Well, there are three major parts to MR gameplay - the training, the battling, and the exploring. I haven't stayed up until the middle of the night playing a game in a while. Why even most hardcore Monster Rancher fans haven't played this game is beyond me - it's the best game in the series by a gigantic margin. And there are 512 monsters, which is twice as many as MR2 - including a number of old fan favorites that weren't included in MR3 or MR4. No scratched discs, no broken drives, and it takes a lot less time to boot. That would be the biggest improvement for me, except for one more - since it's the GBA, instead of using CDs to produce new monsters, you enter code words. There's more - instead of long, drawn-out and boring animations for errantries in order to learn new skills, there's a single fight with a coach monster, after which you get a hefty stat gain and the new attack move.

And it couldn't possibly be simpler than how it is here. Then you can either combine two of them together to produce a new creature, as you could in the previous games, or you can use them as training coaches for a new monster - the stronger they were in their prime, the better their coaching. Instead of having your monsters die, once they've outlived their fighting careers they just stop getting stat gains and are no longer allowed into battle. Instead of blocky, ugly PS-launch-era models, each monster has a beautifully animated 2D sprite.

But the gameplay itself became so complicated and involved, so menu-heavy, and so slow that I no longer found it playable. MR4 provided an excellent visual update while trying to expand the gameplay options, and it did that beautifully.

There were graphical improvements, yes, and significant ones, but the J-pop atmosphere of MR3 felt very strange, and the game was way too easy. Along with FFVII, MR1 and MR2 are the three games that I played until they were absolutely scratched to hell and unplayable.īut I wasn't too thrilled with the PS2 installments. The charm and personality of the beasts you raised made the insanely repetitive and mindless gameplay worthwhile - with every battle, every exploration, that game had almost as much adventurous spirit and emotional depth as a good RPG. I put hundreds upon hundreds, maybe thousands, of hours into them. I adored the Monster Rancher games back in the Playstation days.

Monster rancher games ranked