Monster Rancher 2 - Full Review (PlayStation 1 game)

This is no ordinary virtual pet game and, despite comparisons to Pokémon, Monster Rancher has a defined identity with its own tantalizing hook; find your monsters by inputting your own CD disks into your console. Unlike typical ‘pet raising’ games you don’t buy them from shops or trek through jungles in search of powerful creatures. Instead you must put any audio or PS1 game disk into your PlayStation console and, depending on the disk, receive one of over 400 monsters with many of these only being acquired once you’ve earned the right to raise them.

Developer: Tecmo
Genre: Simulation
Release date: 2000
Platforms: PlayStation 1
ESRB: E –Everyone

‘Monster Rancher 2’ is arguably the most successful and popular game in the Monster Rancher series despite later editions boasting better graphics and additional features. Often compared to Pokémon, ‘Monster Rancher 2’, or simply ‘Monster Rancher’ if you have the European edition, puts you in the role of a certified monster breeder where your job is to train monsters to fight in arena style battles. This strangely enticing game has the potential to take up hours upon hours of your time and dozens upon dozens of your old CD disks as you try and unlock the hidden mysteries within your CD and PS1 game collection.

Gameplay and Story

After introducing yourself and taking a short personality test you’re thrown into the role of a certified monster breeder with your assistant, Colt, by your side. The story of Monster Rancher 2 is mostly non-linear with key events only occurring when you choose to engage in them or when you meet specific requirements. The game also never has to end if you don’t want it to as you can carry on playing even after watching the ‘end’ video so this is a fantastic game for the casual gamer. The general aim of the game however is to raise different monsters, unlocking rare breeds and rising through the 6 ranks by beating other monsters in tournaments and cups. 

Gameplay is split into different segments that mostly revolve around training your monster or battling other monsters. After finding and naming your monster, be that by purchasing one of the three available at the market or by finding one on any audio or PS1 games you happen to have, you take it back to the ranch with you. This unusual twist to the game is painfully addictive and you’ll find yourself rooting around the house for any old CDs that you still have but, in this new digital age, I personally lacked enough CDs to get a real variety. Frustratingly a lot of CDs contain a ‘rare monster’ that means you haven’t met the requirements to train it yet but, by playing the game and advancing through it, those rare monsters will be unlocked with enough time and dedication and if anything it gives you an incentive to continue playing. 

 

Almost every aspect of your monster’s training regime can be controlled by you including choosing what food it will eat at the start of every month, all of which have different effects, which drills they engage in or when they should go on an ‘errantry’. All monsters have a collection of stats to be raised; Life, Power, Intelligence, Defence, Speed and Skill but monsters exceed at these in different ways, for example some monsters are intelligence based rather than power meaning rather than brute strength they adopt entirely different attacks that focus on not just damage but reducing the ‘guts’ of their opponent. ‘Guts’ is what you need to attack your opponent so by reducing them in the enemy it means they cannot physically attack you and allowing you to chip away at their health gradually until they either die or the match is up. Battles are won by having a greater percentage of health at the end of the battle, whether or not you K.O your opponent doesn’t tend to come into it as matches are fought on a time limit. 

The battles can, admittedly, be frustrating as luck tends to factor into it quite frequently and often you’ll be battling against your monster’s unwillingness to listen to you. How many opponents you face depends on what kind of tournament it is and there’s a nice round mixture of tournaments where sometimes you’ll be fighting for the most wins and sometimes where you’ll only be battling two or three other monsters who were the winners of previous fights. Whilst occasionally battles can become repetitive there’s a huge variety of opponents that are genuinely quite challenging and, when you enter a new grade or start with a new monster, verging on impossible. Due to the quite steep rise in difficulty level as you rise through the ranks the game is kept constantly challenging and rewarding so there’s no worry of out-levelling any of your opponents without some serious dedication to training. 

The amount of interaction you have with your monsters fighting and training regime is kind of variable as during battles you can choose to control it yourself or allow your monster to fight by themselves. You will always see how the fight plays out but this effects your ability to select the techniques, when to select them and whether you advance or retreat during matches. You cannot use items during battles which may seem a little odd at first but, provided you use them outside of battle, there are still plenty of items that can be used though with unusual effects. Generally however these items don’t affect the outcome of a battle as that depends entirely on how well you’ve trained your monster and how well you can play to their strengths during a match. 

