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 Okay,
so I am a girl.
Perhaps that is why for me, unlike the majority of video
game reviewers, cutesy is not a problem.
I play Pokémon Stadium and Pokémon Yellow, and, while I ignored the card game,
my entertainment center is littered with the discarded bodies of those
toys that were included in my Big Kid’s meals.
I watch Saturday morning cartoons. Digimon is my
favorite and I do play the Digimon card game.
Therefore, the idea of Monster Rancher Battle Card:
Episode II was somewhat exciting.
Finally, I could play a silly cartoon card game without having
to bribe my fiancé, or risk being labeled a scary-lady by
harassing neighborhood children to come over and play.
The
Monster Rancher series began as a pair of video games in which the main
purpose was to raise what were, for the most part, cutesy little
monsters.
The games were popular enough among children that a cartoon
series was created (which, in no way comes even close to being as cool
as Digimon.
We’re talking about cheap, sappy drivel along the lines of Pokémon
animation.)
Riding on the waves of the success of the Pokémon card
game, Monster Rancher Battle Card was released for the Game
Boy.
Now, Monster Rancher Battle Card:
Episode II arrives for the PlayStation.
The
game begins on Colt’s birthday.
(Yes, for you Monster Rancher veterans, the same Colt
who has appeared as your assistant before.)
As it turns out, Colt is an avid Battle Card player.
You just so happen to posses the extremely rare Phoenix card.
Master Pabs, your mentor, decides to give Colt a special
monster plate.
Surprise!
As soon as the new card is placed upon the plate, Colt is
transported to the “Paradise of Monsters.”
You must rescue your trusty assistant
by collecting all of the monster cards. (No one ever
satisfactorily explains why.
Colt loves monsters.
This place is a paradise for said monsters.
None of the monsters I ever ran across ate people.
Wouldn’t she be thrilled to live in their version of Utopia?)
The only way to do this is to find Battle Card players, and
whip their whiney little behinds.
 And
so begins the game.
To gain your first set of cards, you go to the BCB center and
take the requisite Monster Rancher personality test.
You receive your first three monster cards (Suezo, Gali, and
Naga in my case) and you can immediately begin card play.
The card battles are simple to do, hard to explain.
As in previous Monster Rancher games, attacks and defense depend
upon “Guts.”
In order to collect guts points, cards must be discarded.
All decks are made up of three monster cards and fifty
additional skill cards, and you will begin each turn with five cards
in your hand.
There are attack and defense cards for each monster.
Additionally, there are breeder cards (mostly for recovery and
guts manipulation) and environment cards (which cause an change the
rules of the playing field, i.e. “Nice Fight” will not allow
attacks that cause less than three damage, “Arid Land” will
inflict one point of damage to each of the player’s monsters at the
end of his/her attack turn).
A player wins either by knocking out all of the opponents monsters,
or by enduring until the opponent runs out of stacked cards; the first
player to run out of cards automatically loses.
It
may sound
a bit confusing, but it’s not most of the time (more on that
later).
Cue, your new lackey and Colt’s best friend, walks you
through the process.
Once you win a few battles, you can reform your deck to better
suit your needs.
If you feel you need more skill cards, but are not up to
competition, you can visit the Laboratory.
Here, in a throwback from the previous games in the series, you
can turn your saucer stones -- in other words, CDs -- into cards.
(Hint:
RPGs and compilation CDs seem to have a greater tendency to
reveal “rare” cards.)
Keep battling, win monster and skill cards, compete in
competitions to win other monster and skill cards.
That’s it, the game in a nutshell.
 All
right, I admit it; I had fun with this game.
The graphics are nothing spectacular, just simple
two-dimensional figures.
Somehow, though, it fit.
This is a simple game that uses cards.
The comic-book style attack/defense sequences work.
FMV or some other such fancy stuff would have been overly
pretentious.
The music isn’t anything I would rush out and buy, but again,
it’s right for this game.
When a player gets low on guts, or is down to one monster, the
music reflects their turmoil.
Just one caution:
turn down your TV. when you put in this game.
The music tends to be quite loud, and those first opening riffs
can permanently damage your hearing.
The card games themselves can be quite enjoyable.
There’s nothing quite like finding a worthy foe, and
defeating them in the very last hand when you only have one monster
who only has one point of life and no more stacked cards.
Take that you muscle-bound-noodle-head (or whiney-little-woozy-nose.)
However,
this game is riddled with problems, and these problems become harder
and harder to overlook as the game wears on.
First of all, the character themselves will never be in the
video game hall of fame.
They are represented in portrait form.
Fine, no problem with that in and of itself, but they keep on
blinking and their little mouths move when they “talk.”
I’m sorry, but that’s just creepy.
Once you get these creepy heads into battle, they keep spouting
annoying catch phrases that, I suppose, are supposed to enhance their
archetypical personalities.
I, for one, would have preferred that they kept their mouths
shut and just played the game, which, by the way, would cut down on
the length of these battles (they average about 10-20 minutes each).
Then, after you win a tournament and come home to glory in your
victory by looking over your card list and laughing like a mad man
while planning your next attack, some idiot rival or fan comes over
and you are forced to battle with the little twit, and cannot even
revel in your latest conquest.
Dippy little Cue grates on the nerves by repeatedly bragging
that you’re almost as good as she is, while she never wins anything
in team competition.
(At least Pabs is a pain in the behind to beat.)
Finally, there is your character, who never says a word.
No problem there, however if you look at your profile, your
gender is unknown.
Why then, were all the little hoochies in love with me and
calling me “sir”?
I realize that more boys play video games, but if the gender of
a character is unknown, make it unknown to everyone, including the
other characters in the game.
Let
me not forget to explain the problems in the gameplay itself.
Why, oh why can video game developers not understand that
translation is important?
For crying out loud, hire someone to translate the translation.
Many of the card descriptions (and the descriptions tell you what a card does before you try to use it) make
no sense.
If, per chance, it does make sense, in some cases, it means the
exact opposite of what you think it means.
Oh, and some cards will inexplicably not cause any damage to
some teams, without a breeder or environment card ever being played.
So, the player is forced to wait until an opponent uses a card
(which will often not be for many hours later) to see what exactly it
does, and when it can be used.
In other words, you end up with many “rare” cards that you
cannot use, because the translation of the effects is indecipherable.
 All
right, enough of the ranting.
Overall, as I have mentioned before, I had fun.
Even though I was at times annoyed the point of unconscious,
uncontrollable streams of profanity, I would still keep playing.
In fact, I was so hell-bent on winning, that the reset button
became my new best friend.
(Well, you try to create a balanced team, and along comes some
hothead with a team so unbalanced, that you have to create a new
team just to beat him/her.
You can’t let that idiot damage your record, now can you?)
I would look at my cards list and at my monster plate and coo
with pride.
I was addicted.
Oh, and when the addiction fades, there’s a multi-player
feature, so, you can play with those friends you have that are
demented enough to be into "cutesy little games."
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