Snek's Obscure Game Reviews - Monster Rancher 3
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- Опубликовано: 9 фев 2025
- Join me in my pastel, eye-burning misadventures through my first negative review. A game that had promise to build on Monster Rancher 2's technical innovation and... chose not to do anything of the sort. This is going to be a rough one.
Special thanks to my very patient sound editor: Sean Taylor Brown.
This is just a review, and all footage and visual aids are for educational and review purposes only. Please do not sue me. I am broke and cry easily.
Next Review: Monster Rancher 4. Thank goodness.
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Monster Rancher 3 was my first and only Monster Rancher game, so I never really experienced the other games. With that in mind, I loved this game and have very fond memories of it.
I first played it in elementary or middle school and was terrible at it. I got a used copy in high school and was addicted to it. I loved discovering the new training zones and getting new moves for my monsters. I don't remember having a lot of trouble getting the items for learning new moves. I also remember trading actually being helpful, since you could trade for monster disc shards.
I can understand the hate for it if the other games had all these great features that it lacked. But as someone who never experienced them, this game was amazing. I always want to go back and play it again, but I lost my copy sadly.
You never found the hidden "?" monsters during the Venture? That was the most exciting part to me as a kid. Finding an ??? monster, beating it, and getting a regional Orb to unlock the most powerful techs was very rewarding.
As a kid I loved this game to no end. It was my first MR and I probably played for hundreds of hours. I remember I raised so many Goat golems just over and over again for a long while until I got far enough in the game that not training speed became an issue, kinda got stuck after that.
Overall, though I found a lot to like in MR3. Having multiple training locations was cool. Having the monster change with the biome was neat and for the most part I liked it better than the fusions which usually just saw an awkward reskin. I also liked how exploring the biome during a venture could unlock new training methods.
I do admit though the game's systems could have used some more polish. The lack of an accuracy stat it BS and pretty much requires you to train Speed as high as possible on all of your monsters or you can't do anything in a fight. The monster hearts and inheritance could have been a bit deeper, but it does allow your monsters to inherit moves that the previous monster learned so long as they were the same base type of monster. This had the unfortunate side effect of encouraging you to raise the same type of monster over and over again. The traits system was awesome, but not very deep. Balance between rival encounters was all over the place and like most monster ranchers it still required you to have a deep cd/dvd collection to get some rare monsters and if you didn't have a monster unlocked yet, then you had better keep that CD because the game won't save it. As a kid I had exactly one DVD that gave a Joker it was the special rare joker too with a ??? subtype. It took me ages to finally beat the Joker in goat to unlock it, but I could always see the outline when it was trying to summon. Boy am I glad I still have that save file on PS2 memory card. I lost 3 of my 4 memory cards but by some miracle I still have that one!
I really love this game! I applaud it for going a totally different direction from the first 2 games, adding many new and fun mechanics. I loved the accessories. I love exploring the areas, discovering extra training areas, and I love the biome versions of the monsters. I love that you can pass your monsters heart down. because the game is so different from the others it really stands out to me.
It's really funny, I live in the UK, where we only got Monster Rancher 2 localised. I happened to get it as a present and played it to death, shared with all my friends etc.
One day, my family went to America for a holiday/vacation and I found this game on a shelf. A PS2 continuation of my favourite game ever?? How could this not be amazing. While my parents knew about region locking, I was assured by a member of staff that the game would work on my ps2 back home, so I spent a large chunk of my holiday money on it, and spent a non significant of time reading the manual back to front. I was amazed at all the new monsters (most of which were just ones I'd never unlocked or seen in the ps1 game because despite loving the game I was only 9 and still very terrible at it), the new training regions and how the climate affected the monsters all sounded so amazing to me and I dreamed up a game way more perfect than could possibly be real.
In a way, I guess I'm quite lucky that my dissapointment stopped at the game not working on my PAL ps2, because at least it meant I still got to reread the manual and imagine an amazing game that one day I'd play. Still have the copy of the game and have never emulated it even though I easily could now due to hearing nothing but awful things about the game.
I personally agree that MR3 is just miserable to play, and while I often enjoy cute designs and some amount of cell-shading, the game design doesn't look very good to me either. Some things have already been mentioned by others (ditto on the surprise of a rival showing up with a monster you let go!) there are a few points I want to bring up.
