Ever found an obscure game on the shelves at your local Blockbuster or gaming store and wondered about it? Should you check it out, or should you pass? And if you find said game for only, say, $10 or so would that compel you to buy said game? Probably not, especially if said game is an obscure game from a not so loved clone series of a more popular series… right? Monster Rancher, one of a handful of series often considered to be a “Poke’mon clone series”, is not exactly a fan favorite in terms of fan interest… though I guess there must have been some interest in the series since, well, it DID make it all the way to the fourth game of the series. But, then again, Digimon World also reached game 4 recently and it sucked. So does Monster Rancher 4 bite the same as Digimon World 4? Let’s see…

As the game starts your character comes into town and gets into trouble instantly! Being thrown out of school for monster trainers wasn’t bad enough for you, oh no, you had to go and get into trouble… but that won’t last as you’ll find a kind benefactor who’ll give you a small ranch and help you set up with your first monster to raise. Huh? Monsters? Does that mean you’ll have to go out and hunt down creatures ala Poke’mon? Actually, no. Once upon a time creatures and humans once worked together in harmony, until something happened which made humans kind of paranoid. Apparently they sealed away the creatures in stones called “Saucer Stones” and locked them away for sometime. However eventually the original reason for locking away said creatures seemed to have been forgotten, and people began to train monsters again (after reviving said creatures at places called “Shrines” that seem to use some sort of supernatural science thingamabob setup) for competitions ala Poke’mon. Only unlike Poke’mon you can’t exactly “catch ‘em all”. Yes, while the game does boast about over 300 types of monster to train (which is quite abit) you can’t train or catch them all. Instead of going out into the wilderness to hunt down and capture wild monsters, you have to go on adventures and have your monsters locate Saucer Stones. From these stones you can bring forth new creatures (which is recorded into a book from which you revive your creature from, not from disc which I’ll bring up shortly). Ok, you say, so you’ll finds lots and “catch them all”, but it doesn’t work that way. Because unlike Poke’mon (where all your “training” is done on the job, with your monster growing with each battle against wild Poke’mon, here you have to own a “ranch” in order to raise monsters (hence the name of the game, Monster Rancher).

At the start of the game you are given a small piece of land and you begin to train your first monster. That means, and this is probably the thing that killed off interest in the game, setting a schedule!
That’s right! The key to becoming a master Rancher is to set a complex schedule to train your monster by! Think of this as the precursor to Colosseum : Road to Freedom only without the hulking men.
You have a set of training exercises (six in total, which can be upgraded with the use of training gadgets which a merchant will sell and upgrade for you during the game) that raises the

stats of your monster, and you have to set a schedule that has your monster train to excel in these six traits.
But it’s not all about training, for like a Sim you also have to make sure your monster is fed, rested, praised (or scolded if it’s naughty) and basically maintained… so basically you have less of a Poke’mon clone game and more like Poke’mon meets Tamagotchi game.

But then there’s the thing that you are training your monster for, fighting.
After a month of training (4 weeks) you’ll be able to enter your monster into tournaments, which somewhat breaks the monotony of training but not by much. This is also where your monster’s Fame meter will grow, the more times your monster wins the more fame it gains (and vice versa in that if it loses it’ll lose fame points). Then comes the opening of Adventure mode where you can take your monsters outside of the ranch and go on adventures. Here is where your creature does it’s other leveling up (it can’t level up in skill levels at home, but it can by adventuring and fighting wild monsters).
Here is also the only way you’ll find new Saucer Stones to create new monsters, as well as excel the “story” of the game which seems to have ancient monsters awakening and causing trouble for the above world.

How’s the gameplay? It’s… well it’s repetitive. You’ll end up doing the same things over and over and over and over again, and eventually it’ll break apart the mild interest players from the ones who really get hooked on this. After awhile you’ll probably only continue on with the training and fighting and adventures if you are hooked on the game, ‘cause once you realize the game is basically a long set of repetitive actions any non-fans will begin to play this less and less, until they’re not playing it anymore.
Also the fighting is nothing to write home about. It’s easy to master (with combat more similar to a fighting game than, say, Poke’mon Stadium or Colosseum) and once you get the hang of it you should only lose due to “cheap deaths” (the computer dodges all your attacks and hits you everytime, or you find yourself unable to act because you’re “Bullish” or something cheap) which might be another downer.
Then things get more complicated when you have to juggle what you’ve already learned with Counters and Attack Chains and so forth… gosh, who would have thought such a “simple” game would actually have a halfway decently done combat system… but if you’d rather not fuss with it once you got your monster trained well enough and it’s been fighting long enough you can begin to trust battles to it more which is a nice thing since once it’s got it’s groove on it’ll fight for itself just fine without supervision.

