PlayStation 2

Monster Rancher 4

Roughly seven years ago, the developers at Tecmo released a very interesting game for the Sony Playstation known as Monster Rancher. This RPG/Fighting game allowed players to assume the role of an eager young monster trainer who creates and raises his pocket monsters to become the best of the best in a Pokemon-like world where monster fighting reigns supreme. While this seemed like a strange concept at the time, the Monster Rancher series has managed to spawn three great sequels spanning over 2 consoles and continues to be among the best of its genre, wacky or not.

Is it just us, or is nearly every review ever written for the Monster Rancher series always prefaced with the line "this isn't for everyone?" As true as that statement may actually be, the game is obviously appealing to somebody because over the last two generations, all four of the Japanese Monster Farm titles have been released in North America. And while we're definitely quick to agree that it'll never achieve the same widespread popularity that games such as Grand Theft Auto or Halo have enjoyed, it certainly makes us wonder how many hidden fans this franchise really has. Because for a game that isn't supposed to have a lot of mainstream appeal, it's certainly doesn't act the part.

Lately, it seems as though the card game and a lot of the video game industry have been dominated by the “pocket monster” style of titles, and kids or grownups nowadays have access to everything from Pokemon to Digimon to Yu-Gi-Oh. Back a few years ago before all of this hype really seemed to take off here in the states, Tecmo released a really fun, addictive, and at first overlooked title called Monster Rancher for the Playstation system, which allowed players to not only raise but create their own monsters from CD’s or PSX disks. Here we are past 2000 and long after the launch of what could probably be dubbed as the original U.S. pocket monster release for video game systems, and Tecmo has now released Monster Rancher 4 for the PS2 system to show that they are still one of the best in the business.

I hate Monster Rancher. No other series turns me into such a complete vegetable, helpless to do anything but sit in front of my PlayStation 2 devoting hours upon hours the way this one does. I'm usually a very responsible guy, but this game made me late for work, delay much-needed showers, skip meals, and put off anything that wasn't staring me dead in the face. As a matter of fact, I even turned this review in late, and it was all because I kept telling myself "I need to win just one more tournament."

Since the beginning of the series in 1997, Tecmo’s Monster Rancher franchise has always been almost exclusively about gameplay, with the “story” thrown in as an afterthought. In Monster Rancher 4, however, the series takes a bit of a different twist -- for the first time, a Monster Rancher game features an actual story, with actual characters! Or at least, that was Tecmo’s big promise...

The original Monster Rancher came out at a time when it was perfectly primed to take advantage of the burgeoning popularity of Pokemon. Since 1997, the series has amassed a sizable following with multiple sequels spanning the PlayStation, PS2, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance. With the exception of Monster Rancher Battle Cards: Episode II, every game in the franchise has proven to be genuinely entertaining pocket monster-esque diversions. Monster Rancher 4 for the PS2 is no exception. While retaining the ever-popular method of generating different types of monsters using random CDs and DVDs, MR4 gets back to the roots of the series and keeps the proceedings straightforward and fun. Fans of the Monster Rancher games and newcomers alike should find the fourth game to be an enjoyable experience, though it is a bit simplistic.

Kissing cousins to the Pokémon series, Tecmo's Monster Rancher games have, over the years, managed to set themselves apart from Nintendo's pocket monsters with a greater focus on training and arena fighting and with a unique character creation system, which uses data read from a CD or DVD to determine what type of monster you get. Though Monster Rancher 3 made some pretty sweeping changes to the series' formula, Monster Rancher 4 ignores most of them and takes things back to basics. The resulting game is one that will please fans of Monster Rancher, but won't do much for players unfamiliar with the series.