan. Now you gotta get punished for -checks notes- using it? But, all that being said-- I still want to like this game? It's jank. It's weird. It *feels* far older than it actually is. But the monsters are weird little goobers, and I appreciate the work the dev has done to make them 'mush' appropriately. I think the breeding system is interesting - using organs to improve certain traits at the expense of lifespan, then bringing lifespan back up,... it's satisfying! I wouldn't recommend you play with the inbreeding penalty (because like, they're magical abominations, it makes no sense, but also mechanically it's just a waste of time to have to breed out another gen or two or whatever it is to ... inevitably back breed into your main line). I think the combat change made the battles more fun and less frustrating. And I like seeing number go up. Brain go brrrr. It's an excellent concept. There's still a ton here to mess around with and figure out. I like it. I respect what the dev has accomplished here. I also wish that I didn't have to rate down because of the stupid slavery, but I do. Even though, at best I'd give it a maybe.

Good game, really fun. The only thing that kills the joy is user interface. In a late game, having a litter of 15 creatures requires setting the growth plan for every single one of them, and you loose their stat ranges and have to set up temperature/humidity for every single one of them. Ends up in hundred clicks easily. Feels like work.

Let me tell you. The UI is horrid, the worst I've ever seen but I suffered through and got used to it. The game is superb, I live for the creatures you can breed the design is freakish and I said "Eww" or "WTF" outloud numerous times. The Design especially shines on insect hybrids

Amazing unique game, an absolute undiscovered jewel, it has so many mechanics under the hood your head will spin, combat has layers of strategy to it, a robust fear mechanic that can wipe you if you ignore it, or help you win some wicked fights if you bring the right creatures/weapons, your pets have a finite amount of hits they can take spread across their entire career, it will slowly go down and result in injure when that threshold is finally broken, agility play a massive role in your ability to avoid damage and extend that bar, but you also have to breed damaging stats because a shorter fight also saves on the bar, I have never played a game quite like this, and once you get into the meat of it you will find a deep game with quite a lot of replayability. The solo developer is still adjusting and tuning the game, and is trying to cater to ideas and wishes from his gamers. A gem of an indie game :)

I "like" it in the same way that a drug user "likes" their drug of choice. It's an effective game loop, but fails to offer real satisfaction. Just missing days, and a feeling of shame. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need a fix.