I read currently a lot about monster catching/raising games. Next week is Pokemon day with new announcements, we get new Tem Tem content and there is a hype game we probably all have heared from. Monster farming, fight and hunting is not new for jrpg’s. With Pokemon and Dragon Quest, there are two franchises with a long running history with this sub genre.
Here are some monster raising/fighting games i like:
World of Final Fantasy
I often want to write about World of Final Fantasy (Woff), because this game inspired me to name the community like that. There are probably people that doesn’t like the artstyle of Woff, but i just laught the first time i saw it. And Woff want to be like that. This games is constantly joking about Final Fantasy Characters and creatures. The story often is funny, but also has a bit of deph, so i enjoyed playing this game even more than once. Maybe one ot the two Final Fantasy games i enjoyed the most in the recent years. But also the fighting system is a bit unique, so you are able to stack the monsters and main characters to strengthen them or make more dmg. It’s look just funny and make fun at the same time.
Digimon Cyber Sleuth (Hackers Memory)
I think Digimon Cyber Sleuth is a bit like the favorite Pokemon, but it has a Story and not a perfectly blanace battle system. The Digimon franchise has sadly a lot inperfect games and people have different opinions what is the best games out of those, but a lot would agree, that the two Cyber Sleuth games are part of the better one. I think it kind of addicting to farm/collect and complete monsters in a lot of theses games and Digimon games are part of that. But i was never fan of the world games, that have a bigger focus on farming but more on the story games that have a plot you are able to follow. But at the same time you are able to get quite a lot of these monsters. The story is maybe not perfect, but i would say enjoyable because it has the same vibe as some of the digimon anime. I wouldn’t say the game is perfect, story and gameplay has a few flaws, i probably enjoyed it that much because i got a bit frustrated from another monster game and this game gave me everything i wanted. A decent story and side quests in which this monster interacting with us. A lillymon that go inside the mobile phone of a person because it falls in love with that person, has quite some charm other monster games doesn’t have.
My old school favorite, not counting Pokémon, is Monster Rancher. I always liked how raising the monsters worked in those games and battling was its own thing that you did to show off the fruits of your training.
A modern game that I loved was Monster Sanctuary. The battle mechanics are very satisfying. The battles are 3v3 and move quickly. The mechanics make for multiple viable strategies. Every monster has 2-4 skill trees and 3 forms, meaning there is a very high level of customization too. On top of that, it’s a metroidvania, so you have a map to explore and areas you can’t access until you find a monster with the map action to get you through
Dragon Quest Monsters Caravan Heart
I like how it is relatively simple compare to other monster games. The monsters are designed by Akira Toriyama.
I really liked Cyber Sleuth when it came to raising Digimon after I found out you could put the Switch in sleep mode and they’d still level up on the farm. Didn’t really like battling, especially the bosses that had tons of immunities, inflated stats and could spam annoying moves with several consecutive turns
at first the game was developed for the ps vita, so they had something like sleep mode already in mind on that plattform. Maybe the switch version is the best possible plattform for that game since the vita version doesn’t get some updates. I played the ps4 versions, so i don’t have the pssibility to trade digimon between the two games for example
Is Monster Hunter too obvious of an answer lol
Megami Tensei games have amazing creature design and combat, unfortunately you’re encouraged to constantly trade your monsters in for stronger ones