#ANYWAY. sometimes it PAYS OFF to look like a ps2 game cause this design is. impecable in this level of detail. it adds to it.

[istherewifiinhell]

Okay somewhat unorthodox but u gotta see this character in animation so uhhh here looks like a? 16 year old amv?

[Some flashing and grating noises]

[VD: beast wars amv of the character transmutate. They do not look like any type of transformer, instead more a simple and spindley robot. Their face plain, almost like a theatre mask. The emote slowly, everything is new to them. Their neck is extendable and attaches to their body on a sliding joint, giving it an usually range of movement. Two tubes trail from the back of there head. Their limbs are asymmetrical, one arm and one leg on sliding joints, the others on rotational ones, giving them a lurching walk. The have one gun arm and one three fingered hand, one thumb 2 fingers on the outer edges. Theres dialogue spoken about transmutate highlighting their strangness, and music plays with the clips. END]

[tumblunni]

Bunni continues to play Monster Rancher Advance 2! And generally not enjoy it as much as the first advance, though i can kinda blame it on the fact the first advance trained me to get used to a bunch of differences from regular monster rancher and now thats all gone again :P ANYWAY, ONWARD!

* Its a shame that the training coach system’s revamp makes it so much harder to actually achieve it now. i feel so guilty that my first monster Wrigley didnt quite make it! And like.. fusion isnt even WORTH it anymore! if I fused my high stats Wrigley with another high stats monster then all I get is the base stats version of that fusion, it doesnt carry over AT ALL! And it doesnt even let you carry over Traits like MRA1 did. And retiring a monster just seems to be like another name for deleting them, so I just have Wrigley frozen in the hibernation lab forevermore now. I DONT WANNA LET HIM GO! I do feel guilty for giggling slightly at the fact he’s got that cold minty freshness now XD

* Oh, and the ‘nobody dies anymore’ thing has been rebalanced now. In MRA1 you could just continue going forever with your retired monster, you just couldnt raise its stats anymore. (Tho you could still LOSE stats, so that was kinda awkward) Now you cant do anything with your retired monster except rest and give it items, and then send it to retirement/coaching class. BUT because of that change, I didnt realise Wrigley had as little time as he did, and I didnt manage to do that final tournement in time. :(

* For some reason the ‘SPECIAL’ training has been renamed to ‘Sparring’ training even though its exactly the same thing. And its called Errantry in every other game. I DUNNO LOL Also Loyalty has become Reliance, and now the E rank tournement has returned from Monster Rancher 2. (This is part of why its harder to reach teacher rank now)

* A funny glitch that may have possibly fucked up my ability to complete the main story, I HONESTLY DON’T KNOW?? Okay, so.. in MRA1 there was an annoying thing where you could still ‘use’ unuseable items, and they’d be gone forever with no effect to your monster. I lost 5000 gold due to this, the badly translated item descriptions meant I didnt even know that the Silver Cup passively reduces stress when you keep it in your inventory... In MRA2 you now actually get a ‘this is unuseable’ message when you select them! BUT... there’s one random specific circumstance where the game doesnt check for this. Sometimes when your monster is upset with a choice you’re making, it’ll say ‘[Name] would rather [suggested action]’. This time it SOMEHOW came out with ‘Wrigley would rather eat [magic amulet key item]’?? And I was just mashing thru the text and didnt realise it until I’d already hit yes! I really hope this doesnt come back to bite me in the ass later...

* Oh and there’s now a cool rival guy character! I’ve gained three rivals so far but he’s the most actually a rival. Can I just say the plot works a LOT better with actual other monster trainers as characters?? Seriously. THANKE! Why on earth was I even fighting in these tournements last time, lol... Anyway, here’s Mr Bishie Mysterious Jerk Rival:

* There’s also another rival who has more of a story role.. or uhh.. maybe I’m not able to get bishie man story scenes anymore cos i lost the key item, lol Anyway, he’s a younger cutie patoot rival who’s actually on your level as another rookie, rather than being an asshole adult randomly picking on kids. (No seriously, bishie man is introduced as a dude who’s ATTACKING OTHER RANCHES and then he’s just instantly forgiven??) lil rival boy is a bit competitive and grumpy but its just cos he (understandably) feels like you’re cheating by having the legendary holly as your mentor. But then when you battle him he realises youre actually a worthy rival and then you become Kinda Friends I Guess? I like him!

