This week’s Nostalgia Quest is Monster Rancher 4 for the PS2!
Last night while video chatting with my sister we reminisced on some of our favorite games we played together. So how while talking about Harvest Moon we remembered dear old Monster Rancher 4. Oh how we loved that game…though we never actually beat it!!!!! We also feel like it killed the PS2…
Monster Rancher 4 released in the States on November 14, 2003. Definitely a highly anticipated game for us, we were both huge fans of the anime and the 4th installment of the game truly captured the heart of the Monster Rancher. A staple in Monster Rancher is discovering new monsters through disc, and MR4 let you use a plethora of disc to obtain a crazy amount of monsters that could not be obtains by just playing through the game… This brought about pure insanity and obsession. My sister and I were constantly searching for all kinds of disc around the house to use. We blew through a collection of PS2 games, DVDs, music CDs on what felt like a never ending quest to find rare monsters. Sure there were game forums that told you which disc gave you what, but we didn’t think about that until much later. We just relished in the anticipation of what monster each new disc we tried would create! Besides finding monsters through disc the game and an engaging story, exploration and training element.
In order to make your monsters strong enough to win tournaments you had to train them and they would only be able to train a certain amount each day or I think each week in the game world. You could also give your monsters treats to increase their love for you and it might have also helped with their stats. Also the “ranch” where you trained your monsters could get upgraded. In the beginning you are only allotted a certain amount of space to put training equipment and as you progressed through the game you gradually could put more and better equipment on your ranch for your monsters to train with. Breeding was also important to game. Breeding certain monsters would let you obtain new kinds of monsters of different colored ones and also was important to creating stronger monsters. The progression of time within the game was also important. There were tournament seasons and you had to progress through the ranks in order to become the best monster trainer. Though the progression of time was a unique feature, it was also a depressing one. Time also applied to your monsters…they aged and could die…. And without warning… Monsters had a lifespan and before it was up you had the option to freeze them, in order to use the genetic traits to attribute to breeding better monsters. But no matter how we tried we could get a monster to live long enough to train them to beat “S” rank tournament…
Sadly my sister and I quit playing the game after sister’s Garu, Amon died… it was devastating… What was so amazing about the game was the attachment you formed with your monsters. You pretty much raised them from babies and built a relationship with them…and for them to age and die was a bit too much for us… especially my sister. Also through the course of constantly trying different disc the Playstation 2 just died (though we had another one)… it just couldn’t stand processing anymore disc… RIP PS2… We have talked about replaying the game. It was definitely one of the most memorable games we played and there hasn’t been any Monster Ranchers developed in a long while nor have any been release in the US since the last 2010. Were you a fan of Monster Rancher? I’d definitely love to hear about it in the comments. Definitely would love to know if anyone beat it back then!!
luvusagi Out!
