Monster Rancher DS lived up to its reputation! 3D graphics amazing for a DS game! Fun? Addiction? You got it!
Story:
The plot of the game is not as heavily as I expected it to be, but this does not stop you the gameplay. I will not spill any spoilers, other than it is the typical monster rancher story plot with a twist after you beat the game. Therefore, for anyone who wants to know the story just play the game.
The negative side of this is the non-interesting plot. It was such a bore that I kept pressing A and B just to skip the whole short and unexciting plot. I wish the plot was abit more exciting and explanatory to new monster rancher players. It felt like a digimon game where the story is not as compelling as it should be. There are rated E games that presents mature aspects of the game and I feel like they could have put some kind of betrayal or a darker side of the plot, which you get later of the game but I wanted it to be abit more early and an in depth story.
7.5/10
Graphics:
This game is filled with both 2d and 3d graphics, which was not expected from me. The 2d graphics are mostly the characters that plays a significant factor of the plot. I thought the characters were cute and I had no issues with it. The 3d part of the game are the monsters, background, attacks and crystals. Since I had only played the gameboy advance version, in my opinion the graphics was amazing.
From a DS game, I will judge it based on the DS capabilities and the graphics were able to pull it off because they looked like I expected them to be. There are over 276 types of monsters, meaning that there are 276 3d graphics monsters. If you looked closely to their pixels, you can see that the developers of the game tried hard to put many details of the monsters creating a 3d structure without making the creatures looked like blocks of boxes combined to creature a 3d figure, such as sims 2 for ds. The Attacks were simple and stayed true to what they are named for, such as inferno was an attack where a Dragon spits a blast of fire and if the opponent dodges it, it shows dodging it compare to pokemon where you only get a scripture saying that you have missed your attack. In the end, the graphics were amazing for a DS game.
9/10
Sounds:
The sound is very catchy, and gives you a positive feeling while you are playing the game. I have played the game for more than 30 hours of gameplay and I have not yet become tired nor annoyed of the sound and I usually does not like childish like music, but their music is pretty amazing.
I wish the music varied a lot, or a selection of sound tracks would have been nice, but then again I have never knew a DS game that lets you do that. Many reviewers say that the music is repetitive, then I ask them this. Isn't the music of all the games repetitive? I dislike close minded reviewers who does not pay attention in the other games that they have played and this hypocrisy makes them less credible on their review in my opinion. It's a matter of the an endurable music or not. Pokemon have had the same music or similar music throughout it's franchise and I have never heard of any reviewers discounting it's music as a factor.
8.5/10
Gameplay:
The gameplay is very simple and easy to catch on, but if you observed and try create a creature that is strong enough to get over 400 overall stats. The game becomes very in depth and creates a complex structure in acquiring many of the stronger monsters than the ordinary beginner ones. I think this part of the game is meant for the monster rancher fans that have been playing the game since the PS1 version, where raising a monster and obtaining stats, techniques, and traits are heavily revolved into playing another player's monsters.
The creation factors of this game is very creative, using both touch screen and voice activation which are present in the DS and is not heavily used as they should be in other DS games. I find this a complete usage of the DS capabilities for many DS players still use the original and DS lite giving them a fair match against the DSi which has a camera. You can draw something creative and if it is one of the secret drawings or drawn in such a way, that you will most likely get a creature with a question mark as a sub breed which represents the secret part of it.
The battles of this game is based on a percentage of how much it would likely hit; this has also been added with the dodge rate and blocking rate of the opponent's creature. It can be very frustrating at times because even though you have an 84 percent chance of hitting them. You can still miss which can lead to your loss when you fight higher grade world cups. This just demonstrates that the gameplay is mixed with luck and strategy giving an edge to new players against hardcore fans players or hard, high stats monster creatures.
I have no issues in connecting monsters with a different DS and I have done it more than 5 times. Unless you are using an unlicensed version of the game then that may caused you with some issues. I cannot say this to everyone, but i have no issues in connecting other players.
The negative side of this game is the lack of obvious changes of the barn, which i would have liked. Maybe additional customization of the barn making it more visualize and additional mini games such as training your monsters, minigames could have been added but this will break away from the classic form of game that made this game popular. I am not saying that my ideas would work rather than suggesting it. Many DS have presented a wi-fi feature which this one lacks. I believe that this happened because tecmo wanted to give monster rancher chance to play the game in english and nothing more.
9.5/10
Overall:
This game is fun and addicting and lately I feel that many reviewers go with the hype of the game or they are biased due to the games popularity, which make them forget that all games are simple yet complex. I recommend buying this game and if you want to spend hours in a journey training your monster to be the best. With great graphics and an enlightenment sound and a full function usage of DS capabilities. This creates a good game for a DS game and will make you spend countless hours to be the best and beat your friend's monster or the 4 heavenly gods.
8.5/10
Closing:
I challenge Kristine Steimer's review of Monster Rancher DS. I feel that reviewers like her fail to see how good a game can be. It may not be popular as pokemon, but this should not have affected the game itself. Pokemon is a "collect 'em all" game yet I have not seen anyone review it badly. The music in pokemon is very similar to the past games, and all the franchise, other than the spin-offs All you do is doing the similar things you do in monster rancher, but rather growing stats by mainly battling other pokemons, this game makes you train them and all you do is choose a move to hit your opponent which is similar to monster rancher, except they have a hit rate rather than hitting them directly. You also gain stats from battling if the train bores you, just like pokemon.
It's unpopularity does not make it hard to find monster rancher players in the area. I am sorry, but I fail to see your logic in explaining what the game really is and I bet she only spent less than 10 hours of gameplay of the game which makes her credibility low. This simple, straight forward game demonstrates that even simple games can be fun and addicting. Next time you do a review please spend at least 15 hours of gameplay and try not to be biased. Reviews are meant to guide players in both good and bad aspects of the game, not based on popularity when a lot of popular games are very similar to the game you are rating. I feel that ignorance and the lack of knowledge of the whole game as itself creates a benighted reviewer who talks about the game from the first impression rather than the whole game itself.