Despite the success it once enjoyed, outside of die-hard gamers ‘circles Monster Rancher was never appreciated as a series to the same degree as its contemporaries in the popular’ breed bugs and make it ‘cling to it’ genre. bife ‘”that appeared in the late 1990s and early 2000s, exploding in popularity overnight.
While Pokémon would literally become the largest multimedia franchise in history (your old woman is still waiting for it to go out of style at any moment), and Digimon is still there fighting in a comfortable second place that even if everything is light years away from distance, Monster rancher It basically disappeared from the collective unconscious after those first two PS1 games – and the anime we saw here on Fox Kids and Channel 9 when Blue Toon still existed – to become little more than a footnote to the story. Yes, there were more games, but his five minutes had passed.
Monster Rancher 1 & 2 DX is available on PC and Nintendo Switch
Monster Rancher 1 & 2 DX It originally came out in 2019 as a cell phone exclusive in Japan, and is only now getting home versions in the rest of the world. What we have here are basically full-fledged ports of PS1 games, with some minor quality-of-life changes like the ability to speed up the game during slower sections. Both the graphics and the framerate remained intact and even the “remastered” soundtrack only presents an improvement in the quality of the audio over the original. The aspect ratio was kept at the original 4: 3, which is understandable considering how the battle system works. Less understandable are the frames on the sides of the screen that cannot be disabled.
Except for a few minor differences, both games are quite similar to each other. In both we are monster breeders for an official entity (FIMBA in the first game, IMa in the second), and we will spend our time training them week by week, preparing them to compete in tournaments and thus rise through the ranks. We must take care of their diet, their health, and even how they will develop their personality depending on how severe we are with them.
Our monsters can also be combined to create stronger monsters that can even inherit special attacks without having to learn them first, making it easier and easier to rank up and face the toughest tournaments. In between we will venture on expeditions, play and share quality moments with our monsters, or even suffer when they get sick, hurt, or die.
The gameplay loop of both games is still quite addictive, and it is very easy to lose hours without realizing it, especially thanks to the fact that despite being games from more than two decades ago they adapt surprisingly well to the portable philosophy of the Switch of put in a little game on the go.
Graphically both games withstood the passage of time well, thanks to a strong art direction compensating for the technical limitations of the time. Monster rancher 1 It uses 2D art for the backgrounds and simple animations with sprites to represent the different jobs and training in which our monster can participate, while the sequel presents better models and animations, and is entirely 3D except for the character portraits.
DO NOT DESTROY THE CDS
The big question we all had before the release of this port is how I was going to handle the business of creating new monsters, possibly the most remembered and celebrated aspect of the series. For those who are not aware, Monster Rancher 1 and 2 They allowed you to generate a random monster by reading code from any CD in your collection, be it other games, software or music albums, a very cool gimmick and well integrated into the lore of the game. In an age when no one uses CDs anymore (and the Nintendo Switch would have no way to read them anyway) Monster Rancher DX offers an elegant solution: we can search for games and discs in a database integrated to the games, and the monster we get will be generated from the one we choose among the results. The database is quite complete and includes both current discs and games, although with some rather strange omissions I must say. This clearly doesn’t have the magic of using a real record from your collection.*, but considering the circumstances and the evolution of technology it is a more than ingenious solution.
(Data aside: in all the hours that I put Monster rancher 2 For this review I tried dozens of discs and couldn’t get a single Gaboo, which was the most common monster when playing on PS1. Curious.)
But even with this truncated version of their main selling point, Monster Rancher 1 & 2 DX It’s a great way to replay these cult classics, and while there aren’t too many enhancements I don’t think it needs them either. It is clear that the idea of this compilation is to please old fans who have not been able to access these games for decades, and I doubt that more changes or modernizations would do much to attract new audiences. DX It’s Monster Rancher exactly as you remembered it, and this time it’s more than enough.
* Back in the year 2000, my grandfather had forgotten in our house a horrible CD of court songs called “Baila River!” that he had come as a gift with an El Gráfico magazine, or an Olé newspaper, or some of those things that soccer people liked to buy when magazines still existed. From that horrendous record, my brother and I could get a really broken monster that would basically let us skip the first two ranks of Monster Rancher 2 in minutes. Thanks, Cachito.