Check out my Jack of all Shades project and my art tag!
5 Monster Raising Games You Should Play (That aren’t Pokemon)
I’m feeling a bit fatigued from all the new Pokemon stuff going on, so here are 5 other monster raising games that you should play!
(Seriously, why isn’t this considered a full-blown genre yet?)
5. Ni no Kuni
Its new, its awesome and it makes no attempt whatsoever to reinvent the wheel when it comes to JRPG tropes, which plays to its favour incredibly well. Monsters have a first and second form and then have two final evolutions which you’ll have to choose carefully between.
4. Final Fantasy 13-2
It’s not the first time Final Fantasy has let you catch and raise monsters, but its certainly their best attempt at getting in to the genre. It is, in fact, a pretty similar battle system to Ni no Kuni, but faster and harder. Monsters don’t evolve, but you can have one absorb another and gain its abilities.
3. Jade Cocoon
You lived in a little forest village as a Cocoon Master, and captured divine beasts by playing an…ocarina thing. The game was pretty short and its dungeons were linear, but it had one of those impossibly long, infinitely spawning dungeons at the end if you were up to the challenge. The big revolution this game had was that instead of outright evolving, monsters grew a little bigger and spikier after each fight.
2. Monster Rancher
You have a farm, you raise monsters through daily training and then when you’re feeling confident you take it to a world tournament to win the money to do it all over again. Monsters need to be fed and the farm can be upgraded, but most importantly your creatures have a limited life span - so you really had to manage your time and resources carefully. If you had two good monsters, you could fuse them together and create a new level one creature with slightly improved stats - so it was never a complete waste. You could also generate new monsters by “summoning” them off real CDs by inserting them in your Playstation, which is way cool.
1. Azure Dreams
One of my favourite games of ever. You play as a young boy named Koh who lives in a desert village built around a huge monster tower. You fight with swords and magic, find eggs throughout the tower and bring them home to raise them. The town starts out pretty barren, but with all your adventures to and from the Monster Tower, you can upgrade the entire town, seduce half a dozen ladies in a series of dating-sim-esque sidequests and become the town hero.
In this game you can fuse monsters (quite late in to the game) and they’ll end up looking like the dominant one with the colour scheme of the other.
I decided to colour Toxicroak myself while I wait for someone more talented to do it.
Pokemon Comic part 2 of 3.
You ought to be reading the first one first.
Q. Who’s that Pokemon?
A. Steampunk Charmander, Johnen Vasquez Squirtle, Hawkward, Stitchwork Cyndaquil, Dicks Bulbasaur
