Monster Rancher 4 (PlayStation 2)

Kissing cousins to the Pokémon series, Tecmo's Monster Rancher games have, over the years, managed to set themselves apart from Nintendo's pocket monsters with a greater focus on training and arena fighting and with a unique character creation system, which uses data read from a CD or DVD to determine what type of monster you get. Though Monster Rancher 3 made some pretty sweeping changes to the series' formula, Monster Rancher 4 ignores most of them and takes things back to basics. The resulting game is one that will please fans of Monster Rancher, but won't do much for players unfamiliar with the series.

Monster Rancher 4 is, at its core, a stripped-down RPG. Past Monster Rancher games haven't been terribly concerned with an overarching story, so, instead, they let you go along your way as you pleased. Monster Rancher 4 introduces a little bit of story that involves orphans, ancient tree spirits, and sexy swashbuckling monster trainers, but it's all little more than window dressing--and bad anime window dressing at that. Though, to be fair, it is befitting of the overall tone of the series. What's always made the Monster Rancher games enjoyable is raising monsters and pitting them against other monsters, and on that, Monster Rancher 4 delivers.

You're automatically given a monster at the start of your game, in addition to a small ranch on which to raise your monster. Once you get up and running, you're able to create additional monsters, either by selecting one from an encyclopedia or by inserting a CD or DVD into your PlayStation 2. The latter method is one of the defining traits of the Monster Rancher games, and using specific CDs or DVDs can net you rare and powerful monsters, though you need to experiment some to find out what works and what doesn't.

Monster fights are a highly organized and regimented activity in the world of Monster Rancher 4--complete with scheduled tournaments and different classes. The only way to advance to a higher class is by winning tournaments, and to win tournaments, you need to train your monsters. Every monster has six different traits that affect how it performs in combat. These traits include power, accuracy, life, intelligence, speed, and defense. There are simple exercises your monsters can perform to increase these traits, but if you want to increase the effectiveness of these training sessions, you need to purchase some training gadgets, which can be purchased from a traveling vendor who comes to your ranch from time to time. The catch is, you initially won't have enough room on your ranch for more than a couple gadgets, so you carefully need to choose which gadgets to buy.

Hide Review