Training your monster involves drills or errantry but you can also select whether to train using light drills or heavy drills. Each light drill will raise a single stat whereas heavy drills will raise two and decrease one as well as tire your monster out faster. When you select which drill your monster will perform it takes an entire week and, with only four weeks in a month, you can at most only get away with three training sessions a month and with one week to rest. During the drills themselves you can either watch the scene of your monster engaging in it, for instance swimming around a course or enduring the force of huge battering rams pounding into them, or you can just skip the cutscene and get straight to the results. Your monster is not just limited to failing or succeeding; they may also cheat or exceed and this often reflects how they are raised or their individual personalities. The way in which you can praise or scold your monster is an added dimension and a contributing factor in how loyal your monster is to you, as well as how spoilt they may be. Monsters that are frequently scolded, refused praise, pushed too hard during training sessions or doing their individual ‘dislike’ such as feeding them something they hate or forcing them to battle when they dislike it will ultimately stress your monster out. A stressed out monster means that they will die sooner, are more likely to fall ill and will frequently be tired and unable to fight properly. Monsters that are stressed out or neglected may even run away and this usually occurs when they dislike you but, on the other hand, a monster that likes you and that has more loyalty is more likely to listen to you during battle. Unlike many ‘virtual pet’ games, if this can be considered that, the fact that the way you raise and train your monster has a huge impact on the game makes it all the more absorbing as sometimes your personality and training regime will clash with a monster. What worked with your previous, precious monster now no longer works for your brand new one who needs to be brought up to speed. What this results in is you and your new monster both hating one another and either this poor partnership continues or you change your tactic and adjust to the new personality and style of this new, baby monster.

A huge part of the game and one I particularly enjoy is the feature of combining your monsters into new ones and unlocking more disk stones. Your monster won’t last forever and, depending on the type of monster, will have a lifespan that will decrease depending on how stressed or mistreated they are. There’s no actual way to view the lifespan of your monster so sometimes it can come as a bit of a shock when you wake up one morning, open the barn and find them motionless on the ground. Combining monsters is something of an art and it’s fairly confusing at first as it can be temperamental. The basic idea is that you raise two kinds of monster, the same breed or different ones, you can only have one at a time but you can ‘freeze’ them which is essentially putting them in a cryogenic freezer to be defrosted whenever you want to use them again. Once you’ve got two fine specimens you can then combine them for a flat fee, this merges their DNA to produce you one new monster that is supposed to have traits from its parents including stats, personality and any techniques the parents learnt. To help push your combining in the right direction you can use special items that you’ve picked up from expeditions, won from battles or found in other way. Items can include bits of a broken disk stone which is basically an essence of another, possibly rare, monster. Your new monster will always be back at the lowest grade for battles, level E, but this is doesn’t mean he’ll be lagging behind as the monsters you fight in battles do not raise their stats so, just as his parents did, your new monster can climb the grades and attempt to become a champion. 

Graphics and audio

As PlayStation 1 games go, Monster Rancher is reasonably attractive though not especially detailed. The sprite animations for the dialogue are particularly nice however and each character you encounter has an original look so there’s no rehashes of models. Everybody, including your monster, rae rather animated in their emotions and what’s especially nice to see is that your monster’s personality shows through the way they express themselves and move around. There’s also a noticeable growth in monsters as they age and visual indicators like this are always appreciated. Depending on the breed of monster and the sub-species that they may contain they all look different; colours, textures and features like horns or spines may be integrated into a base monster’s original appearance and this diversity is critical to making each monster feel like an individual. The environments too are pretty decent though the ranch is very unfurnished and mostly consists of just an empty expanse of rolling green hills. The weather is done particularly well in the game and you’ll notice the change in seasons is quite apparent due to the level of light and little things like the hue of the grass, how rainy or stormy it is and whether there’s snow or not. Finally, the battle arenas and town areas are fairly well drawn however, even though most of the buildings in the market do remind me of a bunch of disturbing faces, but overall I’d say the graphics for the game are of a decent level of quality. 

The music is something I particularly enjoy in the game as it’s very atmospheric and, the battle music in particular, changes depending on what kind of tournament you’re playing. It’s a very memorable soundtrack that after several sessions of playing is likely to be stuck in your head forever. There’s no verbal dialogue in the game as everything is done via text but your monsters will make noises that reflect their mood so I guess that’s something.

