Monster Rancher is Tecmo’s successful foray into the world of Breeding/RPGs, and it would only be natural for it to make the leap to a portable system. Monster Rancher Advance is finally a decent Monster Rancher game on a hand held system, and Tecmo’s proving it.

The story this time around takes place on Age Island, and players will take the role of a skilled Monster Breeder who has been called to Age Island by the Age Monster Association, AGIMA. The player’s job in this story is to help a sister and brother duo, namely Aroma and Zest, turn their rundown ranch around. Aroma is typically the assistant in this game, and her brother Zest and other characters pop in once in a while to give advice, initiate events, or just inform the player about special tournaments and offers. Things aren’t as easy as they seem though. To help Aroma and Zest, the player will have to raise strong monsters and win many tournaments before the money starts flowing in. Eventually, the player will face a monster from a time long ago, in a climatic battle to be known as the best Monster Breeder ever.

Gameplay wise, Monster Rancher Advance is way different in its method of generating monsters. For one thing, CDs and DVDs are definitely out of the question! Monsters are generated using word combinations. At the start of the game, players will be able to use a limit of 4 character words, but as tournament victories increase and the player’s Breeder Rank increases, he/she will eventually be able to use up to 8 characters to generate monsters. Monsters that are generated will also be added to the Encyclopedia, so if players want to re-generate it, they won’t have to figure out the word combinations all over again.

Monsters are then raised one at a time at the Ranch. In the Ranch, players have the option to train the monster by placing it under a coach, send it for Special Training, Rest or Use/Buy items. The game progresses in 1-week intervals and monsters in the game have an average ‘life’ of 3 years. Unlike earlier Monster Rancher games, monsters in this game do not die, but instead they need to be retired, because their status will no longer increase once they pass their prime. Players will then have the option to retire it, make it a coach to coach other monsters, or freeze it at the Laboratory to fuse with future monsters.

Monsters in the game can be combined at the Laboratory to create new and stronger monsters, just like the original Monster Rancher and its sequel. This makes things much easier as the combined monster will inherit some of the previous monsters’ stats and be that much stronger.

Battles in the game still follow the simple rules of all the previous games. Players will maneuver their monsters toward and away from the opponent in a 2D field and execute attacks within their range with the press of a button. Monsters can be set 6 skills, alternating 3 at a time in battle with a button press. This does add some variety to battles as players can set up 2 different skill plans and will be able to alternate between them for certain battles or situations.

The general goal is to attain higher ranks by winning tournaments. With higher Breeder Ranks, players will be able to generate more powerful monsters and eventually raise powerful monsters like Dragons and Zans. Battling in higher rank tournaments will also yield rarer items and much more money. This is especially crucial as this game does not have any exploring or venturing elements and players will have to rely on winning tournaments to gain money and rare items. Tournaments, however, reward your monster with experience and boosts 3 of their stats at the end of the Tournament, so players will benefit from letting their monsters battle often.

Control is used mainly to move a monster back and forth in battle and to navigate menus. The main drawback about this game is that it does not seem to have a manual Save feature! The game auto saves at the end of every week. This is a boon and a bane. Firstly, the game does not save if you do not have a monster. If a player were to spend a large amount of time generating monsters and then switches off the Gameboy Advance without a monster at the Ranch, he/she will be in for a rude shock, as the game will not save! Losing at tournaments, monster injuries will also be saved and players will have no chance to backtrack. The only good thing about auto save is when the batteries in the Gameboy Advance die out mid play, but that’s about the ONLY good thing about it. I wonder why Tecmo did not include a manual save function together with the auto save. It would be that much better with both.

The graphics in the game are mostly 2D with a 3D look. You could simply term it as psuedo-3D, I guess. Even so, the Gameboy Advance does seem to have its limits. Monster types in the game are varied, but all monsters within a class look the same, just that they have different stats, abilities, and colors. Skills have simple animations; not what I’d call ‘eye candy’, but they are fast so I’m not complaining here. Backgrounds in the game look nice and bright, but eventually you’ll get bored looking at the same screens over and over again. Even so, for the Monster Rancher games, variety of locations really isn’t needed. Monster Rancher 3 is an exception, but that’s another story!

Character portraits are simple and quite nice. It would be great if they were more varied, but that of course, is asking for too much. Players will also eventually see cameos of familiar characters. Weather effects in the game are simple and smoothly animated. A pretty interesting fact is that aside from making the game look pretty, weather effects also affect the effectiveness of certain training routines.

Training animation brings back memories of the simple animated training sequences in the first game. The monster and its coach are shown and the training is animated before the player. The animations can be skipped as well, with a simple press of a button.

The music and sound in the game is almost ignored, what with the players immersing themselves in raising their monsters. In fact, most of the tunes are reminiscent of those in the first game, aren’t really that catchy, and tend to be repetitive.

Overall, Monster Rancher Advance provides some Breeding/RPG goodness on the Gameboy Advance until a new Pokemon game is released. However, it does provide players with a unique gaming experience nonetheless, so don’t overlook this little green monster before it starts hiding in your cupboard!