I was checking on my dusty PS games and found this remarkable gem, played my saved files and was reminded why this game is still one of my all-time favorites. Breeding monsters, training them and sending them to battle for glory and honor have never been this awesome.
So, any players out there? Also, share your favorite monsters and your strongest ones. :happy:
Raiga of the wind.
Loved this game and spent countless hours on it (and also on parts 4 nad 5). Also hated it because the limited lifespans and limited ammount of stats carrying over and learning the moves randomly and those randomly breeding forward and well, it was pretty much impossible to raise anything worthwhile.
Played the game for at LEAST a hundred hours over a year or two… but it was a terrible broken game. Eventually beat it with a phoenix, sheerly due to it having a long enough life span to train it to S class proper.
Did you go on expeditions? You can extend a monster's lifespan for about 1-3 years using Silver and Golden Peaches you can find in these expeditions. Personally, I think the limited lifespan adds a certain charm and challenge to the game.
My strongest was a Dryad (Pixie and Mock) that lived for 8+ years. I trained a Mock (the one you obtain as a secret monster, not from a cd) and when it almost reached its end (it took about 7+ years for it to reach its peak in life, and that's without feeding him peaches - though I guess that's a given since I later found out that Mocks are among the longest living monsters), I combined it with another monster (I forgot which one) that had been likewise trained greatly. The result was a Dryad with remarkable starting Speed, Int, and Skill of about 300-400 each. The rest of the stats were shit, though. XD
I also had a powerhouse Undine, but that one never reached the final tournament due to its rather short lifespan of 4+ years.
Of course I went on expeditions. I played the game for years. Didn't change the fact that its stat pool and breeding sucked and you basically had to choose 2 attributes and forget about anything else being any good.
And drills destroying one stat to raise another really sucked.
Yeah, that aspect sucked, but made the game even more of a challenge for me. And those high-level drills, ugh. :getlost:
Anyway, were you able to unlock all the secret monsters? I was able to unlock every monster except Bajarl and Wracky which I cheated through a Gameshark.
I was particularly obsessed with raising a powerhouse Joker but goddamn, his lifespan sucks major ass. Even with peaches I can only raise one for barely three years, wtf. One thing I liked about him is that you'd only need to train Power and Skill and a little more effort on Int and you'll be sweeping tourneys effortlessly. Ending battles with a swift Death Final right at the start was uber sweet.
I loved this game, I finally got the Pheinox at one point. Still want Muu though.
God I love Monster Rancher 2. One of my all-time favorites. After Pokemon came out I would play anything that had RPG / monster raising elements (MonsterSeed and Jade Cocoon being some other examples.) Monster Rancher 1 was good but 2 blows it out of the water.
Yeah, the battle system's clunky, and a lot of the game's counter-intuitive, but damn was it a deep game, and satisfying too. Even my dad was into it, I could never beat his strongest monsters - one of which was a goddamn Ducken which repeatedly kicked my Phoenix's ass.
The new DS game is supposed to be a lot like Monster Rancher 2 so I'm thinking about trying it out. All of the games since MR2 (epecially 3, eugh) have been pretty crappy.
And the less said about the anime the better.
@Superbear:
I loved this game, I finally got the Pheinox at one point. Still want Muu though.
Muu is actually impossible to get stateside without a cheating device. He was tied into a Japanese cd, and when the codes were redone for america, there was no particular soundtrack or game given to unlock his unique data. There were rumors that one particular soundtrack unlocked him, but no one ever verified it.
Hey…I like the anime. And the real anime ending, the one with Genki thinking everything was a dream and then seeing his disc was gone, was totally awesome. I really loved that ending....then it continued.
That's actually how BOTH seasons ended. The second time around was pretty much the same.. but the American version cut the sad part off of that, as well and just rolled into the credits, leaving it on the note that Genki was uhm… still in the world with all his friends alive, I guess.
The new DS game is supposed to be a lot like Monster Rancher 2 so I'm thinking about trying it out. All of the games since MR2 (epecially 3, eugh) have been pretty crappy.
4 and 5 let you train multiple critters at once, which was so, so, SOOO incredibly useful. And they stopped dying after reaching their peak, they just… didn't gain more stats, also good. Unfortunatley, you got locked into raising them for a certain single stat for multiple generations of the same critter and that got tedious. They also made the battle system better, trimming it down to 3 actions instead of 4, and letting you pick and choose the abilties you wanted instead of bluntly overwriting them.
Part 5 finally fixed the breeding system so that stats would carry in a meaningful way, but actually made it TOO easy, each gen was legitly stronger than the last and the stats became insane pretty easily... after raising a couple generations.
The biggest problem with the franchise is, unlike say Pokemon, they didn't find a method that worked and then keep improving on it... they started from scratch practically every time and got into all sorts of wonkiness, never really building upt o a fantastic game, and instead just getting a lot of mediocre ones.
It really is interesting the MR 2 seems to be the favorite here.
@robbybedfart:
Muu is actually impossible to get stateside without a cheating device. He was tied into a Japanese cd, and when the codes were redone for america, there was no particular soundtrack or game given to unlock his unique data. There were rumors that one particular soundtrack unlocked him, but no one ever verified it.
So you can't use "Mellow Gold (Beck)" to unlock Moo on the U.S version?
@Superbear:
So you can't use "Mellow Gold (Beck)" to unlock Moo on the U.S version?
That might be the rumored cd, its been too long since I checked. Apparently it was either made up, or a limited rare print run verson of the cd. Some people claim to have bought 10 different copies of the cd, and it failed to deliver.
Dances with Wolves doesn't have the desired effect either, (A white Tiger) if its not the very first version of the CD, circa when the game came out.
