Ultra Kaiju Monster Rancher is a Switch game on sale on the eStore for half-off! It is a Spin-off / collaboration of the mainline franchise Monster Rancher and Ultraman franchised Kaiju instead of traditional “Monster Rancher” breeds.
What is Monster Rancher? MR is a fantasy Pet Raising and breeding simulator that has:
- Creature raising that can vary based on your personal choices of … everything… Feeding, drills, battles, what breed, or mixed breed you’ve done etc.
- Creature breeding via Fusion (Parents are consumed in the process, but babies created from it can inherit stats and attacks from parents)
- Tournament style progression
- Unlockable roster of monsters through story and side-quests
- Real time combat mechanics which your success is based not only by how you’ve raised your monster, what attacks you’ve taught it, but how you directly control your monster and execute attacks. (Monster Rancher itself is also technically a spin-off of a Horse racing/breeding simulation “Gallop Racer” by the same developers (Tecmo / KoeiTecmo).
Ultra Kaiju monster rancher plays very similar to an amalgamation of MR1 & MR2 with some new stuff thrown in because… well… Big Ol’ Kaiju!
If you’re curious about the roster of Kaiju, you can view all of the Field Guide Kaiju which includes the ones available from the start and all of the locked, DLC, and hidden Kaiju as well.
If big Kaiju aren’t your thing, there’s always the remasters of the Originals… “Monster Rancher 1 & 2 DX” which is on Steam, Switch, and iOS. MR2 specifically is the franchise’s most popular game in the series and PVP tournaments are still frequently run. If you have any questions about either, just ask :)
Most people don’t actually use the NFC, It’s just not as highly accessible in North America as it is in other places (Also, very specifically, Amiibos will not work, and this is an in-game notification as well. No idea if this was a licensing thing or what). It’s an interesting gimmick to replace how Swapping out CDs worked for the original Playstation game, but most people use the Keyword generation in the North American version.
Thankfully, we solved how keywords worked. After scripting out auto-solving more than 2 million keywords, and filtering out duplicates, we have published options for every baseline, and every variant (stuff that has different stat gains, starting stats, starting techs, or faster guts regeneration from the baselines).
NTAG scanning and Bus Passes are solved too.
The bus passes are fun/interesting because the remaining balance of Yen on them is what determines what it makes. Many of the numbers are references to Ultraman or Monster Rancher lore. If you’re curious about that, check out: https://legendcup.com/faq-ukmrnfc.php
I still prefer to think of it as magic. I hope they keep that appeal of ‘i dno wtf gonna happen when I pop this in’ from the original game in future games.