Monster Rancher DS

It's not like I'm some all star power reviewer like our favorites on this site, but I've still struggled to write this review. As a lover of Monster Rancher games from day one, I feel like I have a unique perspective on this series and it's newest entry, Monster Rancher DS (Monster Farm 2 in it's native Japan). And while Monster Rancher DS looks to the past for inspiration, it fails to capitalize on recent improvements, feeling like an attempt to cash a cheque on nostalgia.

Back in it's Playstation years, Monster Rancher was often compared to Pokemon, but besides the large library of creatures core to both games, they have nothing in common. Your time spent in Monster Rancher DS will primarily be on your ranch (imagine that) where you direct your monster's life on a weekly basis. This section boils down to training your monster to raise specific stats, keeping close eye on his fatigue, stress and overall health in planning your schedule. You can also send your monster on longer Drills to learn new attacks, Errantries where you assume somewhat direct control of your monster to explore areas, and finally to battle. Your ultimate goal is to have a monster rise through the tournament ranks from E to S, facing off against the Big 4 to win the game. This basic formula has driven almost all the Monster Rancher games, and it's in full effect here.

This feels very much like a reboot, bearing an extreme resemblence to Monster Rancher 2. As a matter of fact, your assistant from MR2 is your mail(wo)man in MRDS. They've even brought back some monsters not seen since the original game. However, with this eye on the past, it seems that besides some returning monsters, nothing implemented in the more modern titles has survived. For example, you're limited to one monster at a time regardless of the size of your ranch, and you have to determine each week what to do instead of scheduling in advance. A lot of the changes in MR3 and 4 aimed at reducing the amount of tedium in the general gameplay, and they've been completely discarded here.

There are two areas of the game that have seen a change up; Drills and Errantry, your town-based training options. Drills take place on a board, with dice rolls determining your results. You also have the chance of learning a new attack on Drills, which will probably be the main reason you do them. The odds seems stacked against you though, with "lose a roll" and "attribute lost" panels seemingly outnumbering any positive results. Drills aren't cheap and take several weeks to complete, so returning from one having gained less stat points than comparable training (or even losing stat points overall) is infuriating. Errantry places your monster on a map where you can direct him by tapping with the stylus, but the pathfinding is so broken your monster is as likely to go where you want him to as he is to run off in a completely random direction. While this does make it feel like you're trying to direct a creature that's got it's own free will, and might even be intentional, it is no less frustrating. I know from previous experience that there are probably items and maybe even monster breeds only available from doing Errantries, but I honestly couldn't be bothered trying it more than a couple times before ditching it entirely.

The older games generated monsters by inserting CDs and later DVDs, using their data to determine the monster's characteristics. Obviously the DS can't do this, so instead you can generate monsters by scribbling on the touch screen or babbling into the microphone. Unfortunately, neither method works very well. If you dig around online, you can find a chart that shows you what grid to place a dot on the screen to produce one of the limited variants available through that method. It's unfortunate to look past the curtain and see that it doesn't matter in the least what you draw, only what sections of the grid contain the most marking, that determines your monster. The vocal method is even worse; saying the same word multiple times will give you different monsters at least some of the time, but then different words or tones will frustratingly produce the same monster againd and again. While the grid is at least deterministic to a fault, the microphone's results feel completely random. The only upside is that once you have obtained all the basic monster breeds, with enough patience you can use the library to revive, freeze and then combine them to obtain any monster in the game. This ultimately makes the monster generation methods pointless, but their poor implementation is still a sore spot compared to the mystery and fun of checking your CD collection for rare monsters.

And then there's the battling, the biggest thorn in my side. Battles have always been a bit hit or miss in the series but in this version they've somehow managed to become not just dull, but frustrating and possibly unfair. For the record, I have no concrete proof of the following statement: THE AI CHEATS. Yes, I know it's very tempting to blame the game for one's own ineptitude, but I honestly have no other explanation for what I've experienced many many MANY times in the course of playing this game. What it boils down to is the percentage chance for attacks to connect. You can see the chance for both yourself and your enemy's current move, and I simply cannot reason why my monster with a 70-80% chance will miss more often than a CPU monster's 20-30%. It feels like compensation to give the otherwise braindead AI a chance.

Besides this piece of RNG, battles consist entirely of standing around, waiting for enough Guts to use your attack. The only tactical option you have is to move yourself between one of three designated distances, which determines which attacks are available to both monsters. So it would usually be in your best interest to hang around at a range which your opponent doesn't have an attack, then move in when your Guts are high enough to launch your own. If your stats are higher than your opponents and the RNG gods are on your side, I've just written the guide on beating every battle in this game. It's ok though, the AI read my guide too, so you're on equal footing. You'll know as soon as the enemy monster stops standing like it's glued to the floor and hastily makes for a specific attack distance that he has singlemindedly saved up enough for that move, especially if you've seen him use it before. There's really no thought or strategy to this section at all, and while it is very similar to the previous game's battle systems, there were (again) many changes made over the years to spice things up.

The wrapping around MRDS isn't much prettier than it's butchered elements. The graphics look ripped right out of 1997, and the music is tolerable but inevitably repetitive. Battle spectators are strangely silent, with the blurry crowd only chipping in a garbled cheer for the rare critical hit. All other sound effects get the job done, but you'll do yourself a favor to just mute the whole thing.

There's certainly a lot to do in Monster Rancher DS but it becomes undeniably repetitive, particularly in the battle system. Newcomers may be left wondering what the fuss was all about. Old timers might be able to cling to the "back to basics" style, but it's a cold embrace, similar to the one you might get from a corpse. Still, you develop a bond with your monster as you raise him to compete in progressively harder tournaments, which makes his inevitable death or retirement a bit heartbreaking. There's satisfaction to be had making those stat numbers creep higher, but it's overshadowed by shortcomings that Monster Rancher games have already proven they can overcome.