This is the first time that a proper Monster Rancher (the Game Boy Color games don’t really count) series appears on a system other than the Playstation. This doesn’t sound like something shocking, that it is not on the Playstation system but this changes the whole game's idea that ever CD or DVD has it own monster inside. Instead of using a CD or DVD to unlock your monsters, you have to put letters and numbers in the code bank to receive them. This makes getting the monsters easier, especially those people who do not own a lot of CDs and DVDs. Temco put some monsters as hidden characters to access these you must win special tournaments. These special monsters were hidden so you would not get the best monsters at the beginning. There are about four hundred monsters to unlock and I spent hours on end and have not even unlocked two hundred monsters yet. Also, if you want to train and beat most of the game with each monster, I would be guessing you will spend around two and half years to play through most of the monsters. Temco put so many monsters in the game so no one will complain about the replay value but there are few options and features that could be change to make the game much better.
You start out in the town where you put in your first code to get your first monster to train. You can type any word or just random letters to get your monsters. The first monster that I started training was a naga monster; all your favourite Monster Rancher monsters are back. When you go back to your monster farm, you start by feeding him or her something every month. Then you can train your monster to raise its power, intelligence, defence, accuracy etc. Your monster keeps doing the same animation over and over again on the screen and the same music is played again (this part of the game is very boring and probably keeps some people from playing this game a lot more). Every two weeks or so in the game, your monsters needs to take a week off from training so you can take a week off to keep it healthy. Once you think your monster is fit enough, then you fight in the official tournaments or the prize fights (where you get great items, money or even new monsters). Later in the game you can get special training and continue fighting until your monster dies or retires from all his battle bruises.
The fighting system is similar to the other Monster Rancher games using your stamina meter and accuracy to determine a hit. A fast Pixie can hit faster than a slow Golem but the Golem will hit like "Ali" and finish your adversary with a hit or two, if you can hit your enemy at all since he is very slow. You have three attacks, far attack, medium range and close attack. You can have special training to learn new and more powerful attacks. The later tournaments can be extremely difficult and will likely force you to keep turning your Game Boy off and on until you beat that tournament because your monster will have to retire and die after too many blows in fighting. Some of the last fights in the game are almost impossible and luck is probably your only chance of winning - this is the part of the game where I think will turn off the most gamers. After your monster retires then you have to get a new monster and continue the process of Monster Rancher tournaments from the beginning. Hopefully you will get two decent monsters so you can combine them and get a strong new monster, which will have better stats than just a new monster from out of the blue.
The music is half way decent considering it is a Game Boy after all and the graphics can be consider beautiful, well at least for a Game Boy game. I played the first Monster Rancher game for the Playstation. I can say that Temco could have added a lot of more features in the game. The gameplay only really concentrates on getting your monster, training it, and fighting with it. There are no mini-games, exploring or you cannot improve your ranch, which is a bit disappointing to be honest. There is a story line but it never really hooked me and I think that it could have been better. The fighting is extremely difficult in the end which will turn off many gamers from playing it for two years or so to get all the monsters and train them. The game just feels like it could have been a lot better but it sure a lot better than some other Game Boy games out there.
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