Monster Rancher thred

I am really sad I never played any of these games before, they're so good
Really rough around the edges and plagued with tons of shit design, I really understand why it sold like shit when competing with more polished stuff like pokemon, but the underlying ideas are more than enough to carry the experience

I'm playing 4 right now, kinda mad that pcsx2 doesn't support disc swapping, feeling anxiety over my default garu fast approaching old age and visibly slowing down with each passing week

What about you faggots? I never see anyone talking about it, how does Holla Forums feel about Fantasy Boxing Manager Simulator?

I played the everloving fuck out of Monster Rancher 2. The PS2 ones seemed like they lost a lot of content and became streamlined and weird, so I never really got interested in them.

MR2 itself is gargantuan so I feel like I got my fill.

When I was a kid I played loved MR2. I'd rush home from school and to my dad's just so I could get in some time before dinner. Legit cried tears when my Rock Zuum died of old age. I remember reloading the save just so I could give it it's favourite food before he went.

Hell yeah. MR2 is damn good, but MR4 is fucking amazing as well. I'd highly recommend you guys download it and try it out. Both of them are excellent games.


Pokemon isn't really polished. It is when it comes to the more simpler things, but the game itself is way damn simple and the flaws with the gameplay are small, but irritating enough to put me off a decent bit. Monster Rancher had shit design in some ways, like how 4 let you freeze monsters but never let you unfreeze them. Shit sucked. As alright as Pogey can be, I dare not criticize Pokemon too much though because Pokefags are rancid shitters and will cause a shitstorm over any criticism the series gets


That was Monster Rancher 3. It was still really good, but just flawed. Monster Rancher 4 let you raise up to five monsters at once, have a customizable ranch, go exploran dungeons JRPG style, and set up custom training schedules for each individual monster you had as well. Skip 3 unless you're looking for a super comfy and lighthearted 2000's Saturday-morning anime romp through a simple, colorful world. All Monster Rancher games are comfy as all hell though, so, it's kinda silly to call it comfy.

Monster deaths were the most crushing shit as a child. Seeing it limp weakly in the death cutscene in the middle of the night before collapsing dead on the ground MR3 was the most shocking and heartbreaking shit in the game.

Had a nice Octopi and a Scissors (Underwater Beaclon) that both died on me. It was sad as hell to see something as big, rugged, and simpleminded as a Beaclon die. That nigga was reliable and friendly as fuck.

Pokemon might not be a well oiled machine all the time, but it has a very finely crafted user experience, for lack of a better term
Monster Rancher can be very grindy and unappealing at times, especially with how esoteric half the features are where you're never really given any clear indication of how they work, and some features don't really stand up to repeated use nearly as well as others

Also despite having a tiny fraction of the monster roster, MR has a lot more that look like they never went past the rough draft
Say what you will about later gen pokes not fitting in theme-wise, but for every cool giant beetle in MR there's three anime catgirls or dopey furry things, like it's trying to be a more grounded version of digimon

I know that feeling all too well
I don't like MR3, as much as 2 and 4, but fuck, that was one of the most heartbreaking situations I went through in any game.

What are other games that are similar to monster Rancher?

The closest you'll get is the chao garden in the sonic adventure games
Outside of that, you've got-
Pokemon
Digimon
That one dragon quest spinoff
That's it

...

Lack. The only reason Pokemon got where it is today is because it was the first of its kind to come over and on a device a lot of people were picking up with its anime on an easy to get channel. The simple monster designs and non-complicated evolution line really helped too. Pokemon has always been one of if not the worst monster raiser.


Monsters
If we're listing monster raisers; you got Magical Pengel and I think there's a Shin Megami one too.

Looks like they ran a train on that literal semen demon.
That show was the next best thing to digimon, I really only ever played the gameboy game though, which was oddly like the yu-gi-oh! game because you had cards rather than actual monsters.

...

It's absolute bullshit that some monsters don't have unique breeding combos
It would be the easiest thing in the world to just do texture swaps to fill in the holes when they run out of budget for special models

OH BOY
why does it have to be dead. Pretty much all games like it are dead

Every time someone asks this, the consensus is generally "nobody can/wants to compete with pokemon"
But that's total bullshit, games like this have a completely different approach than pokemon

Yokai Watch was slightly popular, maybe it's just that normalfags are really into that more casual jrpg style

Doesn't make the people who produce monster raisers any less stupid.

Just advertise cute monsters and waifus with difficulty modes that makes the casual players feel like they're playing at a normal difficulty and something challenging for people who enjoy RPG gameplay.

Cute is cancer, everybody knows cool is where it's at

Cool doesn't sell as easily or Digimon would've been a true rival to Pokemon.

Excessive edgyness also turns people off
You can only put so many guns and spikes on things before they stop being cool

DVDs always give me the same monster, and blu-rays don't seem to work.

Monster Rancher was so fucking dank. Pokemon is shit comparatively.

What are you, European?


Pokemon's shit to pretty much every monster raiser.

