Monster Rancher 2 is the second game in the Monster Rancher series and was exclusive for the Playstation 1.

Although I haven't played Monster Rancher 1, the second game is definitely worth your time. This game is simple, you breed over 400 unique monsters, train them to join tournaments to fight other monsters.

The unique thing about this is that in order to produce monsters, you need to use CDs whether it's another playstation CD, audio CD or even DVDs.

Warning, players tend to get very addicted to this game the moment you start playing this.

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Characters

You are the main character here, the breeder and the trainer at the same time. The camera is in first person view so you won't be able to see your face or anything like that.

Character Creation Page

And after creating the characters, you will be asked 10 personality questions to determine what kind of trainer are you that doesn't really matter in the game.

Colt

She will be your assistant in breeding monsters no matter what your answers were in the test, in fact she is the one who is more like the main character than you because she talks most of the time lol.

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Story

This game has a long story but non linear to the game.

Start Screen

When a tremendous catastrophe hit the earth, men were afraid so they prayed for God's help. So God created the monsters which eventually became bad and turned against humans so he sealed them to disc stones and trapped each monster forever.

After a long time, a group of excavators discovered the first disc stone and took it to the temple where priests with ancient knowledge successfully revived the monster.

Soon, many more disc stones were found and thus the beginning of using monsters to help men and eventually training them to fight one another.

I remember playing this on a computer shop and played countless hours breeding and trying a lot of CDs hoping to get cool looking monsters.

You start with creating your character and the game ends once you win the 4 highest tournament battles which is almost next to impossible.

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Graphics

During the PS1 era, most of 3D games weren't that good. But there are some exceptions and Monster Rancher 2 is one of them. Each monster that you get has different animations that will certainly not make you bored. You also have the option of changing your monster anytime.

During Battle

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Sound

The music here is not that phenomenal but I can say good enough. Each music per stage fits the mood like when you're in your ranch, the sound is calm and slow, the marketplace has an exciting but a bit slow sound and when battling against other monsters, the music fits the arena as the 2 monsters fight plus the crowd gets involved too with their shouts. Even each monster has its own sounds.

Ranch Music

Source

Battle Music

Source

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Gameplay

Unlike Pokemon where players catches the monsters and travel to different areas to look for battle or random encounters, this game is a bit different where in breeding is a big part of the game.

Breeding

You feed your monster at the start of every month and there's a lot of options to choose from.

And while on the ranch, the most important thing to do is train your monster to become stronger in order to beat your opponents during battle.

Like this domino training to increase the attacking power of your monster making their physical attacks stronger.

And finally, there's a special kind of training for monsters to increase their abilities tremendously and acquire new techniques.

After a few training, resting is a big part of the game especially before during a tournament so that your monster will be in top shape when fighting.

Oh and I forgot, when your monster gets a few years old, it's possible it might pass away so you'll have to start again. During this period, make sure to save often or combine the monster with another monster to retain some of its abilities.

Battle

Most battles are in a round robin format like the picture below. There are also tournaments that are in an elimination format.

At the start of battle, you will see the abilities of you and your opponent to see and devise strategy on how you can beat them.

And winning a few tournaments will increase your rank for stronger opponents and better rewards. This one is the lowest rank battle, rank E.

Controls

The controls during breeding is easy, you just have to choose the commands that you want your monster to do and pressing circle will give a brief explanation of the command.

But the battle controls are a bit of slow especially moving your monster. The attack has a good response though.

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Overall

The game is very fun and addicting. The fact that there's over 300 kind of monsters to breed, plenty of training to choose, tournaments for every rank and so much more.

If you're into virtual pets and battles, this is absolutely one of the best games to play.

Replay would be a lot. There are players even today who still plays this game because of almost endless combinations of monsters to breed and train.

There's an anime from this game too that is quite good.

All photos without source were taken from my PS Vita

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