I’ve been playing a little bit of Monster Rancher Advance 2, to break away from the monotony of dealing with MR2 information. It’s a lot harder – you can’t game the system as much as you could in 2. In MR2, you could get around having to rest entirely (depending on the race of monster, since certain monsters receive a higher fatigue reduction from Nut Oil) by giving your monster Nut Oil on odd weeks and Mint on even weeks. You don’t seem to be able to do that in this game and you can only give your monster one item per week as opposed to two, but they make up for that by having a lot more items that passively restore fatigue or stress every week, and having more stress-reducing items, though, monsters don’t seem to stress out in this as much as in MR2, so I’m not sure why there are so many stress-reducing consumables and only two fatigue-reducing consumable items (one only reduces something like 20% and is primarily for reducing stress, and the other reduces 50%).
Also, battles are way more of a battle of attrition. Unless your stats already tower over your enemy, the battle will probably end with the timer running out. Monsters also seem to miss a lot more, too, which is infuriating.
Monsters fail training with a lot higher frequency. I got so angry because a monster kept failing, so I froze it, got another one, and it also failed a lot, so I froze that one, and then fused the two, and that thing was a failing asshole, too, so I started the game over and got something that fails a bit less.
I don’t mind the palette swaps, but it kind of blows that so many of the cool monsters from 2 were replaced with a lot of the lamer monsters from 3. Stat-wise, even, their growths tend to favor non-offensive stats (meaning, neither Int or Pow are easy to gain stats for), and techs are (this may have changed in MRA2, I’m not sure) either Pow-based or Int-based. So, if your Int is shit, and your Pow is shit, then you’re not going to do any fucking damage, and monsters aready do very little damage in this game. I suppose you can rely on withering (reducing your opponents “Guts”, which are like MP that are constantly regenerating at set speed that’s inherent to the monster, some monsters have faster Guts regen rates so they’re considered better monsters simply because they can pop off attacks quicker (If I recall correctly, MR2 has it so the monster’s sub race would determine its guts speed, so a monster with a sub-race of Pixie, Plant, or Jell might have really high guts regens)), but if you get hit for more damage than you can do to your opponent, then withering makes no difference.
In MRA2, I’m not even sure which monsters have good guts regen, there’s not a lot of information out there about this game like there is for 2 (even in Japanese, as far as I can tell). Jells and Plants don’t exist in this game (which is strange), several pixie subs are missing, several tiger subs are missing (including Blue Hare, which was a popular monster because it was all-around pretty good), and Katos are also not in this game (Blue Katos were another all-around good monster and used in speedruns).
A lot of changes feel like reactions to things people exploited in MR2. I’m sure I’ll get used to it. In this game, your monster doesn’t die, it retires and you can then either use it as fusion fodder or use it as a “coach” for training, which will (I think?) increase the stats you gain and possibly pass on traits (traits range from things like traits that up their lightning techs to traits that make them overeat).
I don’t wan’t a different one, you stupid cad. I want the purple speedo rockman in sunglasses. This is bullshit.
I feel like they made this in reaction to MR3 not selling well, and people obviously wanting more MR2 (vs the more overtly cartoony direction they were trying to go in (and did wind up going in)). It’s too bad that instead of staying somewhere in this direction, they made 4 and EVO (5 in Japan), which are pretty awful. 3 is OK, but not as many cool monsters.
There’s a Switch port of 2 out in Japan, but it’s probably not heading West.