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Graphics are average( my one star should be ??? )

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 22
Date: November 22, 2001
Author: Amazon User

If u have read November's Nintendo power, there are pictures of the upcoming Monster Rancher Advance game. The graphics are kinda shaky though

Monster Rancher

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: February 12, 2007
Author: Amazon User

At first I thought, hmmm... a game where you train and raise virtual monsters, AWESOME!!! Then I actually got the game and was thrilled by it. Cute monsters that you could spend hours finding by putting in random letters, symbols and letters. Then when you find a monster you like, you take it to the ranch and train it using one of around ten pre-programmed coaches. Each raises a stat in a certain area, although some also lower X stat.Then I had to turn it off for some reason (I forget exactly what). When I was ready to play it again I turned it on and hit continue. It just made a sound that sounded like a buzzer and wouldn't let me resume game play. There was ABSOLUTELY NO visible way to save. I thought it was just a one time glitch and started again. This happened again and again. Once I lost a Rank A monster because of this. If Tecmo EVER decides to release another version of this game, they should put a SAVE option! I hate starting over!!! Sometimes when you enter random codes to get a monster you get one of three 'locked monsters' that you have to beat later in the game to allow you to raise them. It makes me wonder why they even put them into the game at the beginning in the first place. My third complaint is that there are not many ways to get items there are about four, but I might be forgetting some: 1:your monster gives them to you. 2: You beat a stray monster and it drops one. 3: You pay unreasonable prices to get one from Crow, although most of the items he sells serve little/no purpose for the price. 4: You manage to win first place a once a year tournament and get a wood box, iron box, silver box or gold box. The battles take about a minute and once you start battling another monster there's no way to stop or pause the battle until you finish it. In most battle games, like Pokemon if you need to take a break to check on something you're cooking or a screaming toddler or something like that, you just leave it on the attack screen without choosing a command. In this game, you either put it down and most likely lose as your monster can't attack without you, KO the enemy (which is often hard to do) or wait to attend to whatever needs attending until the battle is over. The time frame is VERY unrealistic, I mean, would a monster REALLY take a week to run under rocks and get points in speed or understand another monster talking with odd symbols? I wouldn't mind restarting every time I played it, other than those facts, except for the fact that it takes AT LEAST five minutes to input a name for your character AND listen to a lot of pointless talking. It's interesting the first time, but honestly after having to start over twenty million times, it gets boring and annoying. If you or your child or grandchild or neice or nephew or anybody you know wants something you can take care of and nurture, I suggest a Tamagotchi. They are a lot less frustrating than this and the characters are still very cute, although they don't battle.

Portable Monster Rancher

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 10 / 15
Date: November 24, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I loved the first three Monster Rancher so I imported the game boy advance version from Japan. Its still as sweet as ever. It's basicly the same old fun but they had to take of some stuff. That doesn't mean it's bad. It's really good. My ONLY problem was slightly dated graphics. If you loved the other monster Ranchers then you'll love this one. Don't miss it.

Cool Game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: January 02, 2002
Author: Amazon User

This was the game I bought with my GBA. It is alright.

Graphics:7-10 The graphics are okay but they can be better. The monsters are animated from a one view (which isn't all that good).

Gameplay:8-10 The gameplay can be boring at times. To me the most eciting parts are just creating monsters and battling in the cups and tournements. At the ranch all you do is train. The most exciting part at the ranch is when mail comes.

The Monsters:10-10 They are really cool. You create them using any word. They become very loyal. There are quite a few different monsters.

All Together:10-10 The game is pretty good. Music can get annoying. I recommend this game to new buyers.

Quick, but long-lasting fun

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: June 14, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I too was surprised by how much fun this game is, after dismissing the early parts of the Monster Rancher series as too 'kiddie'. Basically, you revive a monster by inputting any word of your own choosing into a computer. The word creates a monster and determines its stats. There are a ton of monsters to discover using this method, so it might take you a while to revive one you like.

After picking your partner, you train him by sending him to coaches that train specific stats like strength, speed and accuracy, and by having him battle in tournaments for different prizes. Eventually, your monster will become too old to be good in a fight, but old monsters can become new coaches, and you can begin the process all over again with newer, more powerful monsters that you've unlocked through word experimentation and gameplay.

This is a great game to take with you. The game saves itself in between turns, so you can make progress in a matter of seconds, save your game, and go back about your business.

All in all, I am very impressed with MRA.

A barely known classic for the Advance...

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: January 10, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Since I purchased this game (one of the first three games I purchased with my Gameboy Color years ago), I've gone on to own Monster Rancher Advance 2 and am now waiting on Monster Rancher 1 for the Playstation 1 system to come in the mail. This should tell you a little of my feelings regarding the game.

