/v/ - Video Games

>>16721381

While Digimon's success is likely part of it, it's also that the mammoth mogul Pokemon is shitting the bed so fucking hard, other companies are seeing people scouring for other monster raising sims and companies are going

>"Oh yeah, we own this, don't we? What do the fans say?"

FUCKING GIMMIE!

>"Well, lets re-release an older title and see what happens."

>>16721929

>Amiibos

I mean, it's possible, but I'd think they would do something else. Perhaps book entries or even a password system like the DS games.

I recall some game that was brought forward and had a function that was impossible to use on the new hardware, so the "emulator" they used to make it work would just fill in the data by the player using a password of some sort. I'm not sure what it was though.

>>16723438

Because the information was being built in the early 00. Part of what happened was that Lisa's dedication got her foot in the door as a western contact for Tecmo. Once that happened, anytime ANY other site beyond hers that had any deeper information could be cited as "stealing information" and shut down. This was to hoard it all to her web page, despite the thing being so fucking archaic, unable to handle photos of any sort and not even able to be moderated properly.

This lead to the current sea of fan pages that have NO information and next to no images of the species and no Disk lists.

>>16724471

i heard stories about this, wasn't there a psonemini and a little screen you could put on it?

>>16724247

>Honestly haven't delved into Monster Rancher myself, but while on the topic, is there any particular reason MR4 is a good $55+ complete these days? Just asking since I've noticed before it seems inordinately pricy for a monster sim that isn't Pokemon or Digimon. The others seem a good bit lower, at least where I live. Was it a good entry that simply came out when there wasn't as much interest in the series or something?

Rancher 4 had a very interesting mechanic where you could raise up to 5 monsters at any one time and went with a more solidified model structure of the monsters as opposed to the cell shading of Rancher 3. You could also personally construct the layout of the training machines, could go on adventures. It also was t he last console mainline rancher game as the game that came after it, Evo, was very different.

>>16730216

The biggest waste of mechanics was the whole "speed/power/crit" performance of attacks depending on what button you pressed ,and the counter mechanic, which made late game battles nearly impossible since the AI would just read your attacks and counter you.

>>16730546

>Getting lost in the ruins

Monsters had a percentage listing in Rancher one: the lower their skill and intelligence, the more easily they would get lost. You had to learn that you needed to prep for the expeditions (they happen the second week after every official tournament after you reach C rank).

>Secret monsters are a bitch to get

Yes, yes they are:

>Dragon

<get monster to B rank

<find a cup where a dragon is in it

<beat it

<get to A rank

<will get invited to a 1 on 1 fight vs a dragon that will throttle your shit

<win and get Dragon Tusk combining item

<combine a Grape (Dino with Naga sub) with a Stinger (Naga with Dino sub)

<get dragon

>Magic

<have to have a REALLY FUCKING SMART monster when you go to the snow ruins

<have to find several hidden paths and a building really far from everything else

<find Old Mirror

<Old master tells you that it's used in combining with two specific monsters

<he'll tell you if you beat the Magic in this one cup

<beat it

<combine Purebred Gali with Purebred Monol

<get magic

>Ape

<find banana in jungle

<raise two monsters

<make both spoiled

<combine both with banana

<get Ape

>Henger

YOU WANT THE BEST MONSTER EVER? STRAP YOUR SHIT IN, MOTHERFUCKER

<go to desert

<find three doll parts in the close buildings

<in one building way the fuck away, will find last doll part

<make sure you clear the pathway to the tablet

<when you have all 4 parts, you'll get invited to a tournament where you fight a henger

<win and they give you the 5th part of the doll

<go back to desert with a monster who has 800 intelligence and read the tablet

<the monster gets a mark

<mix that monster with any other monster + the doll and you get your henger.

There is still the Nya, Ghost, and Doodle to unlock, same with the Disk. Man this shit is right out of those bullshit stories you'd hear on the playground.

>>16732777

TRIPS DEMAND I ANSWER

It is a good entry, the monsters look great, techniques are awesome, there are boss fights where you use three monsters in rotation, and such. That said:

>5 monsters is unfeasible and cumbersome, 3 should be your max and at that, this is to form the bonding function so that when they are old enough, you can mix them for best stat gains

>don't bother trying to counter the opponent, you'll just beef the incoming attack even if it would have missed

>there is an unfortunate mechanic where the game will make the gains for your monster total shit until you win an official tournament, so you can't sandbag, get bitching stats, then dominate the tournament structure

>the only way to gain new techniques is by doing expeditions and defeating wild monsters. This is't too bad as it WILL give you techniques and if you keep raising monsters of that type through that bloodline, you'll retain most of the techniques, but it's a slog if you're using a monster that's shit at a certain field skills

So yeah, it's pretty darn good, though not perfect. Seriously, when you praise your first Jell, you'll very likely go "AWWWW!"

>>16732777

I FORGOT!

>expeditions REQUIRE three monsters

MONSTERS DO NOT DIE IN THIS GAME

Instead, they will reach "retirement age" where they STOP gaining stats. This is basically where you can still build bonding with your other monsters (hence the 3 monster formation). You use this "old fart" to raise the monster who you fused earlier, along with the new baby monster, get them techs and bond to them, then it could bond with them and you can then make it fuse with the new baby while the previous mix monster is super powerful.

Combine this with generational stat and tech rollover and it's pretty easy to eugenic your way into a team of three gigga nigger monsters that can gank any dungeon.

ALSO!

>after you beat the story, you can do Dungeon+ missions

>Dungeon + missions have harder monsters that give more EXP, better rewards, and the bosses return

>by beating the Bosses+, you can get Sacred disks

>these can contain ??? monsters, so you can still get them in your book and generate them at the shrine to raise them

I get the feeling there is something else I'm forgetting, but can't remember it at the moment.