First, a small correction: The stat increases from levelling up attacks is not random. Each move has a set increase pattern - if you go into your attacks and check them in the xp view, you can see what will improve upon level-up. This means that a few moves are better off, but overall this is actually WORSE than being random - because the stats to go up for one particular attack are always the same, any attack that doesn't get bonuses it needs never really shows much improvement, especially compared to the (few) attacks that get a more balanced increase.
Now, about those items you need to learn attacks - you say you never got one, which is a bit surprising, so I thought I'd go over what I know. They come in three types - bit, stone, and orb, with it's type determining how you get it. There are also a few elemental varieties of each type, such as jade or aqua. The move a monster gets is determined by the exact skill item you give the lord - giving the same item (say, a Jade Bit) over again doesn't change anything unless you're using a different monster, but a different item (a Jade Stone or Aqua Orb) will give an entirely different attack to the same species.
There are two massive downsides to this however, neither of which helped by the fact the Monster Rancher series as a whole has always been bad at telling the player things. First is that the items are not easy to come by, as you've experienced. Each 'type' is obtained in different ways. Stones are the easiest to find and the ones I'm surprised you haven't gotten - they are prizes in the 'free' tournaments, and you can see on the calendar which gives what. Bits are found very rarely while searching during ventures, and orbs are rarely obtained by beating wild monsters during ventures - the element is also random. This is terrible enough, but there's one other very serious design flaw for these items: You can only hold ONE skill item at a time. Getting a new one will prompt you to either swap out the one you have or give up the new item.
Despite learning more than I wanted to while dealing with this game, I actually never really knew about the dinky accuracy bars until watching this video.
You really do need to go through the plots of each region to really get much 'story' in this game. One thing I'd like to note though is that the 'Kalaragi Bug' - as far as I can tell - is just a myth, and is presumably a result of a lack of information, lack of general interest in the game, and the requirements to continue being very poorly explained in-game. I can confirm from personally playing through the line of events that it IS possible to find the fruit and finish the event after losing to Gadamon. I believe someone actually has a playthrough on youtube that showcases this as well, and I've seen the steps mentioned online once or twice, so I know it's not just me.
Still, good and enjoyable video overall. I'm looking forward to seeing you review the rest of the series.
I remember having *LOADS* of fun with this game when I was younger, with my oldest friend.
I remember expressly creating a new Naga, fusing it with a few different species until we got one we liked the color of, and proceeding to let the AI battle from that point forward.
We weren't trying to progress. We weren't trying to make our monster the absolute best. We were just having fun. It actually created a superstition between my friend and I that if *you, the player, physically mimic the monster's attack animation it would be more likely to connect*. Silly I know, but we were just those kinds of kids.
Start a tourney, put down the controller (aside from text progression), and then bounce up and down, swinging our arms wildly in a sort of voodoo dance to make our monster perform better.
I'm not saying all your points are wrong, or are not negatives. Hell the game was my friend's so I didn't even know most of these issues. But this Monster Rancher game is actually *the one I remember most fondly*.
I'm so shocked people think this game is bad. The graphics are adorable - sure, Jells look very "cartoonish", but it's far better than the weird humanoid things they are in other games. The characters and areas have life to them, instead of feeling like a stat grind, and there are so many "Special" monster types that it makes up for the lack of fusion.
I couldn't get into any other Monster Rancher game because they seem too dull or grind focused. I don't feel a reason to keep playing.
That said, the accuracy stat should've been in the game.
MR2 = Goat 🐐 💯%
Mann i absolutely loved this game as a kid and its one of the few games that i actually shed a tear over once my monster died 😭😭
Idk if its just me or my nostalgia but i like the art style and music still. I havent played the other games so its hard to compare
You got me as a sub, sure you're knew, but your commentary is smooth and well spoken. I'm hoping the best for you, and I look forward to going through your library.
Thank you much! That means a lot to me to hear it! I hope you enjoy the new things to come as well!
honestly i think the art is wonderful
15:10 I just bought it today for $10 bucks 👀
It’s to late for me. The Cold oatmeal that is this game will taint my soul.
@@nemodemigodofstuff6373 I was going to say something along the lines of "Well, maybe you'll have more fun with it than me?" But I'm not sure I can do anything when the descriptor is "cold oatmeal". G'luck.
also....momo is awesome. and there were way more newcomers! Raiden, Suzurin, Mogi, Ogyo...all GREAT monsters that went on to Monster Rancher 4.
