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Okay, maybe it's an old addiction resurfacing, but this game Rocks! It's definately the best of the series. Once again, you can have the enjoyment of digging out every single CD and DVD you have ever owned and plop them in one by one to see what Monster they create. Pick your monster, raise and train them to be strong or quick or intelligent, and battle other monsters in the Arena for cash and prizes galore! See how long it takes you to get a Class S monster, or an entire stable of them!

All of your old favorite monsters are back in this version, as well as several interesting new ones. There is still the chance to make variations on the basic monster, but this time instead of mixing two monsters together, you take your monster to one of the unlockable training areas and your monster adapts to that terran!
Train your monster underwater and he develops water-based powers. Train him in the desert and he gets rock and sand-based powers. Other terrans include Forest, Jungle, Ice, and one that for now remains a , which I'm hoping will be revealed as I continue unlocking terran. Unfortunately, it seems that your monster will only have 2 or 3 chances to make these adaptations in his lifetime, the first when it reaches 9months old. I've not yet seen if they can adapt more than once.

But the best part is the reward you get for allowing your monster to die. In the prior games, the death of a good monster meant losing everything you'd put into it. All the training and hard work gone, plus losing the chance to mix it in the hopes of a stronger baby monster. In #3, when a monster dies, all of its stats and ablities are stored in a 'Heart' gemstone. When you give your new baby monster this Heart, 1/4 of the dead monster's stats are added to the baby's totals, as well as gaining additional attacks modeled on the dead monster's abilities!
What does this mean for you? When your Level S Monster with Life 800 and 4 attacks dies, you feed your baby monster his heart and baby now has Life 200 and at least 1 new attack!

Now, the down sides.
You will spend many hours playing this game, wanting 'just one more week', or 'I'll stop when they reach X'. You will grow to love your monster to the point you don't want to leave.
The training clips are fun the first few viewings, then they get old. Luckily you can skip them, but you will stil be spending a lot of time training your monster up to maximum levels.
Yet again, you have a cutesy young girl helping you train. Yes, she's still annoying. You also have Rival Breeders who stop by occassionally to Talk, Trade, or Battle with you. Sometimes they actually have good advice or nice trades. Other times they're just annoying. Especially in Arena battles where they think their monsters are the best shit around. It's fun watching them lose.
"Baldur's Gate" for PC, "BG: Shadow of Amn", "Icewind Dale", and "NeverWinterNights Gold" all give you the basic Mocchi monster, a little pink and green soft squishy monster that was introduced in Monster Rancher 2.. It seems to be a BlackIsle thing, maybe because of copy protection or some other code on their discs. The "Baldur's Gate" soundtrack gives you a basic Suezo, the one-eyed monster with the long tail and longer tongue. Both monsters I consider to be good opponents, but nothing I'd ever consider raising.


Still, all in all, I highly recommend Monster Rancher 3, especially now that it's available for $20 in most stores. It's a very fun little game that has a lot to offer.

Hmm...now the real question is what makes the best critters. Really awesome games, to reward that they're really awesome, or the worst of the worst, the whole 'damn, you bought that? We've got to give you SOMETHING to redeem it.'

White Haven wrote:Hmm...now the real question is what makes the best critters. Really awesome games, to reward that they're really awesome, or the worst of the worst, the whole 'damn, you bought that? We've got to give you SOMETHING to redeem it.'

The FinalFantasy series gives you Awesome Monsters, if that tells you anything.

I played part 2 before, but gave up because of the whole lifespan thing.

Now it's a good idea and all, but the lifespans are too short, IMO. It seems just as I'm getting them where I want/need them to be, they get too old to keep going. I also didn't like how you could only work on one at a time.

SAMAS wrote:I played part 2 before, but gave up because of the whole lifespan thing.

Now it's a good idea and all, but the lifespans are too short, IMO. It seems just as I'm getting them where I want/need them to be, they get too old to keep going. I also didn't like how you could only work on one at a time.

Monsters still live only 3 years gametime, however the new "Heart" mechanic makes it far easier to raise a monster's stats to where it can breeze up the Class Levels.

Personally, I think it's best that you can only work one monster at a time. While you can freeze/hibernate up to four monsters, I feel you lose the closeness you get from having one 'baby' at a time.

OH! I nearly forgot!!

The Encylepedia of Monsters fills with each new monster you own, and once you have a monster filed, you can Regenerate it from the Enclyepedia instead of searching for the CD/DVD that gave you that one in the first place!

Also, the Encylepedia gives you the option of looking over the stats of each monster, so if you find the same monster on another disc with better stats or more attacks available at birth, you have the option of replacing the listed monster with the better one.

I've pretty much given up on this game (planning on trading it in), but...

NAMCO discs tend to be better monsters, IIRC. Gran Turismo 3 gives a unique lizard (Zoom). One of the Fresh Aire discs (III, I think) is one of the unlockable monsters (either Jester or Zann).

I have both of the origionals. I'd cheat and use a gameshark to get a full encyclopedia, but it was usually worth it with all the nifty monsters.

I'll have to look around, but I remember that using the original Dead or Alive game in MR 2 got you a Pixie based off of Kasumi from the DoA series, the Rush Hour Soundtrack got you a Kung-Fu Bunny, and the Titanic Soundtrack got you a monster called Ocean Liner. Does anybody know if they've put similarly obvious matches in this game?

I still want to see what the Equilibrium DVD spits out.