* Also your third rival is GRANDPA Seriously, you literally just fuckin.. find a wild grandpa starving in the cold and take him in. And he says he’s gonna repay you by giving his monsters as free tutors for a certain period of time, but for the life of me I COULD NOT FIND any way to unlock them in the tutor screen! But this was back when I was first learning all these new systems to maybe I just messed up somewhere? Anyway, after a certain amount of time he’s all ‘I’m proud of you, you dont need me anymore, i’m gonna go join the tourneys too cos you inspired me to get back out of retirement’. And its kinda sad that he leaves :( I WILL MAKE U MO PROUD, MYSTERY FOREST GRANDPA I STILL DONT KNOW WHERE DE FUCK U CAME FROM

(Clarification: he is not saying this about you but about the jerkass bandit you just fought off.)

(This is the jerkass bandit you just fought off)

(It is TOTALLY unfair how the game throws you immediately into a battle with him as a tutorial to the exploration system! I literally got this as the first thing with my new monster after Wrigley, I just got lucky enough with the RNG that all his attacks missed and I somehow survived!)

* Random fun highlight of Wrigley’s short career: winning an all bunnies league.

* I really don’t like the random addition they made of a ‘counter system’, though. Apparantly this was an addition made in Monster Rancher 4 for the PS2? It wasnt very liked there either, but this is an absolutely TERRIBLE port of it into a modified game engine that was never designed to include it. In the PS2 game each move is assigned to the four face buttons, and you press one of those to choose which move to counter. Its still not very good cos you only have a 1 in 4 chance of it working, and the AI is completely random anyway so it’s only predictable in 2 player mode. but they somehow made it EVEN WORSE in this version, cos the moves ARENT mapped to buttons yet you still have to input a button combination with a 1 in 4 chance! You have to awkwardly try and hit B and one of the directional buttons simultaneously, and there’s no way to know which random direction the AI picked, and just... GAHHH The only good thing is that you can still play the game perfectly fine without ever using it, and the AI is equally likely to fuck up. I only saw a successful AI counter ONCE after raising three monsters! Anyway, look at this dumbass who failed a counter and smacked himself in the head for 220 damage as soon as the fight started.

* My second monster was kinda awesome, i lucked out and got a rare monster from random tablet regeneration! Its the only Antlan type that I actually like, cos its unique colouration makes it look more like a giant skull thingie. Woo!

* His name was Heartbreak! He didnt have many spectacular adventures along his way, just managing to become a coach for future generations. I mean, he didnt break my heart, so it turned out better than expected XD I’m sorry i didnt have faith in you, lil buddy! THIS GAME IS STILL REALLY DAMN HARD THO

* i haaaaaaate the changes to the coaching system I HAAAAAAAAATE dear fuckin GODDDDDD now you have to keep paying a salary every half a year or you lose your coaches forever all your memories of your past monsters dont have enough for one payment and they NEVER COME BACK T_________T I’ve been savescumming a lot more in this version of the game, there’s a lot of bullshit chances to lose everything... And like.. they kinda wanted to make a good change by letting you hire governement-funded coaches if you cant train your own. but their prices are so ludicrously high and the most powerful one just has 300 in two stats and 600 in one. Your own monsters are always gonna be better than that, and you’d need to raise a few monsters to even get enough money anyway! So yeah just.. fuck this system, seriously, dear god. I still had complaints about it last time, but i was more forgiving cos it was a new change to the formula and all, but this is just making it worse in every possible way...

* Its also very annoying that we have a lot more items in the game but all their descriptions are badly translated. I have NO CLUE what the whole second page is about! ‘Its a cake’, ‘its a candy’, ‘its a meat dish’. Even stuff that had descriptions last time doesnt! You’d never know that ‘smoked newt’ lowers your monster’s ‘spoiled’ status! I mean, at least you could kinda assume that the cake raises it, if you’re getting too strict? I think? Cos I thought maybe the cake is for raising weight like the diet pills are for lowering it, but I can never get it to actually do that. the weight system is so unintuitively awkward! Any choice you make will change it wildly while your monster is a baby, and then as soon as they hit maturity its nigh impossible to change it! And its really hard to keep pushing it back and forth to keep the middle for whenever the maturity flag pops up, cos its not even set to happen on their birthday or anything. And being fat or thin causes gigantic debuffs because WHY NOT! Weirdly enough the raising style doesnt seem to do that anymore, its just like the chance of them running away, and a (never actually explained) small chance of lowering their overall lifespan every time you drift away from the medium.

* But anyway, I AM glad that now your strict/spoiled meter actually does exist in the menu again! It was definately still actually a part of the mechanics in MRA1, you’d still get stress and disobedience and stuff and just not be able to know when you were getting close to it. But MAN is it unforgiving this time... its always been the most difficult thing to manage but seriously... but seriously I am glad its at least in the menu...