>>16733977

Actually you only need to:

>Get purebred monol fame to 80

>fight in a low rank tournament and withdraw from all fights

>fame ends up in the toilet

>graffiti happens

>mix it to get a Doodle

ALSO

>there is a low chance that instead of getting a doodle, you'll get a Sketch, which is a ??? sub breed Doodle with glasses

But yeah, MR2 was merciless:

>Need to reach A rank before a certai nitem shows up in the item store

>didn't do it?

>lol you'll NEVER get the mock

Permanently missable shit will never fail to make me furious.

>>16735808

>>16735853

Rancher 4 has a failsafe where the Rancher 4 disk is, in fact, a Pandora disk. This will give you a different monster every month (if I remember correctly), so you'll still get some cool shit.

ALSO THE THING I FORGOT

When you mix monsters in Rancher 4, you can PICK WHAT COMES OUT OF THE MIX

>mix pixie with joker base with Golem with dragon base

>don't want a pixie

>don't want a golem

>choose to get a Dragon with a Joker base

it makes the game have a lot more options.

>>16739137

The rancher games were masters of hiding key mechanics from the player, and when you learned them, you suddenly became amazing at the game.

But yeah, raise just one monster until they let you have 3, make sure all 3 have the same timetable IE: train, train, train, rest, train, rest. Doesn't matter if you get a baby and they start on a Rest or Train week, just make sure you praise/scold accordingly and be sure to have many food options. Again, easier the longer the game goes on.

Some more pointers:

>While there are locked monsters, they are usually just locked behind story segments and are not hard to unlock (usually they go "You're not at a high enough rank to be trusted with this monster" and "Weird… you should get this monster but some sort of PTSD is preventing you from allowing it to come out of the disk…"

>You can go on expeditions ANYTIME you want

>some monsters have unique field skills during expeditions (though some need to be gained via level up).

>This is anything from digging in holes to find treasure, to swimming, to even letting you ride the monster over hazards

>your only limit is a universal stamina that is larger the stronger your three monsters are

REMEMBER

>Pick one monster species you intend to have for a VERY long time. This will be a generational monster that will end up as a cornerstone of your entire ranch.

Also, neat thing is that if you use the MR1 disk in MR4, you'll unlock a Zuum with a ??? base which is the dino from Rancher 1

>>16739333

Scolding is on a per-performance basis. You look at the monster during the "free time"

>is it sitting around not doing anything?

>PUNISH

>is it working but taking breaks because it's exhausted?

>check and see if it needs food

It's fairly simple and after a while, you'll get the hang of it.

>>16739394

I believe so. I think I had it set up to be like:

>train

>train

>train

>rest

>rest

I think that was what I had, and would usually do exploring and such after the first rest. Just make sure you pay attention to your monster's reactions and hunger and don't try to rush anything.

>>16739448

right, and as I said, it's been a bit since I hooked up my PS2 and played it.

>>16739465

Always nice biting those folks in the ass.

My father loaned my copy of Metroid Prime 1 and Pikmin 1 to someone (when I specifically gave them to him to play and experience them, he never did) and when I wanted them back, he "couldn't find them". i grilled him about it until he finally admitted that he let someone else borrow them and then keep the games in exchange for something else (comics or some shit) and he planned to re-buy the games used later since "I wasn't missing them". That bit him in the ass hard when both Pikmin 1 and Prime 1 were hot sellers and a used copy didn't fucking exist for under $50.

I did eventually get new copies of them but I got them myself because I didn't trust him holding an IOU over my head.

>>16721381

>>16721396

Think Square Enix will cash in? DQM is huge so i'd be surprised if they didn't make another one soon.

>>16739641

Oh I have no doubt, especially with DQ already hot to trot and showing up in smash bros.

>>16739660

Filter and move on. He came here strictly for (you)'s

>>16739847

Pokemon had a death grip on the genre, thus other companies didn't put too much effort into monster games hen "it'll just lose to pokemon", but pokemon fucked up hard and people are shouting "hey, gimmie some MONSTER GAMES." And all these companies are going "well shit… what happens if I dust off this old thing and put it into the market?"

Best part is that this will cause a cascade effect on pokemon as a whole.

A beautiful thing is that shareholders watch the money very closely.

Pokemon makes it's money as roughly:

- 10% anime and misc programs

- 20% games

- 70% merchandise with the pokemon brand slapped on it (plushies, toys, cards, pants, shirts, hats, socks, etc).

Initially, this looks like if the games flop, nothing happens…

HOWEVER, the truth is that the games are some of the biggest advertising because, lets face it, very few people watch the anime. But people get the games because they like their legacy pokemon and want to take them into a new world.

Pokemon wants to cut this out and never again let you "catch them all" as part of their perpetual game of fucking the player out of content and make each game "unique."

This will bite hard and I'm seeing the results already:

Notice the lack of pokemon art of the new pokemon since the treehouse interview that exposed this issue?

Yeah, the games selling poorly will reflect in a lack of merch being sold because no one will recognize the pokemon and as anyone who knows anything about stocks knows; they expect the numbers to ALWAYS go UP. This will cause the numbers to go DOWN and a future projection will show those shareholders going broke/losing lots of money.

This will cause a MASSIVE shakeup that may even force Nintendo to step in and go "Gamefreak, you had one fucking job." and give the next pokemon game to a different team.

I assure you, once Gamefreak no longer has pokemon, Pokemon's quality will go up while Gamefreak dissolves into nothingness.