Monster Rancher 1 & 2 DX Review — no need to dust off these CDs
Review Monster Rancher 1 and 2 DX
All the Pokémon craze has hit North America in 1999. I was 14 at the time, and being a fan of Pokémon in high school was the equivalent social from certain death. My brother was three years younger than me, and in 11 years he was at the heart of Pokemon target audience. He loved Game Boy games, collectible card game and, of course, the cartoon.
All I knew was on Pokemon through its objective, which was mainly this cartoon, and the first 150 Pokemon. Many Pokemon clones began to appear, and the two most important, in our home, were Digimon and Monster Rancher, mainly because they were both very good cartoon series. Because I have discovered the Shin Mega mi Tense series as Night for the PS2 in 2003 (above Pokémon nearly a decade in Japan), the two best captures video game monsters were available Jade Cocoon and Monster Rancher, unappreciated. Both for the original PlayStation. I do not even remember playing a Digimon video game. Again, play Pokémon on a Game Boy, in the hallway of my high school, was a shameful act, but play Jade Cocoon home was fine.
Monster Rancher had one of the best cartoons capture monsters on TV and one best games monsters catch on a home console. And this game was something unique: the monsters were not searched and captured, they were rather generated by CDs. Compact discs, for you younger readers (which read probably not do this, because you probably want video content) were plastic storage units like coasters we used to listen to music albums in the 1990s in one way or another, Team, who developed Monster Rancher, found a way to use individual data, seriously, each individual CD to generate a different monster.
Monster Mystique
I love monsters generation system of the mystique of Monster Rancher 1 & 2 DX, so I did not look how many hundreds of monsters were in the original game, but there were thousands and thousands Albums music on CD, so inevitably some CD would contain the same monsters. There were albums (15 about if my memory serves me) that contained rare monsters. I suppose that this information was published in some magazines or something like that (Internet was not as helpful in 1999), and my friend Brian, who had a copy of the original Monster Rancher, discovered that I had a copy of the soundtrack of the film Spawn. He was overjoyed, and I borrowed it and immediately procured a sort of evil squirrel.
In 2021, 25 years after the release of the original game, Monster Rancher (and Monster Rancher 2) come out on Switch and PC under the name Monster Rancher 1 & 2 DX. I’ll tell you what it looks like this game, for those who do not already know, and comment on its progress. But the real question I will answer in this article is the following: how Goa Team he operates this CD-based monsters generation system at a time when the switches and laptops do not even have more disk drives?
There is not much narrative in the game. You are a farmer who lives in a world where people dig stones that can be exchanged against the monsters inside them in temples. The goal monsters farmers is to raise their monsters to fight in tournaments and earn money.
The gameplay is to generate monsters (we’ll talk about soon), to raise these monsters and fight them. Raising monsters is a juggling work and rest. You have to feed them, give them different jobs and training that increase various statistics and lower, then ask your monster to fight against others in tournaments. The money from the participation in the tournament is used to buy food and better training. Rinse and repeat. It’s a fairly simple process, but it should be fun for those who like to relax in the simulations firm or are motivated by statistics of earnings.
The battle is a RPG style combat turn, where the counters for the percentage of shots and power have to be juggled. The timing of the attacks with a percentage of success is changing the key to success. If your monster loses the will to fight by acting too quickly, it becomes confused instead of executing commands. But really, at the end of the day, if your monster statistics are slightly higher than those of your opponent, he will win with little strategy. The fun of the game is not in the fight, but in the gain of statistics that allows the player to participate in top-ranked tournaments.
Spotify for Pokemon
Generic monsters can be chosen in a market game, but the real fun to play Monster Rancher 1 & 2 DX is to generate monsters sanctuary. Monster Rancher 1 & 2 DX has a database in the game probably 90% of all music albums ever created. There are search bars for the artist and album. The player must actually enter the group name and select an album, and this combo generates a monster! The monster that I used in my first part of the original Monster Rancher was a brown jelly generated by selecting the album Clayman In Flames. I was very impressed with the attention to monster missions for my monster Clayman looks like a man of clay. There were a few albums I’ve tried that were not there, however. The database contains a clause disclaimer indicating that the CD will not necessarily have the same monsters in the original game, which made sense when I could not find the soundtrack of Spawn. There were two other albums I tried I could not find: one was Ray of Light Madonna (because it was a golem rainbow sky powerful enough at the time) and the other was Sing the Sorrow AFI (because I love it), although all their other albums are in the database.
Monster Rancher 2 is very similar to Monster Rancher, but it starts with Ogre Battle style quiz that determines your workout style. The only other major difference is that there is a greater variety of monsters, as well as details in their visuals. Its inclusion is a feast for European fans of the franchise, because they have not got the original Monster Rancher, and Monster Rancher 2 has been labeled as such.
I like the graphics just been refined. I love the original visuals. It has a combination of Final Fantasy style backgrounds meandered, portraits of static and animated 3D models of hideous monsters. Monster models like FFI character models, probably will be a waste to some, but honestly, I really enjoyed the aesthetics. Even GMF opening like a PS1 quality video and presented a beautiful presentation of balance between aesthetics video 90s, but a modern clarity.
The problem with Monster Rancher today is that there’s really not much to do. Improvements in quality of life in Monster Rancher DX 1 & 2 are essentially all monsters’ storage capacity increases. A huge addition, for example, would have the opportunity to fight online monsters. Although the monsters look different, they act the same way, except their visual aesthetics. The starting statistics are low, but are obviously massively built and carved by the player over time. There are simply not enough diversity in the game to make more than a novelty. The discount, however, helps a lot to solve this problem.
The combination of rumor, publishing magazines and CD trade is what made special Monster Rancher games. It is difficult to recreate such feelings today. But Team Goa has done very well. The only problem is that there is not much content in the game, and no multiplayer capabilities, mileage is not going very far. If I have any advice to anyone trying to play this game, is to share this nostalgic story of how the game works and not simply look the statistics of the best monsters on the Internet. Play with friends, use your favorite albums and see what you get, because that is what makes Monster Rancher 1 & 2 single DX. Monster Rancher 1 & 2 DX is effective nostalgic novelty, but as monsters farming simulator is pretty meh.
Switch game code provided by the publisher