Overall

There’s a great potential to get hours and hours of gameplay out of Monster Rancher and still not quite understand how the complex calculation system of combing works, but it’s fun all the same. Whilst the graphics aren’t exactly the game’s strong point and gameplay can become repetitive and uneventful there’ s still this sense of achievement when you raise your monster’s rank or find a new, rare creature. The game is a nice level of challenging but is still very accessible and I particularly love how connected you can feel to your monster and how you develop favourites, I hate Pixie’s for example because I personally believe they’re a bunch of spoilt brats who never do what I say and who cheat all the time. Ahem. The game is definitely addictive and extremely time consuming, the original spin of finding your own monsters by using your own disks from home is always a draw for me and there’s a lot of replay value in the game due to how different the monsters are. This is one of those games where you can play it for the long haul or for a short stint but, I warn you, it’s a rare find and will cost you more money than your average PS1 game. If you can pick it up for less than £20 I advise you to buy it, immediately, because it won’t remain that cheap for long.

The Good: 

• Original premise of using your own CDs
• Lots of personality
• Huge selection and of monsters
• Nice difficulty curve
• Addictive gameplay
• Monster combination very fun to toy with
• Monsters are very interactive
• Lots of hidden features to unlock rare monsters
• Some nice quirky events to break things up such as birthdays and expeditions
  

The Bad:

• Can become repetetive and boring
• Training your monster takes a long time
• Graphics are a little grating
• Could use more features and places to go

The Score: 7/10

Final thoughts: "This is the golden age of Monster Rancher, it's really fun, super addictive and just has bags of originality. It's not like Pokémon, I swear."

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Viva Piñata - Full Review (Xbox 360 and PC game)

'Viva Piñata' presents a tantalizingly unusual premise that you’ll either love or hate; attract a variety of Piñata creatures into your lovingly crafted garden on Piñata Island then tame, personalize and manage them all. These Piñatas come in all shapes and sizes but are all based off of real creatures though with quirky names that reflect a type of candy and a strange array of colours that may be changed, if you can figure out how. There’s no denying it, this is a very casual game for the causal gamer but despite its childish appearance it’s a charming and addictive game with great creative opportunities for those who enjoying gardening, designing and pet keeping.

Developer: Rare (Xbox 360) Climax Group (PC)
Genre: Life simulation
Release date: November 9th 2006
Platforms: Xbox 360 and PC
ESRB: E - Everyone.

Story and gameplay

There’s not a great deal of storyline though there is some attempt to explain what’s going on; you start by walking through a beautiful haven filled with flourishing flowers, trees and crops with piñatas flying overhead, prancing through the grass or drinking from streams and pools. In the centre of all this fluff however is a tiny plot of hard, cracked earth with a woman sobbing in the middle of it all. After comforting her you’re charged with using this plot of land as your own and to turning it from something that resembles the aftermath of an explosion to something more in tune with the surrounding area. You’re given a watering can that’s practically falling to pieces with rust and a shovel that looks like it’ll snap as soon as it touches the earth, armed with these two devices you’re instructed to get to work. The game is vastly open-ended with very few objectives once the tutorial is finished with and though it may appear to be a simple gardening free for all there’s a hidden structure in the way that you progress. As you begin your gardening career you’ll gradually unlock new titles, better equipment, more garden space and different seeds that allow you to garden in more complex ways.

Whilst initially you’ll attract low level piñatas that simply require you to have a certain amount of grass, dirt or perhaps a particular flower or vegetable you’ll soon catch glimpses of wild, black and white creatures as they prowl the outside border of your garden. Attracting the attention of huge eagles, magnificent lions or clumsy elephants will take time, dedication and maybe even a few sacrifices as, after all, the animal kingdom is not known for its kindness towards smaller, weaker creatures. You start out in a very restricted manner; confined to a tiny plot of dilapidated land that’s in need of some serious maintenance but once you’re removed all the junk, beaten out the cracks and grown a bit of grass you’ll be faced with an empty canvass for you to play with. You’re never thrown too far into the deep end yet you’re given just enough freedom to discover a gardening style by yourself. Do you start with patches of flowers and draw in butterflies and bumblebees or do you opt for a vegetable patch to try and allure some rabbits or mice? Either way they’re all low levelled but the way in which you advance and nurture your garden will have an impact on the creatures you’ll lure inside your newly developing patch. Piñatas will only enter your garden once you’ve met their individual ‘visitor’ requirements and, once inside they’ll develop an additional set of requirements in order for them to actually become a resident. Once you’ve finally convinced them that they should inhabit your garden they’ll move in, change into their true colours and settle down to enjoy themselves. Here, they’ll live, sleep, mate and attract other piñatas to become residents too or, if you choose, entertain people at parties should they be that lucky piñata that gets chosen. It’s, admittedly, a very strange concept but still a very entertaining one once you’ve become enthralled in the everyday drama that comes with managing a horde of cute, but ultimately wild, animals.