You are correct in that I was wrong about how many new monsters were added. I can't believe I overlooked that many, but I did, and that's on me! Especially weird as I really like the four races you named even.
And while I will fight to the death for your right to say it, I will never praise Momos. I tried raising them and they were just awful in my estimation. But there really is no accounting for taste, right?
Thanks for keeping me walking honest, though. Doesn't help that it's been a year since I wrote this episode so even now I'm like "How did I mess it up that badly?" Haha!
Huge upgrade in art quality aged way better than any other mr game lol
9:08 Fleria giving some simple, but sage advice.
Personally, I quite like the art style shift and music. As has been stated by others prior, there's no accounting for taste, but I appreciate the energy this one offers compared to 4's... honestly very subdued soundtrack. That's all I can say really because while I like both of those aspects more than 4, I still don't think they're great.
Did you know that monsters regenerated from CDs and DvDs don't even have a basic stat line? If I were to regen a Suezo from one disc, a Suezo from another disc could have its stats and base traits tweaked compared to the other Suezo. A neat idea that would've encouraged friends to visit and 'trade' monsters I'm sure, but an absolute nightmare to minmax, so one would likely settle for 'good enough'.
As stated before in the comments, skill items are obtained randomly except for Stones. Bits are obtained randomly on Ventures, and in my experience, tended to grant your monsters attacks with low Guts usage, low damage, and higher accuracy. Stones being the inverse, with HUGE guts usage, lots of damage, and generally poor accuracy, but you can at least reliably obtain them. Orbs are the rarest by far by my experience, having only found a Jade Orb in about 5 years of playing the game. I think they give attacks that are in the middle of the two extremes but I literally do not have a sample size big enough to verify that. Stones and Bits aren't too bad, but locking a number of skills behind items that are REALLY hard to obtain is, frankly, kinda silly to me. Hearts can give skills too, but sometimes they just.... don't? I don't really get it.
Speaking of Hearts and Ventures, how about that Trait system, eh? It's absurdly hard to manage them in MR3. Radar is Hengar exclusive as you mentioned, but abilities like Thick Skin or Heavy Armor aren't, and neither is the Hare's EXTREMELY broken Fast Footwork. These two traits can co-exist on the same monster, however, canceling each other out and basically wasting 2 slots for 0 gain. So, how do you get rid of them? You don't, really. Those traits will always be there if you try mixing up your playstyle later and the only way to raise a monster without them is to start from scratch. Ventures VERY rarely will let you find an item that grants a new trait. What it is exactly is random, on top of being unfairly rare, and will replace a trait you already have, at random, with the new trait. This has literally never benefitted me. In Kalaragi, the item was a butterfly. It bestowed upon my monster a trait called "Bruise". It did nothing. And while the mental image of a butterfly uppercutting my monster and essentially scarring it for life was funny, it wasn't exactly helpful. MR3 has a few traits like that, and I don't know why. Dimples is another one.
On the subject of traits, I mentioned Fast Footwork earlier. Speed not only governs your accuracy now, but it's still your evasion stat. Fast Footwork increases your evasion even further but anything that DOES hit will hurt way more. MR4 retooled this Trait as Foresee in 4, but it's significantly less severe. While Radar is a very good ability, I found Fast Footwork to not only be better at keeping my monster at higher HP than my opponent (and thus winning), but also enabled more types of monster to be playable, from Pixies to Tigers to Momos to Raidens to Zans and beyond- as long as it didn't have a defense trait, Fast Footwork was viable. This meant Speed sets for monsters could just decimate the AI, being unhittable and never missing. Bonus points if you had an attack with good Guts drain, so you could just outright prevent enemies from attacking in the first place if you chose and remove their ability to fight back entirely.
All this, plus what you mentioned and others have mentioned, adds up to a game that is, frankly, not well balanced and both tedious and irritating to work with... but I do still kinda like it. I think the biome-related monster designs and environmental training routines are charming and look pretty good (shout out to the Pixies in particular for having my favorite designs in the series overall, and TONS of unique animations). I think the pastel colors suit this series better than the murky color palettes it usually has. Some of the locales and battle arenas look pretty nice, and I love that each one has its own unique song to go with it. The accessory system is something monster raising games keep toying with but never seem to keep around, which is too bad because it's always an upside. I like that feeding and scolding/praising are different here, with feeding being VERY simple and scolding/praising having numerous options with different effects depending on your monster's personality (except Zan, whom never has any fucks to give about anything).