One thing though, and it’s something I’ve never seen in any game to date, it is the compatibility with this game and Monster Rancher CD and DVDs! Now at the shrine there’s two options, the second (book) being the one you want to use if you just have this game (since it draws the creature from the game itself). HOWEVER if you happen to have the right CD or DVDs it might be possible to draw monsters from OTHER sources! Apparently the PS2 will open up and you have the option to put in a DVD or CD at this point…

now I don’t know what that means since I bought this game pre-played (no instruction booklet), but I’m thinking this means that if you have the right Monster Rancher product you can use that to draw in exclusive monsters into this game! This unique compatibility with other media (CD and DVDs) of the Monster Rancher franchise is something unique to this game (never seen any other game before with this kind of compatibility before), mostly since I have not seen any other series take advantage of such a thing, and it’s something I wish I saw more often.
For instance wouldn’t it be nice if a Gundam game could download exclusive Gundam mobile suits from special Gundam SEED (or whatever) series DVDs!? I think that would be super keen and it’d give you just that much more reason to have the game and all the right DVDs.

The idea of the technology that seems to be present in this game is quite innovative, but apparently mis-used since not enough people was into the Monster Rancher Anime to take advantage of the system.
I don’t think we’ll ever see this innovation again, and that is probably a sad thing since this is something that had such potential, but in the end it became wasted potential since nobody took advantage of it.
Long story short (too late) is that this game is a middle of the road fence sitter.
It’s not incredibly fun, but it’s not a completely meritless game. But I’ll let my breakdown say the rest.

Monster Rancher Breakdown the 4th
What’s Hot?
Well it is something for you fans who wanted a little strategy in your monster raising. Here, with the whole schedule thing that’ll help you set up a training schedule for your monster, you can hand train and craft your monster to be all that it can be (customize it‘s moves, it‘s special abilities, and once you‘ve gotten it trained enough it can take over and fight it‘s own battles). With all these things you actually have a hidden little gem here of a game that might occupy you for awhile.
There is a few quirks with the schedule, like for instance you’ll need to constantly change the schedule to reflect the present status of your monster (so checking it daily and adjusting accordingly is advisable), and sometimes you can’t turn over fighting to your monster right away (sometimes a monster needs to be “controlled” longer than others before you can completely let go of the leash and let them fight on their own, especially if they happen to dislike a thing called “Battle“… you‘ll see).
Otherwise if you like a game with lots of data management and character building this might be for you.

What’s Not?
However this is no Poke’mon Stadium! While, yes, there is fighting in this game, most of the game centers around the training and raising over the fighting aspect of the game. You spend more time working you upgrading your monster and training it up more than you do fighting monsters, which might be a turn off for you if you are not a major fan of that sort of thing. Basically the same thing that might be a draw for some might be the killjoy for others. Oh, and the story of the game, as it were, comes out really really really SLOWLY! You’ll have long periods of no story then, suddenly, story happens… then stops and doesn’t happen for what seems like this side of forever!

So if you’re hoping for a vibrant active story then you won’t be finding that here.

Moments to Remember?
I guess the “story” since nothing else, even if the story drags it‘s heels forever and ever to “evolve“.
Oh, then there’s the little fairy females who are the most human looking of the monsters, and who often wear itsy bitsy little two piece bathing suits or some sort of clothing… where did they get those anyway?

What to Ignore?
The game seems to fancy itself with a “Story”, though the important part of the game is the training, the “story” (such as it were) will roll along just fine on it’s own with little interference on your part (unless it involves beating some boss monster then the story ends up grinding to a halt without your help).
That usually happens when you have to solve some mystery which sticks you with having to fight some gigantic ancient monster of one kind or another, which is such a cliché I can’t even tell you how cliché that is for the gamers to have put that into the game!

Overall?
Like raising things slowly and watching them grow old? Like the detailed care and maintenance of a tamagotchi but want the fighting of a Poke’mon Stadium game (but in a more fighter game style aspect) along with the adventuring aspect thrown in as well? Then this might be the game for you.
However if the endless repetitive gameplay aspect seems like it’ll be more boring than exciting, and you think the endless management of your monster’s personal workout schedule will bore you to tears (which will become more of a hassle as you juggle up to five monsters at once) then by all means don’t pick this up (no matter how inexpensive it is)! There’s going to be tons of monster maintenance here, and if you are not thrilled by the detail oriented aspect of monster rearing then you are so not going to love this game.
However the game’s true potential is wasted since it seems to depend on Monster Rancher CD and DVDs to draw out unique creatures for training, which should be darn near impossible to get ahold of… or justify getting ahold of since nobody really liked the Monster Rancher series)!
That and the game is rather middle of the road with nothing really making it stand out except for that one aspect which will probably be near impossible to exploit if you’re an average gamer like me, who doesn’t own a single Monster Rancher DVD to their name.

Look, this is basically a choice option for you and it’s for you to decide, of course. However while it does have a few merits it’s not for everyone. And while I don’t want to sound repetitive or anything I think it’s still important that (when you think of this game) you consider the amount of work you’ll have to do.
When it comes to the work that means you’ll spend more time juggling schedules and training than doing fighting or adventuring, which may be the make or break of this game for you.
If the game’s training thing interests you then you’ll find it has merits, but if the whole thing of doing endless training and scheduling (which turns into scheduling conflicts when you try to schedule workouts for more than one monster) bores you then avoid this.
Either way for $10 it’s not a bad thing, it’s just the gameplay may not suit you even at $10.