Monster Rancher was one of my blind purchases in the 32-bit era. I was looking for an RPG (there was no shortage of these for the platform) and settled on this unique sounding title. I was absolutely intrigued by the fact that the game would generate monsters from any old compact disc you inserted into the system when prompted. Half the fun was in gathering all the CDS I could get my mitts on to see what monster was supposedly ‘living’ inside of them. I had long forgotten about this game until only recently, and I remembered very little of it except that I enjoyed the time I spent in the world of Monster Rancher. Recently I decided to dive right back in and today I’m here to give you a review of the game with a fresh start. Monster Rancher is still a blast to play.
The concept of this game revolves around monsters living inside the data of compact discs. You play as a monster rancher; someone who raises and battles monsters to become the very best (sound familiar?) You start by being given a monster from a choice of three, but you can then start unlocking new ones and even combining them for more powerful versions. There are somewhere around six or seven different monster families that come in a variety of different colors and slightly altered designs. A lot are palette swaps, but that’s fair given the large number of monsters at your disposal. From here your job is to raise said monster into a lean mean fighting machine through various methods of raising its statistics. What’s interesting is that your monster actually ages, can get sick, and even die. You can only have one active creature at a time but can keep others in the freezer for later use. It’s not so much about collecting them all as it is focusing on just one.
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| Home… home on the range… |
Upon getting the monster you want (either from the market, combining two others, or from another compact disc) you can start training it right away. You can give it odd-jobs to complete which increase its statistics and give you small amounts of money. When you save up enough currency you can send your monster off to train which increases its statistics much faster. In some rare cases an archaeologist will actually ask to borrow your monster to help explore old ruins wherein you can find rare items. The real highlight, and what everything leads to, is the monster battling. Here you and an enemy monster go toe to toe in a circular arena as you drain each other’s hit points using a series of different attacks. While you can sidestep these encounters are basically played moving either left or right. Attacks each have a range at which they can be used and highlight when you’re the proper distance from you foe. Each of these offensive moves consumes will points which recharge automatically, but they run out pretty quick in the heat of battle.
The battle system is unique. Each time you use an attack the action freezes until the animation has completed. Enemy encounters are pretty unique to be honest. You move your monster left and right with the shoulder buttons and depending on what attack you want to use attempt to keep a specific distance from your foe. There’s a fair amount of strategy here. Of course should you prefer you can allow the computer to take control of your monster instead. They do a pretty decent job and sometimes it’s nice to kick back and simply cheer for the monster you’ve been training. I do have a couple of issues with the battle system however. For one thing too many monsters are focused around the speed stat which allows them to swiftly avoid you attacks. It can be frustrating wasting all of your will points with attacks that constantly miss their mark. I also found that quite frequently the clock would run out, and while I would cause the more damage to my foe the victory would still go to them because they had a higher percentage of their hit points remaining. It caused me to get mad on occasion, but it’s not enough to really take away from how fun this game is.
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| This fight looks like it should be one sided, but it isn’t. |
The absolute highlight of Monster Rancher is the sense of progression. Even just a few additional boosts to your monster’s stats and you can feel the difference. This makes spending a lot of time and honing your strategies a highly rewarding experience. What’s more is that, due to the loyalty system and spoiling your monster, you really feel like you get to know them the more you work with them. It makes it all the more tragic when they pass away from old age and it makes it difficult to sacrifice them to combine into a more powerful monster. That sense of attachment adds a lot to the overall experience. I also really like all of the little events that happen on the ranch. You’ll have visitors that help progress the story, or notices that training sessions are on sale, etc. This all helps to establish the world as a living breathing place despite the environments consisting of just static images.
This was a mid generation release, and it still looks pretty decent thanks to some pre-rendered backgrounds that ensure this one didn’t age particularly badly. It still looks pretty nice. Scenes on the ranch are a little simplistic and boring with the 3D model of your monster simply walking around, and the same goes for in town sequences. The battles are feature fully three dimensional battlefields which looks really nice. The monster designs have a lot of personality (the giant eyeball creature with a tail is basically the mascot of the game and looks hilarious) I just wish there were more of them instead of so many palette swaps. The sprites that represent them while working and training are hilarious and I was a big fan of that graphical method. The soundtrack is largely forgettable. I could barely tell it was there. It fits the game well enough but it’s nothing special.
It’s a shame Monster Rancher isn’t more widely recognized because it’s a bonafide classic in my book. The concept is just as fun as it once was (even if it’s not nearly as magical to put discs in the system to unlock monsters) and I found myself quickly addicted once again. Everything just works. I was surprised to find out while looking up the date of release that there were a myriad of sequels. I will absolutely make sure to seek these out, because Monster Rancher is, in my opinion, one of the truly hidden gems in the library of the original PlayStation.