Yes, it's a tad repetitious, but then, aren't RPG games in general? You do a lot of the same events again and again to advance further in the plot. In the beginning, you are a monster trainer in charge of turning a Monster Ranch around. You create a monster based on a random set of characters (anything from Blob to z?z!j) and you'll get a monster. There are hundreds of different monsters you can create, with about twenty primary species, so you can always be sure to get a monster to suit your fancy.

Basically, you just train your monster, training it in Strength, Defense, Agility, and so on. Your monster fights in battles against other trainers and other monsters to give it experience points and rare items. As you progress higher, you can create certain kinds of rare monsters not allowed to you in the beginning of the game. You have to be careful with training your monster, as it can get tired or stressed and not respond to commands as much.

There are a few random events in the game, however several of them are silly and mean nothing to you, the player. Just silly interactions between different characters in the game. Also, the type of food that you feed your monster doesn't seem to really have a significant effect on it. Honestly, I would suggest getting Monster Rancher 2 for the Advance, if you're going to get an Advance game. But as I got this game before the sequel was out, I owned it first. It's a quality game that will easily give you 50-100 hours of gameplay. It's a little bit older game, so you might have a hard time finding it. But believe me, it's a treasure.

great game!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 30 / 31
Date: December 09, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Thsi is a great game! It is very similair to Monster Rancher 2 for PS1. You generate a monster buy putting in a word and it uses the word to generate the monster. Each time you get a new monster it adds it to your book and the word you need used generate it. Any word will work! That is one of the funnest things in the game it typing in weird words to see what you get.You train your monsters to battle in tournaments so you can make them stronger and earn money. You must feed and care for your monster too. There are even little events that pop up once in a while in the game where you can get useful items or get bargain. Your monsters can battle until they are 3-4 years old and then you can just retire them or make them a coach! You can have multi[le monsters by freezing them(putting them into hibernation) and reviving them. I would say the graphics aren't so bad once you get to playing them game(hey it is a LOT better than the original GB or GBC!).If you are a fan of Monster Ranchn garantee you will like this!

A pleasant surprise

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 18 / 19
Date: January 31, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I received my Game Boy Advance as a Christmas gift, along with three games. Lego Racers 2 was fun for a while, but quickly lost its appeal. Frogger's Adventures was amusing, too, but failed to capture my attention. Monster Rancher Advance, on the other hand, has found itself a real home in my GBA.

I'll admit that upon first inspection, I didn't imagine that Monster Rancher would be all that great. It looked juvenile, 'cutesy'. Upon playing it, however, I discovered that the game is actually quite challenging for adults. There are no magical instructions for success included with the game...my first monster went hungry for months because I ran out of money to buy it food. Even after weeks of steady playing (just ask my wife), I'm still discovering new strategies and features. Doubtless I'll find more to come.

There are a few things I'd change, of course. The music becomes tiresome quickly, and there's no way to silence it without losing the other sound effects. Some of the 'dialogue' gets repetitive, too, but there are enough random events to keep things interesting.

All in all, though, this is the best game I've played for GBA!

The fun from the Playstation version continues on GBA

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: July 17, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Monster Rancher and Monster Rancher 2, both achieved success on the Playstation thanks to Nintendo's achievements with Pokemon. As with the two previous Monster Rancher games, Monster Rancher Advance allows you to breed, train, and battle a wide variety of monsters. In the previous two games, you could use a CD of any sort to bring a monster to life. In the GBA version you instead input a combination of letters, symbols, and numbers. At first, not all monster species are available for you to use. As you progress through the game and win special tournaments, you earn the right to train higher species. Along with training your monster for battle, you may combine it with other monsters, earn money from tournaments, fight off wild monsters, and do other miscellaneous tasks. The graphics on this game are excellent. All the monsters are very well detailed and exhibit excellent animations. The play control is almost non existent. All it consists of is navigating through menus, and going through battles which is all very simple. The sound/music is standard fair. There's not much to it, but it's interesting enough to keep you from turning the volume down. The game design is clever and well thought out. Always interesting, at times it can be impossible to put the game down. It's not quite an RPG, but it provides the hours of game play that an RPG has. It's a great solid title that can be enjoyed by anyone.

Monster rancher is a good game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: December 28, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I'm a monster rancher fan and i have played most of the monster rancher games and his is not queit the best one. This version of monster rancher has some monsters taken out like the wheel or plants and dogs but this game is really great its replay value is great I SUGGEST to not beat this game early and dont cheat it will ruin the funness and but even if you beat the game early its replay value will kick in thats why i give this game a 10/10

GAME CONTENT
Generate and raise monsters from words
Train and battle
Earn money and gain in rank and get permission to raise special monsters

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