Monster Rancher EVO for PlayStation 2 Reviews by Gamers

The Monster Rancher series has always enjoyed a cult-like following; perhaps it's the teenage "Pokemon" focus on creating and raising monsters from any CD or DVD lying around the house. Then again, it could be that PlayStation owners like playing with cute monsters they've created as much as Nintendo gamers do. Either way, Tecmo's battle sim with beasts has geared up for a fifth console game with Monster Rancher EVO, alluding to the evolution of the gameplay. Unfortunately, EVO devolves much more than it leaps forward, eschewing a number of the standard facets of the game in favor of a larger faux-RPG feel that doesn't work very well.



Significant changes have been made to the game, making the setting and formula for creating your monsters completely different than it's ever been. In previous Monster Rancher titles, you were a nameless rancher trying to make a name for yourself by raising a monster (or stable of monsters) to fight through regularly scheduled league tournaments. With a careful balance between training and battle regiments, you could gain prestige for your farm while winning awards and status for your creature.



EVO actually abandons the nameless scenario and farm system in favor of a more story driven setting in the Orcoro Circus. Players step into the shoes of Julio, a budding circus performer who also happens to be an amateur monster breeder and wrangler, raising creatures under the big top. Julio can raise multiple creatures at the same time now, handing off training responsibilities for the "animals" to his fellow circus performers. However, the training is much different than the previous games: for one, you're not simply fulfilling random tasks to upgrade your monster's stats in this title by "training". Instead, you're building up their confidence and motivation in your trainer's abilities by getting the creatures to perform tricks.



For another thing, players decide what the tricks will be by purchasing and building various "equipment" via gadgets from vendors. Depending on the combination of the gadgets, you can create beginning, intermediate or advanced tricks that will be performed during a show of the circus itself. Finally, players themselves play a much larger and more active role in the development of the monster's skills by matching up various commands in three separate kinds of mini-games. The beginning game tasks you with matching icons as they fall from the top of the screen, while the intermediate has you picking out icons as they move around a circular arena and the advanced one gets you to match button icons as they flash on the screen. Depending on how well you perform the various tasks, you can receive additional money for your troupe as well as bolstering your monster's skills. If you blow it, you can potentially hamper your monster's growth.



Unfortunately, this new showtime system sets up a ton of problems as far as helping your monsters fully develop their skills. First, and perhaps most important is the fact that you can only schedule a show once every five weeks. For some reason, regardless of how much rest you try to give your monsters, they're never in shape to perform before then. Considering that this is the only way that you can boost the levels of your monster's vital stats, you're only really getting a chance to upgrade these beasts about 10 times a year, and depending on what the creatures are in your stable, this just won't be enough to upgrade your creatures before they wind up retiring, getting seriously injured or having another significant status injury.





That leads to another problem, which is that you can rest and train your monsters with the lowest level of stress possible, and yet they'll still be subjected to injuries, sickness or other problems. Unfortunately, you're not given an estimate as to when your creatures will be better or if you'll have to replace them at some point because the problem is just too severe. Instead, you're simply informed that one of your creatures is damaged. This is particularly bad when you're just starting, because you are just forced to stick with these damaged beasts without getting the chance to get rid of them. Just get familiar with the reset button when this comes up.



Creating monsters is completely different as well. Instead of journeying over to shrines to buy, create or handle items with your CDs or DVDs, a member of the troupe, Nayuta, actively generates these creatures from a disc placed in the PS2, allowing you to spawn new beasts for your circus, give them away or combine them with fellow creatures to create new species of monster. Just about any disc will do; in fact, we used everything from CDs and movies to Xbox 360 discs to make our creatures, which allows for a large amount of creativity. By combining and generating these beasts, you can make more than 300 different kinds of monsters.



