In DX they now attack at any time, provided that they have enough guts for the cost of an attack, and can often make them feel more aggressive overall. Previously, the AI that controlled monsters would not normally attack if their guts level was below 45. The new Magic Bananas can now be worked into a very efficient training routine that prevents a loss of lifespan that normally occurs if too much fatigue or stress is accumulated. In DX, the Magic Bananas have been changed to lower stress and fatigue levels of a monster instead. In the original game, it was possible to exploit Magic Bananas to dramatically extend the lifespan of a monster to unintended lengths. Errantry no longer reduces the lifespan of your monster by an unintendedly large amount.īugs related to the progression of time, such as the one that could prevent you from obtaining the “Mysterious Seeds” needed to obtain a Mock have now been fixed. Monsters that were previously unable to learn certain techniques can do so now. The DX port of these games has brought along with it some bug fixes, small changes, and new features. I once had an entire family of Golems that started their lives being generated from a fully trained Golem in Monster Rancher 1. I am glad to see that the first game comes along for the ride with the DX release, but unless you really are a die hard fan of the first game I suspect the majority of your time will be spent in the sequel.įor me, the main reason I have ever spent any length of time in the first game was when I wanted to train a monster in it and then use the save data from that to generate a monster in the sequel.Ī portion of the stats gained in the first game will carry over, and can make for an incredibly solid starting monster when doing so. Music, sound effects, game mechanics, monster variety, monster balancing, and everything else you can think to name were unquestioningly improved in the sequel. In particular, the graphics are massively improved, right down to the new fully rendered 3D environments for the ranch and the training sequences (though I will admit the sprite animations in the first game are pretty adorable.) Monster Rancher 1‘s 2D backgrounds leave a lot to be desired. One thing to note for anyone in Europe with little to no familiarity with the series, Monster Rancher 1 was never released in your region, instead Monster Rancher 2 was released as just “ Monster Rancher.” It wasn’t a huge loss in my opinion, as Monster Rancher 2 really does eclipse the first game in every conceivable way.
Now, Koei Tecmo is bringing it back to some degree, by porting Monster Rancher 1 and 2 to smartphones, Nintendo Switch, and PC on Steam. The franchise continued on for a while on various other systems, but has been dormant for the last decade or so. It’s taken a very long time for the community to piece together an accurate picture of exactly how every system works, and how best to manage them. Training style, monster loyalty, stats, behavior, form, likes, dislikes, nature, techniques, training, fighting, so on and so forth.Įvery system has the exact details of its function hidden away from you, and they all inevitably interact with each other along the way.
Not only do you have to uncover the mystery of how to obtain every rare monster, but you have to figure out how nearly every system in the entire game works too.
That is the first phase of Monster Rancher addiction, and it only gets stronger from there. Platforms: Mobile, Nintendo Switch, Steam Hours spent testing stacks of CDs was filled with disappointment at being told that I’m not allowed to use the rare monster locked inside the disc, but that also bolstered my determination to work towards meeting the requirements. Monsters like these are often initially restricted from use until the player has used common monsters to progress a certain amount into the game.
For example, my friend had an HP printer driver CD that would generate a Phoenix. That included other PlayStation games, PC games, and everything else.
Beyond music CDs, any CD at all would generate a monster of some kind.
When a friend of mine showed me the game for the first time back in 1999, I was immediately fascinated by its concept of generating monsters to train and battle with by inserting random CDs into my PlayStation.Īt long last, my parent’s collection of country music CDs finally had a purpose. Monster Rancher 2 is one of those games that I can’t help but find myself revisiting over and over again throughout the years.