When all those monster collection games saw this game, they must have sh*t their pants.
Now I'm not very far into this game but I can tell you that it takes about 5 minutes of playing this game to become completely enthralled in the world. You actually give two sh*ts about your monster and the battles can be really quite intense.
This is not to say that this game has its flaws, for example, I was in town exploring the monsters of my cd collection when all of a sudden I realized that the headache I had was due to the fact that the music is incredibly abrasive and terrible. I had this same experience with Pokemon so I now wonder if it isn't that monster battle games just automatically have a bad music complex, just like shooters automatically have a giant pulsating testosterone complex and real time strategy games automatically have a really f*cking arrogant complex. The game also has a lot of dialogue, which would not really be a problem if it wasn't that I had to go through like 4 seconds of windows every time I want to do anything, which doesn't sound like a lot but when it adds up (and it does) your skipping through the same words for like half the f*cking time. On top of that there isn't really much of a plot to this game (like every monster game) so its not like the dialogue is advancing the story, its kind of like how you always had to wait that 15 seconds for the nurse at the pokemon centre to shut up, great for the first time when you need to know, but f*ck, after another eight times it loses the novelty.
If you are ready to play a game that you will not stop playing for a LONG time, then look in your vintage game store for this one. You'll play til a monster dies and then you'll get so sad and frustrated you'll break it and immediately regret it.