Although a huge part of the game consists of attracting and taming Piñatas the game is so much more than that and, if you feel like exercising your creative side, there’s huge opportunity to get inventive with your garden’s design. There’s a surprising amount of content packed into this charming game whether that’s levelling up to unlock new features or dressing up your Piñatas to increase their worth before sending them off to children’s parties. If you enjoy gardening then you’ll be delighted at the whole host of trees, crops and flowers you can nurture and at the vast difference a few drops of fertilizer can make. The variety in trees, flowers and crops is actually quite impressive and there are some lovely elements like the magnificent oak tree that, when fully grown, has a trunk that appears to be carved with the forms of many different species of Piñatas. Whilst the huge range of, not only flora and fauna but buildings to, may seem impossible to fit all into one garden due to a build limit of sorts you can have multiple gardens with the same profile. In this case, chocolate coins and your gardening level all pass over so you will still have access to everything that has been unlocked yet now with a completely empty plot of land. It makes sense to have multiple gardens as many piñatas are specialized creatures who will only live in certain environments that would be extremely difficult to integrate into an already beautified and designed garden. Large piñatas such as hippos require gardens that are mostly consisting of water, for example, so attempting to make 80% of your garden consist of lakes and rivers whilst speckled with bulrushes and water lilies will, quite naturally, naturally destroy any attempt you had at a designing a perfectly crafted flower bed and orchard.

You are not the only non-piñata resident on the island however and throughout the game you’ll be guided and helped by the local residents who offer services in shops and, if you pay for it, services in your garden such as weeding, gathering and as either watchmen or night watchmen. Whilst the first couple are pretty self-explanatory the presence of watchmen in the game is unusual as gardening and virtual pet simulation combinations tend to be of the peaceful variety, not this one. Amidst the everyday scraps and brawls that occur between piñatas that don’t get along you also have to contend with outsider aggressors such as sour piñatas, ruffians and the evil Dastardos who’s the ringleader of all of these. Sour piñatas can be made resident and turned into good variants of their sour selves but ruffians and Dastardos are evil for life. Whilst ruffians simply make a nuisance of themselves by dropping poisonous sweets for your unsuspecting piñatas to eat and throwing up land over rivers and pools you may make, Dastardos is actively violent. When your piñatas get sick, by losing a fight or eating something poisonous, Dastardos will show up and break them open with a stick, effectively killing them. Well, not exactly kill them as this is a nice place so rather than die permanently broken piñatas merely respawn as the black and white variety outside of your garden.

Whilst the standard way of keeping these antagonists away from your garden is by taming sour piñatas and using their special abilities to keep Dastardos distracted you can also buy special upgrades. The game’s in-game currency are, quite appropriately, chocolate coins which can be made by selling piñatas, building a mine and selling what you find within it or making and selling produce for profit. Chocolate coins can be put towards a huge variety of things such as garden items, fertilizer, piñata houses, special buildings, hirelings, fashion accessories for your piñatas, seeds, produce or special services like the doctor or the hunter who can capture piñatas for your garden. In order to keep track on everything that’s going on it’s useful to utilize the in-game journal which is there to not only provide backstory about the island and its residents but also to track your accomplishments and statistics such as whether you’ve achieved maximum growth for individual plants or how many piñatas you have in your garden. The journal brings to light several unofficial objectives as it lists each plant and each piñata with several checkboxes beside them all which are checked as you accomplish things such as finding each of the 3 variants for each piñata or romancing a species a certain number of times. A piñata variant occurs when you instruct your pinata to eat something and, after enough experimentation, you’ll find three different items that will change their colour into something else. Whilst this is of course simply aesthetic it’s a pleasant option to be able to discover more hidden elements within the game.

