Monster Rancher

[Ayen]

Has anyone here played any of the Monster Rancher games or am I alone?

I was introduced to Monster Rancher back in the late nineties when it first came out. My brother bought the game and I would watch him play before eventually getting my own copy of the game after my own PlayStation. I was so excited to play it I could hardly sleep. I love the game to pieces, raising the Dino, Tiger, Suzeo and Pixy as well as a truckload of other monsters. It was unique in the fact that you could swap discs of other games, music CDs and demos to get a different monster and fuse others for various results. I'm a big Holly fan still to this day. I like Monster Rancher 2 as well, though the first one will always be my personal favorite. I tried Monster Rancher 3 for the PS2, but I just couldn't get into it. Those are the only three I played. Monster Rancher was also the first game I ever did a review off of and is a high childhood favorite. Even now I can still go back to it and have a ton of fun.

Only thing is, IMO, it's ridiculously hard to get anywhere without cheats. If you take time to raise your stats to do better in battle you risk time flying and your monster getting old, when it gets old it's near time to retire and when it's near time to retire they can and WILL die. It was a shock when we learned of this little detail. Your average monster's life span is only 3 years and time goes by in weeks. My brother used to always freeze the monster and raise something else for a while before going back to the previous one, but you're only prolonging the inevitable with that.

Any other fans on here? Why and why not?

[Scotty_ffgamer]

I played Monster Rancher 2 a lot as a kid. My sister worked at Babbages before it became Gamestop, and she would bring it home for me to play pretty frequently. I do remember loving it quite a bit, and I also remember getting really frustrated with not being able to make much progress because of the whole death thing too. It did make me really sad when my first monster died, too.

I can't remember the game very well anymore, though. I do own Monster Rancher 3 since I got it for really cheap, but I haven't gotten a chance to play it.

[Ayen]

Monster Rancher 2 is pretty rewarding the further you get into it and the longest you play. I came to a point where I got visited by a freaking UFO! No joke.

[Bolivar]

I played a lot of the first four or so. They're pretty addicting with unlocking monsters from random CDs and DVDs around the house, then training and fighting in tournaments with the one you've settled on. I never needed cheats, maybe just an FAQ to understand the finer details of how the game systems work. The diversity of the monsters is what adds to the replayability of it, as the next monster you use is likely completely different from the last and every once in a while, some random disc gives you an incredibly rare breed.

It was a nice series to transition up to from Pokemon as I got older, it's just a shame that we haven't had a new release in a while, I guess they can't figure out how to move forward now that people don't have as many CDs lying around.

[Freya]

Oh my mom hated this game. My brother and I went through the house pulling every cd we could find. I wish there was something similar now that did that kind thing. Plus, besides pokemon and that's not so much raising and more of fighting, there aren't any monster raising games. The original Digimon and then these Monster Rancher games were some of my favorite games.

[DMKA]

I had a friend who was quite obsessed with Monster Rancher back in high school.

I never actually played it, but I found the monster inquiring system via sticking random music CDs, PlayStation games, and PC games into the PlayStation, quite amazing at the time. Weird, but cool.

[Tasura]

I think I've played most of them, and I've always loved them. As far as I know, I own 2 and 4. And I had no issues with monsters dying on me, mainly because when I got the message saying they were starting to get old I'd freeze them and get a new one, and then when it was getting old I'd fuse them together, the fusing imparted some of the built up stats to the new creation, so it's not like a total waste, keep fusing and you'd get one with stats at the very beginning as high as your first old one.

Monster Rancher DS is also quite fun, what it loses in the whole no disk thing it makes up for by letting you draw a picture, or speak into the mic to create a monster, and if I remember correctly, you eventually get the ability to write sentences to create monsters (speaking and sentences are unlocked either by story progression or getting to a certain rank in the tournaments).

[Ayen]

I didn't know that about the freezing, I'll have to keep that in mind next time I play. The DS one sounds cool. Always looking to add to my DS library when I have the spare cash lying around.