Let's Play PSX: Monster Rancher Battle Card - Episode II
0I guess episode 1 was a game Boy Color game? Anyway, The game is alright but there is kind of a big problem... You see, the "main" part of the game is essentially just discarding your hand every turn, and then trying to deal enough damage to finish off the opposing monsters. Most of the defense cards aren't even worth having in your deck, as they just take up space that could be used for cards that deal 6+ damage so you can finish an opponent off in a single hit. That's the most efficient way to do things anyway. Some of the monsters try to do things a little differently. The Tiger, for example, requires that you draw 3 specific cards into your hand at the same time to do the same thing... but the attack is free. So maybe once you collected enough cards you could have some fun experimenting with different decks...
HOWEVER: Let us not forget about the *other* way to lose the game: Running out of cards. You see, if you're playing a damage based deck, the game lasts around 8 turns each (discard/play 5 cards a turn, with a 40 card deck...). BUT you also lose if you run out of cards. And so the designers made certain monsters better at "grinding out" the opponent, Especially Pixie, Plant, and Mew. Some opponent's decks (especially the final boss) is based purely around doing nothing but causing the opponent to lose all their GUTS. The way to beat *those* decks is to... discard exactly 1 card a turn. Yup, that's all you need to do! But that turns a game that was about 8 turns... into a game that's about 35 turns. It's a fucking crawl to the finish. It's pretty miserable, because once you know how to do it, it's not interesting or challenging, it's just tedious.
So yes, I beat the final boss. But because I didn't have enough monster cards, I wasn't allowed to end the game. there are some more quests and stuff, but honestly, it's just more of the same. We've seen all the monsters other than Phoenix I think (oh and Ghost).
I mean, that said, despite the flaws of the game, I did play it for quite a long time. I was having some fun, even though it was kind of easy, and you can beat the game with a minimal of actually, you know, changing your starting deck at all. The concept isn't bad, it's just not very deep. That's good enough for a few hours.