Part of what makes this game so enjoyable is not just the attention to detail and the open-ended, casual gameplay but also the charming personality of your piñatas themselves. It’s quite easy to form opinions on certain piñatas and pick out favourites as the way in which they interact with each other and the environment differs depending on the species. Syrupents, a snake type piñata, for example often start fights and can be quite stubborn to get rid of yet, if you perform special actions with them, can become entirely different creatures that are extremely useful. Many piñatas also enjoy wearing special accessories and, whilst some have the potential to enhance the piñata in some way or form, mostly it’s just to boost their happiness meter or to allow them to ‘romance’ one another. Swananas, for instance, enjoy wearing diamond collars and strutting about, honking snobbishly whilst Cinnamonkey’s are disturbingly human as they sidle about on two legs and who require a fez hat to allow them to breed. As an interesting addition you can also buy domesticated piñatas from one of the several shops as well as put down fencing to enclose them should they be something like chickens or sheep. Amongst all of this is the actual ability to send your piñatas to parties as, now and then, a crate will be given to you with the request for a certain type of piñata or just one of high worth. By packing your piñata off to a party you receive some ‘joy candy’ that makes piñatas happy in return but, what with everything else going on, this apparent ‘objective’ in the game is lost.

Graphics and audio

The artistic style of ‘Viva Piñata’ is both unique and extremely distinctive with its bold, colourful and patterned style. Whilst it may not be to everybody’s taste due to them appearing somewhat childlike it cannot be denied that, visually, ‘Viva Piñata’ is technically impressive and extremely advanced for the time it was brought out. There’s a very fine level of detail in the game that can only really be appreciate when you zoom right in as only then can you witness the growth of plants or admire the little augmentations strewn across buildings and clothing. Every blade of grass can be identified, the clouds roll by as the time ticks by in a well enforced day and night cycle and even your custom designed labels can be seen clearly on the bodies of your piñatas. Not one stone has been left unpolished and everything from the texture of the grass to the beautiful, vibrant scenery has been crafted to maintain that distinctive ‘Viva Piñata’ atmosphere. 

he music of the game is generally very soothing and not at all irritating though, for very long periods of play, it may start to grate a little. All of the Piñatas have their own individual sounds that tend to a little exaggerated such as a ‘peeping’ noise from worms or a strange, haughty honking noise from those uppity swans I mentioned earlier. The personality of the piñatas are all very well addressed in the sounds that they make but truly it’s the overall ambient noises from the gentle swishing of the wind, the hammering of the rain or the combined snuffling of your piñatas. Now and then there are some very abrasive noises such as when a sour piñata enters your garden or drops a poisoned candy but these simply serve as loud, audible warnings that something has happened and so in this sense are not particularly annoying.

Overall

Despite initial reservations ‘Viva Piñata’ is an undeniably good game with a great deal of personality and charm that’s simply hard to resist. With a very solid 30 hours or so playtime the game puts you in a position where you start caring passionately about taming all available piñatas and about making the perfect, piñata paradise. It’s an extremely casual game with some basic multiplayer support where up to four people control the same on-screen cursor and, whilst this is likely to not interest older games, is beneficial for parents and their children. Its very friendly demeanour makes it a great game for beginners with plenty of help at the beginning of the game whereas for those looking for more of a challenge I tell you this; just try and get a hold of a Dragon piñata, then tell me it’s not challenging.

The Good:

• Looks fantastic, very detailed, very vibrant
• Relaxing, casual gameplay 
• Deceptively challenging at later stages 
• Addictive and ‘collection’ orientated mentality of meeting all objectives 
• Fun for all ages 
• Unique and distinctive gameplay 
• Lovely audio and music 
• Multiple gardens a nice addition for allowing themed gardens 
• Piñatas are very charming, huge variety

The Bad:

• Co-op play limited to sharing the same cursor
• A lot less to do as you level up 
• Some autonomy happens as you employ staff making you feel a little redundant 
• Lacks any real storyline and objectives which could have given the game more structure

The Score: 8/10

Final thoughts: "This is quite possibly the best 'gardening' game I have ever played, despite there being an updated version of this game (trouble in paradise) I still find this one to be the most accessible."

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