Similarities of Monster Rancher and Digimon World for PS1

[AdamGomez1987]

Similarities of Monster Rancher and Digimon World for Playstation 1

This is pretty long rant from myself. I played the tar out of both of these games when I was around 12 (I bought a PS1 around 1999) as well as recently playing these games once again. Both of these games are super addictive for myself.

Both share similar stats and how they are raised. The difference between them is that Digimon World 1 has an open world that you go from training platform to the next and there is a timer. Monster Rancher is day and week based.


Both share tournaments which is elimination tree. Monster Rancher also has that and a majority wins format.

Though processed different, items that deal with hunger. In Digimon, you gotta worry about pooping them where in Monster Rancher, you have to worry about their stress. Both games you have to worry about their fatigue.

Both Digimon and Monsters have life spans. The mechanics are completely different with their life expectancy however.

In Monster Rancher, genetics are applied in which there is a pre applied set of weeks these monsters are destined to live (their sub races also factor into that) So items like silver and golden peaches and the plant disc chip raise it's life span. Then how you raise that monster properly without stressing it out or overboarding it's LifeSpan Index (if you overwork it) which will deduct weeks from it's life as a penalty.

In Digimon World, your Digimon goes from Baby to Ultimate (American terms, there's no Mega form in the first game) However, if you are negligent with your Digimon, you can end up killing it. The game has a three strike system where if you over stress it, don't feed it and work it way far and beyond, a heart will disappear and that will take a year off its overall life expectancy. Same from dying in battle. All 3 deaths means your Digimon's life span has ceased and you have to raise a new Digimon, and I believe you lose techniques that you trained your Digimon.

And then there's dying from natural causes which is the end of its life. Where Monster Rancher had peaches to keep to raise your Monster's life span, Digimon had two items that raised their life expectancy as well, Chain Melon and Digi Sea Bass. Your Digimon without the aid of items will live up to 18 years as an Ultimate Digimon, around 12-14 years as a Champion Digimon if he doesn't meet his requirements to Digivolve to Ultimate.

In Monster Rancher, the monsters with the longest life expectancies can live up to 10 years or a little more. To be honest when playing Monster Rancher, my monsters live around 3.5-5 years because I've been pushing them too far.

Monster Rancher goes by a week/month system to make 1 year where in Digimon, one day in game time equals 1 year for the monster's age. Digimon World is a faster paced game and that's kind of a neccesary drawback. The reason why it's a drawback is because by the time you're training your Digimon, you only have the last year to get everything done so you spend most of your time grinding so by the time you hit 16 and your stats are pretty ripped, then it's time to go out with those 2 years and get as much as you can done before repeating the process.

The huge drawback with Monster Rancher 2 is that going to tournaments actually takes 2 weeks of life span from your monster's life. At the end of their life span, it becomes necessary to have them enter into S rank tournaments because raising your monster's stats is more beneficial than training them since training them declines to minimal before they finally die.

Both games have some pretty wicked death scenes. Monster Rancher 2's death scene is way more emotional for a first time. As a 12 year old when the music qued and the monster let out one last screech before it drops to the ground and its ghost floats to heaven was a well earned tear jerker. And everyone gathers for the funeral to give their condolences.

In Digimon World, your Digimon lets out one last shriek as its pixels fall to the ground as it has polygon form keeps its head down in defeat before transforming back into an egg. It's a much quicker paced death, Jijimon comes to give you the news that all's not lost and that you can start again.

I think they softened the death scenes in games probably from mother's complaining of their kids crying. Monster Rancher 3 had this smaltzy visual at the end of them ascending, Monster Rancher 4 eliminated any form of death from the game, their stats just stop.

As an adult, I think it's appreciated they do have these touchy, graphic death scenes because it informs the child who may have never raised a dog in their life, it gives them a glimpse of how precious life truly is and how fast it comes and goes. It hurts, but it's unavoidable.

So when people say to me that Digimon is very similar to Pokemon, I tell them that it's more similar to Monster Rancher. Monster Rancher 2 came probably a little less than a year after Digimon World. Monster Rancher 2 is a souped up version of Monster Rancher 1 which feels more like a very well done expansion than a sequel.

I wish Digimon World 1 did likewise with part 2 instead of making a generic rpg. Add more monsters and more locations.

[AdamGomez1987]

I don't want to make a new forum so I'll post my additional post here since it's the same content.

I always loved these two games because I thought they were better than Gen 1 Pokemon when the games came out. I did own a GameBoy first before I owned a Playstation 1. So I had a lot of fun playing Pokemon Stadium on the Nintendo 64 with having both Pokemon Red & Blue available to me. I believe I chose the blue one because Sandshrew is one of my favorite Pokemon. I like to think that AJ's Sandshrew could still beat up Ash's pikachu. SANDSHREW! BACK IN THE POOL! Sandshrew

So when I was around 12 so it was around 1999 when I finally got my Playstation 1. I bought a bunch of Capcom games for it, Street Fighter EX Plus Alpha, X-Men vs Street Fighter was one of my first while I was waiting to death for Marvel Super Heroes vs Street Fighter. These are some of my favorite games as well.

But Monster Rancher and Digimon during this era had some really good games before the PS2 came out with different styles that I didn't care much for. Digimon started to go with a typical, uninspired rpg style and Monster Rancher 3 had a very limited roster of babified looking monsters and their alternate skins were just a recoloring for the most part with a couple of exceptions. Monster Rancher 4 was a great game, the dungeon crawling made the gameplay unique from the previous ones. Monster Rancher 3 had some sort of skill leveling system that would happen every season. I heard EVO/5 was the weakest link and I never played it, but monster rancher 3 for me is the weakest from 1-4 as raw and basic as the first game is.

For Monster Rancher 2, I just made a Death Dragon which is a Dragon/Joker hybrid and I just beat the end game White Mochii with him. It took like 15 tries, but it was doable because of my max intelligence. But in my honest opinion, the Dragon race stinks in this game because all monsters have a different level of guts regeneration, Dragon's guts regeneration is one of the slowwwwwwwest and many of his techniques require a bit of it.

So I'm having him battle against my Earred Mew who's stats are around 500-600 across the board. Where my Death Dragon's hp and skill are around 550-650, his power and intelligence are 860 and 991 and his speed and defense are 330 & 270. I have computer go against computer to make it competitive and they actually do take turns nailing one another. I think it's a 60/40 in favor of Death Dragon.

I'm likely going to raise my Earred Mew again to further power up his stats.

[Jagosaurus]

Wait... did you say pooping?

....


I love the monster catching elements of DQV & I must've put 100 hours into Pokémon yellow. These 2 games you're discussing scare me. One of those times you avoid a time sink game you'd enjoy on purpose.

[samsonlonghair]

Yes Pooping. Digimon utilizes a data/virus/vaccine health mechanic. If you fail to keep your digimon clean, he could digivolve into a virus-type rather than a data or vaccine type.

Digimon world two was a step backwards, but Digimon world three was tons of fun!

I never spent much time playing monster rancher, but I seem to recall there was a fascinating way to generate randomized monster DNA. Correct me if I’m wrong here. Wasn’t it something like sticking an audio CD into your PS1 to generate a monster based on audio data? I found that interesting, but I couldn’t figure out how to do that for myself. You had to go to the Shrine, right?