• Mocchi, Suezo and Golem are back with a whole new multi-breeding and training program

• Customize your training facilities with a variety of equipment for efficient monster training

• Go beyond the original Monster Rancher games with the new interactive action/adventure elements -- you can take your monsters on quests!

• Cool new CD/DVD swapping feature lets you unlock new monsters by playing your favorite CDs & DVDs

Whether you're a seasoned MR breeder or new to the game, the fourth version will be easily playable while still offering challenges for us "old timers". The larger your CD/DVD collection is, the more likely you are to get more monster choices. The game will walk you through "extracting a monster" from your discs. Computer discs, music CD's, DVD's, and game console CD's are read by the game at specific points and will display a monster held within for you to keep or not.

The interface (the yes/no options) are a bit tricky, be careful when clicking through to speed text up as sometimes it will click "yes" when you're not ready and tend to destroy a battle or result in purchasing an item you really weren't ready to spend your money on.

The music is nice, low-key, and fits well with the scenes. The monster models are excellent, very cute. Their animations while training/fighting are well done.

All in all, I love the game despite the minor issues with the interface at times. I am a long time MR player, so I was already hooked before I ripped the plastic off the case. :)

14 of 15 found the following review helpful:


Okay, But Lacks Certain Qualities  Feb 08, 2004
This game is deffinetly an improvement over the third but it lacks a few things that seperate from the best. For example: Because you can now hold up to 5 monsters on your ranch at a time, you'd think the designers might give you more vs. data slots. But they don't, which means that you can only have one full party of monster's data, plus one monster! Also, when your monster has to be retired, you can't save your vs. data so your stuck with what you have saved in the past.
Training in this game has improved dramatically with the introduction of training gadgets. You can customize your schedule so you don't have to fiddle around with the controls every week like in it's predeccessor.
Once you finish your training you have to go to "weekend activities" and choose to either enter a competition, go adventuring, go to town, or go to the next week.
The all new 3D adventuring in this game is amazing, walk around 4 levels, that you have to unlock as you go through the game, and search for treasures, do goals, or just try and get your monster a new move. You can also unlock the ability to fly, or ride on your monster.
Now about the battles. Your monster can now hold up to 9 moves, plus you can press any button you want, not just the button that's high-lighted, like in MR3. Also, when your monster does a move that annoying black screen, that shows up in MR3, doesn't show up. The second you hit the desired button, unless your monster is disobeying you, the monster does the move. What a relief!
Going to town is also a cool thing. You can go to 4 different towns and talk to people. You can also buy food, and items for your monsters at the item shop. I won't reveal any more of the game, but I will say, this game is deffinetly worth getting!

5 of 5 found the following review helpful:


Slow build up, but enjoyable in the long run  Jun 14, 2005 By Stephen J. White "Dragnilar"
MR4 features many improvements upon it's past incarnations for those willing to wait it out. The game starts out giving you only one monster, and you have to progress through the game's storyline in order to be able to unlock more monsters from your own CDs. The main problem with this though is that it requires you to spend a tremendous amount of time training your monster and having him fight to raise his reputation. This can become tedious and boring for some gamers, and can cause their attention span to wane. As a result, the early half of the game can feel almost childish for some, and will cause them to not even finish it. The later half of the game though can become enjoyable due to the increased capability to create monsters of different classes, better training facilities, and more places to explore. This can be deemed though as 'more of the same' by some gamers, so those that do not enjoy games that are overly simplistic and sadly repetetive in the long run may want to steer cleer of MR4. It is not as innovative as it's first incarnation, but it does add more onto what fans of the series want.

6 of 7 found the following review helpful:


probably the best in the series  Feb 11, 2004 By page of cups
monster rancher was the reason i bought a playstation instead of sticking with my sega genesis and nes. i have now played all four playstation games in the series, and monster rancher advance 2 for gba sp. i like the increased number of moves that i can have available in battle, training multiple monsters at a time, the new adventure system, doing adventures and battles and things on weekends instead of taking up training weeks, the more realistic look of the monsters, training gadgets and placing the house and barn and such. the only thing that i didn't like was having to be a premade character. in the other games, you could choose your gender and you name. i can still choose my name, but i have to be that kid. i know that in other rpgs you have to be a premade character, but i like being whoever i want in monster rancher. they probably did that because you have to have some form when you're running around on the ranch and on adventures, but it'd be better if the character was customizable, or not obviously a girl or boy so you could call it either one. or maybe if you could choose between a male or female form. also, i'd rather not have more of a past than, "oh, so you came from age island" and that's it. oh, and the pixies, at least the ones i've seen, aren't quite as cute in their new, realistic style.. still, the good outweighs the bad. another good thing that i forgot to mention is that they brought back the combine feature. that was something i really missed in monster rancher 3. you can combine two monsters to make one with qualities of both. i can't say much about it for this game because i haven't used it yet. you really should buy all the monster rancher games, but if you can only get one then you should get this one.

See all 22 customer reviews on Amazon.com