Oi u wot m8 I'll fuckin stomp ya in da teef fer dat ya git

Its the little things in life. That game would make a sweet game to do with Holla Forums. Its fairly short and you could get some good creative input. Shame I have no time

aren't machines and golems an essensial thing in yggdrasil/norse mythology?
isn't pokemon suppose to be an RPG?
like i don't get why /vp/ dislikes digimon designs that are meant to have machinery and weaponry in their designs

Dunno, not my favorite mythology
It's an RPG with no challenge and very little story that's "eh" at best and barely any interaction with the world. The characters themselves are only there to kiss your ass when they're not kissing the games ass.
Because /vp/ wants to fuck animals to fuck and Digimon are either too human or with too much junk that would get in the way.

There was this pretty interesting h-game that was a parody of Monster Rancher but retained almost all of the gameplay mechanics.

You had sex with your monsters
Not all of them were made humanoid

Wasn't that the unfinished flash game where the autistic artist ditched the project and threatened legal action if they continued to use his assets without giving him all of their profits

No, that was Breeding Season. The game I'm talking about is some JP h-game that can be found on dlsite.

link it nigga

Love me some MR. I still go back and replay it every few years.

Problem is as ever that it takes so goddamn long to play that getting the more interesting monster combinations(and iterations of them strong enough to compete in the B4) often comes after so much toil getting through shit mons that I find myself too fatigued to continue. Then again this is due to the fact I always start a new game instead of loading old ones.

Is there an easy way of getting some kind of basic girl monster in MR2? I wanna make some monster girls.

My last champs.

Whats that bro? Never been to the hospital? Here, let me help with that, have a straight.

Pixies are available off the bat and quite common off of CD's. Once you find one or any of it's sub breeds you can begin mass production.

...

Oakleyman can suck a dick.

So when are we gonna get a new game

on 3ds

Know any in particular? I've tried a bunch of CDs but I either get boring monsters or a message telling me that the monster is too strong to summon now.

Last I heard, they're going MMO and since it's Tecmo; you'll be lucky if it doesn't get revived into what DoA currently is.

I also just remembered why I got turned off the PS2 games–they eliminated my two favorite creature types, Monol and Gali.

I think I can finally get over it years later and will PCSX2 them this weekend, though.

they already did that and the servers shut down years ago
they also had a mobage that lasted for a few years before dying a quiet death

The portable games (Advance, DS) let you type in keywords to get monsters instead, and you can just look those up. So that might be more your bag.

Nevermind, I looked it up and found out the Spyro 2 disc summons a pixie/golem type. Now I have as much pixie DNA as I need.

I don't get it

More life shes gunna get all the dna she needs amirite?

Gali and Monol were the "Holy Elemental" and "Dark Elemental" creatures, but they were represented in an uncanny and alien way. I really appreciate that for some reason.

Aside from that, Monol is obviously an homage to 2001 A Space Oddysey.

Eh, it just seems really lazy to me
It doesn't even look good enough to be as alien in relation to it's surroundings as the monolith does, so the value of the reference is lost

Gali is top tier though

Aw shit niggas, what about dragon seeds?
I think the thing that pulled me to that game more wad the music more than anything.

Gali are among my favorites along with henger and durahan.

kind of late to the party but I always liked Dragon Seed

Thank God Digimon offered an encompassing and interesting story of love then


I should probably try to play it again. The last time i tried was when my english was shit-tier and couldn't understand two words together

I WUZ TRANSPOORTED TUH EH FUHAWUH LUND TU UH WURLD WUR MONSTAS ROOL

Dude. Same thing with my crab zuum. After that I'd freeze them if they started getting low gains in training.

What's a good emulator to run MR2? I tried psxfin and the disc stones are kind of bonkers, it works, but there's clearly something wrong with it seeing as almost every .bin or .iso I try gives me a Scaled Hare.

I used epsxe and it seemed to work
I mean, most of the monsters I got were locked, so they could easily all just be the same thing, but I think I actually got something once

I hate pcsx2 for not being able to handle disc swapping, but at least MR4 lets you find the little shits in the wild with only moderate grinding required

...

So now there are zero plans for a new game eh. Which also means zero plans for a new anime, which I enjoyed. That sucks.

I miss the anime

I hope that suezo is being spoiled rotten in Monster Heaven.

Has no one considered making a PC version of Monster Rancher 2? The basic game mechanics seem simple enough

I'd at least like a mod that adds the MR1 Monsters and the Japanese MR2 Monsters and Content.

It emulates just fine.

But a PC version would be great. Mods adding new monsters and shit. New textures. New items. All that good shit.

What, would you want someone to whip up a shitty remake in unity or something and then not release it due to getting fan mail from tecmo lawyers?

Work on it in private and then release when finish.

Nobody who makes fan games can ever do that
They feed on the attention and are too stupid to have patience

Hell, if you wanted to do it smart, make the basic game stuff, and have it so people can easily mod in Monsters and Events.

Besides, is Tecmo even that big on fan DMCAs? I honestly don't know. They probably forgot they even own Monster Rancher anyways.

Well they're a japanese company, so probably
They're likely getting some use out of the IP, royalties from the anime and such
Hey maybe there's a pachinko machine that suckers old people into raising a monster one coin at a time