* HOWEVER... i have no idea what the personalities do!! There’s now a thing on the menu above the spoilt/strict menu that says stuff like ‘hot headed’ or ‘medium’. And it never seems to change throughout their whole lifespan, so it seems to be like a personality or nature value? Does it actually affec anything? is it like pokemon and it means its easier to train a certain stat?

* Also there’s now the ability to get ill and go to the doctor. Its mostly pointless as its just like.. okay now you get TWO potential punishments for being too strict- monster can run away OR get sick. And running away just means you have to wait a few months and lose training time til they return, but instead sickness is like a debuff that halves your gains in a certain training. Its surprisingly in-depth, they give you a full diagonosis of a random illness and some made up medicines you need to take to fix it.

* ...do you really get anemia from being malnourished? i thought it was genetic only?

* And then ALAS I didnt manage to get any screenshots of my third monster while I was actually training her. I coulda sworn I did?? But it seems I forgot, so have a pic of her as a training coach

(for some reason special monsters get an ugly red background in status screens)

* She was actually surprisingly useful as my designated Explorer monster! It just sucks that you have to rank up in combat tourneys to unlock exploration areas, and you have to do it AGAIN every time you get a new monster. I didnt realise this so i trained her with an exploration-focused moveset and had to blunder thru the tourneys like a total mess. Errantry/Special/Sparring is now also based around combat stats, your chance of gaining a skill is greatly reduced if your stats are lower than the tutor, even if you win the fight! And if you dont, its fuckin impossibleeeee! So I couldnt even gain more skills to fight the skill tutor to gain more skills, GAH! Am I supposed to assign my own tutors here who have terrible stats?? But then the stat gains I get would be low too! So yeah, an intelligence based monster and I never managed to get a single intelligence skill in her entire lifespan. ALAS!

* Oh and Exploration is also REALLY WAY TOO HARD AND UNBALANCED AND  HARD Well I mean.. its not??? But it is??? Its actually got much smaller stat requirements than in MR on PS1, and the chance of getting nothing when you inspect a ruin is much lower. But the odds of the MOST HATED STUPID MECHANIC are way higher, and it seems that there isnt ANY stat that affects it, its totally random with no way to avoid! See, sometimes randomly when you’re exploring you can get lost. this ends the exploration immediately and you lose every item you’d collected. COMPLETELY AT RANDOM. NO WAY TO AVOID. keeps fuckin happening at the end of my 500 HP long 50 items gathered super sessions with super Rina the kitty of joy and hugs so I just ended up savescumming every time it happened, its too bullshit to be allowed to exist! Rina earned around 30000 or so Gold during her lifespan, and I was able to get the barn upgrade to keep bigger mons. And she also found the item that unlocks Monol monsters. Yay!

* So yeah thats the end of my gameplay today, and I didnt really enjoy it as much as the last one. The weird new gameplay decisions are a part of it, but also because of just HOW MANY monsters are locked behind various sidequests, and how you have no clue how to get half of them. Last time they were all just tournements you had to beat, now there’s bullshit like raising five monsters of specific species to master rank and sending them to certain exploration areas to find orbs... And like, with the inability to carry over traits and stuff, and the smaller amount of fusions, you cant even make a particularly customized monster out of the ones you can start with. So its just les fun to wait to open up all the options. And there doesnt feel like much incentive to even do it anyway, its not like most of them were locked away because theyre stronger. There’s loads of stuff that was a starter monster last time and there’s just no reason you have to save up a titanic amount of 20000 just to get the weird rhino motorcycle i got by typing my own name in the game last time... But ehh, I might play again anyway? I dunno. Later. Much later.

* BUT I STILL LOVE MY SWEET MONSTER FRIENDOS love and hugs list of all the bebs: Jade the Golem/Lesione, Carole the Momo/Zan, Kyubi the Zan/Mocchi, Dandelion the special albino Lesione, and Diva the special albino Dragon and now Wrigley the Hare/Lesione, Heartbreak the special albino/halloween variant Antlan, and Rina the special albino Mew that looks more like nidorina hence the name ...I’m only just realizing that I tend to like the albino variants the best. I guess maybe its cos they look more normal and dont tend to have overpowered stats or anything. Except the albino dragon which was the strongest one in the first game, hence why I picked it when I just gave up and wanted to brute force my way to the ending... ANYWAY THEY ARE ALL CUTE AND YOU WILL APPRECIATE THEM

* ok bunni go play different games now

* also bunni go try and learn how to draw these monsters, yo