I LOVED MR2, I was excited to play this but- yeah the music was kinda bland. And as many times as I tried to play, I always got bored and would rather step back down to the previous game again. You bring up good points and things I never noticed. Like the percentage in battle. wtf were they thinking?! xD
I liked 3 after I figured out what to do
I have played MR2 and MR4, a little disappointed to MR4 because its not as good as MR2.
I have planned playing MR3, hoping it will be as good as MR2.
But thanks to this review I am probably just stick playing MR2!
i honestly loved 3, it being my first monster rancher game; when i got monster rancher 4 i was like wow this is a step up going to play mr2DX soon and hope i enjoy it
*I don't like the fact I can't skip generation animation like in MR 2, it happens in MR 4 but at least it ain't trash game, the cell shading like is really strange and uncanny feeling on me, the emulator version is way too slow 'n laggy, the battles take forever, the defense system is weird with bad animations, everything about it is bad, but I kinda like Jell so I'll skip this part, thought the MR 2 Jell is by far the best design for it, MR 4 Jell is literally Ocarina of Time sub boss Dead Hand*
HA! The fact that you never managed to get more attacks means you missed out on ONE MORE of this game's frustrating flaws: You can only have 4 moves...and the game never really tells you what your new move does. So you get to the move giver thing, they tell you you're trying to learn some new move but you have to delete one and you have NO idea if the new move will be better or worse than the old move. It's usually worse.
I actually like the cel shading and Flaeria's US design (she's a very small child in the Japanese version. I think a few other characters are too) but yeah the game just...felt like they were doing things different for the sake of being different because Monster Rancher 2 got slammed for being "more of the same". I remember a friend of mine quit because he got stuck in one of those soft lock battle loops and couldn't escape. Good to know he wasn't alone I guess!
Oh, yikes, it's worse than I thought. That's good to know, though. Maybe if they get around to doing MR3 DX or something, they can fix a lot of these issues and make it much better...
@@TheHipsterSnek Indeed! I mean they should probably just skip to 4, but I'll support whatever they throw out. MR3 wasn't unplayable just...odd...
What the heck those people Slamming Monster Rancher 2??? Its literally the BEST in the series!
Nooooo I love this game :'( This was hard to watch
The unique variants are cool in this game too
Before I watched this video to know exactly why this is considered the worst game in the Monster Rancher series, I knew it was going to be bad because at the beginning of the game, before you are allowed to start training your first monster, you are forced to battle that asshole rival of yours you mentioned and it’s a forced loss. Then your rival has the gaul to rub her victory in your face.
I loved this game only because it was the only Monster Rancher game I owned Q.Q
My first was Monster Rancher Explorer. Which was a good game, just... y'know, it was no Monster Rancher 4. Hahaha.
Don’t wanna just troll post and say this in an immature way, but there’s really only one way to counter argue this. You don’t like this game because you sucked at it! I beat the game with the Ogyo fish character bro it’s not as hard as you make it sound lmao. And the fact that you never got a SINGLE bit, stone OR orb to get new skills over the amount of time you said you spent is VERY telling. I also loved the soundtrack but I will give you the fact that it’s mostly nostalgia factoring in there. I can only agree with you on the art style and even then it has its charm to me (whether it’s nostalgic or not.) I also have no problem with speed and accuracy being lumped together as they have the same purpose, just inverse. Why have one stat for accuracy and one stat for dodging attacks when they can be grouped? Seems super scuffed to even have it be an option to have 999 speed but 0 accuracy. Shouldn’t be a possibility and this makes that so! Just some points from a huge fan of this game who has been replaying it in emulator lately! Open to further debate for sure; I am interested to hear your input as to why having the accuracy stat is better than not, specifically. Cheers!
EDIT: You did teach me about the radar trait! No wonder those fuckers are so annoying lmao they never miss and all have high speed so you can’t hit them! An annoying aspect for sure, they should have added a few more monster traits like that so the Hengars weren’t the only one with something that OP 😂 might have to be the next monster I raise on this save 🧐
Cel damage isn’t shovelware
I was completely unaware of how bad this game was in terms of gameplay mechanics, but nostalgia glasses on, I love this game. Lol
I'm gonna make better videos than you
(Thats an obscure compliment, i like your videos!!)
I hope you do, and, in turn, inspire someone to outdo even you!