Deciding to set up a training session, a performance or new creatures can only be done at the start of each week when you schedule the tasks for your troupe. You'll also have the opportunity to go out and explore the cities that your circus sets up in, which will inevitably set up the opportunities to fight in tournaments or take on adventures to help out the townsfolk and advance the plot. Unlike the other titles where you only took one monster into the fray, you now will take three monsters out of your stable to fight against enemy creatures. Triggering attacks and launching special moves are still based on the amount of Guts that you've stored up for your monsters, but you have the opportunity to link up your creatures by putting them in a line to increase the regeneration rate of this vital resource (Think of links as morale boosts for your creatures.)



Obviously, in tournaments you're facing off against fellow monster breeders, but adventures are much different. Taking a page from the standard RPG, EVO has Julio and his creatures move through large environments, unearthing items and treasure chests, manipulating switches and fighting indigenous monsters. Successfully defeating your opponents gives your creatures points called Anima which can be used to bolster their skills and their traits, giving them new attacks or character traits. You can also use Anima to purchase special attacks known as Union Attacks, which lets all three of your beasts team up to unleash a massive strike against any opponent on the screen. Inevitably, after clearing out a large number of rooms and battling your way through enemies, you'll go up against a "boss" fight that will test the skills of your party.



The redesign of the combat system actually leads to some odd battle situations. First of all, the balance between a regular battle, a tournament battle and a final boss are radically skewed. The difficulty level of basic creatures ramps up dramatically without warning, making it very tough to beat some creatures without slogging through every map for Anima four or five times so that you can supplement your skills to give you a chance. This leads up to final bosses, whose higher levels will easily wipe the floor with your party, forcing you to start over, slowly resting and retraining your group before you try going through the scenario once again. Sure, you can warp back to these boss fights once you've reached them before, but along with the training problems and difficulty level problems I mentioned above, you're going to be easily frustrated with the repetitive nature of the gameplay.





What's worse, you can spend multiple hours performing and trying to increase your stats only to get slaughtered by some ridiculous and random monster. Oh, and can someone please tell me why you continually have to blow additional Anima points on a Union Attack when you spend it? The fact that you constantly have to repurchase this "special move" makes it a useless tactic against later bosses, who can usually shrug off its effects thanks to its increased health and stats.



Next, the tournaments, essentially the main focus of the previous titles, aren't really important anymore. For the most part, one fight is all that it takes to bypass these events, which have really been reduced to plot devices. Instead of the multiple fights you'd need to successfully clear a competition before, now one battle automatically declares you the winner of the event. While you can still engage in trials and take on missions at guilds for items and money, the concept of seeking out tournaments and testing your skills against rival monsters has been effectively replaced by the Adventure mode.



Finally, the item system that's included is relatively useless with the redesigned "RPG-like" aspect of adventuring. Each object in the EVO world has pluses and minuses to equipping it. While you can combine items to ward off the disadvantages (in effect, making the positives of the item outweigh the negatives), you're stuck with the same item as long as you're on an adventure. You're not able to heal your monsters at any time or resurrect any fallen ones, which means that if you enter an adventure and lose a beast or a ton of health, good luck making it through the rest of the fights ahead without a scratch.



Visually, EVO takes many of its cues from the Monster Rancher cartoon and other anime, so monsters and characters look a little more expressive and at times cel-shaded than they did in earlier games. Many of the attacks that monsters will release are pretty good as well, with a lot of vibrant colors, particles and other pieces of flair. The same can be said about performance tricks, which can include anything from snow to light shows. Some of the environments are impressive as well, although the camera can get lost in some objects as you're moving from one part of the map to the other. You'll also wonder why there's so few cutscenes included in the game. The only ones featured in the game revolve around Nayuta gaining some knowledge to summon a monster or performing an action with a disc back in the circus tent, which makes you wonder if there were supposed to be others and they just happened to get left out. As for the sound, it's not particularly worth your time, especially without any voice over. With a number of big top jingles and other generic music tracks and sound effects, you'll wind up tuning out this game quickly.

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