One of the most in depth, innovative, and straight up fun games ever made
This game was really innovative for its time. Imagine Pokémon, except good and more interactive. You use normal music CDs or DVDs, place it into your Playstation, and poof a monster is born - however, you will not always get a good monster, it all just random to be honest. You can either get monsters that way, or you can buy them.. or mix two monsters together. The possibilities are limitless, not to mention that are over 100 monsters in this game for you to find/unlock/battle/create/raise.
Your monster is confined to a ball like in Pokémon, and it isn't trapped in a card like Yu-Gi-Oh. Instead, you own a ranch which your monster roams freely. As the game progresses, and you earn money and become famous, you build on to your ranch turning it into a mansion and upgrading your monsters little house.
Training is key in this game. There are many types of training which affect your monster's abilities. For instance, you can train it to be stronger, or smarter, or faster... which all help in battle. Not to mention you can go exploring, and the higher your monsters capabilities, the more likley you will find valuable items which can create rare monsters of can sell for money. On the other hand, if you dont train at all and go exploring, your monster can get lost. Ontop of that, if you spoil your monster it can die or become lazy, and if you abuse it too much it runs away... so watch what you do.
When your ready to fight, you must watch your calender for upcoming tournaments. You start off at the lowest level with the weakest monsters and lowest rewards, but as you go on the fights get harder and the stakes get higher - so really, its an incentive to train.
Like I said there are a lot of monsters in this game ranging from odd big blocks, to living sketches, to ghosts, to serpant things, ogres, golems, fairie, monkies, dragons, cyclopses, dinosaurs, etc. There are just so many to get that I guarentee you will play this game a hundred times just to see all of them.
What was cool was your monster had a life span in Monster Rancher. So after a few years (we'll say like 8 or 10, and trust me they fly by) they die. You can freeze them, and combine them with newer monsters so that way they can share abilities and become even stronger.
The graphics were pretty top notch for this game. I'm going to have to say it was some of the best the PS1 had to offer. The music was alright, but can get a little iritating and annoying after it looped like 300 times. The sound effects was where it was at. When your fighting your monsters growl, the crowds cheer, thins explode, claws scratch - it sounded great.
In conclusion, if you own a copy of Monster Rancher then you already know how great this game is. If you dont, go out and buy it.. it's cheap and will provide you with one of the best gaming experiences possible.