Bigger, sure, but not necessarily better.
Ultra Kaiju Monster Launcher is halfway between a spin-off and a sequel, but it’s totally Monster Launcher. Anyone who’s played a mainline entry such as the recent Monster Rancher 1 & 2 DX coming to Switch will feel very at home here. Along with new ways to earn critters to farm, returning characters are introduced, and a few other changes add some welcome flavor. Throwing kaiju into the mix isn’t enough to bring in people who have never enjoyed gameplay.
In Istur, you play the role of a monster trainer and breeder in the same world as Monster Launcher, but now with Kaiju. After meeting Holly, the handler, and obtaining a breeder’s license, head to town to pick up your first Kaiju. Holly and other characters (such as Colt) will be familiar to those who have played Monster Rancher, as well as many gameplay traps. The altar where you get your first kaiju is also where you can spawn new kaiju using codes, keywords, and what’s called a memory board. The memory board system uses NFC and pairs perfectly with amiibo, but for some strange reason, Nintendo’s own line of figures doesn’t work in the game. One of his great features of the altar is that he can play any kaiju he had previously owned, but in the end he found the way the music tracks were used in Monster Launcher 1 & 2 DX to be a bit more interesting. rice field.
Also, in the city, you can synthesize monsters at the laboratory and bake cookies at the Inheritance Cookie Shop. In the latter place you can create cookie items to give them small status bumps and special traits. Kaiju gains a total of 3 additional trait slots on 1st and her 2nd birthdays. Who doesn’t like birthday cookies? You can use a memory board here too (but probably not). You can save up to 30 cookies and give them to different monsters you raise.
Back on the ranch, you can spend weeks or months engaging your Kaiju in drills, errantries, tournaments and adventures. Drills are a popular way to increase kaiju stats such as skill, speed, and power, but there are some nice changes here. You will earn stat bonuses as you progress. Enemy monsters will also try to take over the training area. Defeating them protects the territory meter and grants a stat bump. A month-long errantry requires you to meet and defeat specific Kaiju Trainers in scheduled Arena battles before they offer their services. Each trainer specializes in a particular move type or stat. As always, there’s a chance to get a new move at the end of most errantries, and the game autosaves at the beginning of each week, so you can always reload if you don’t like the results.
In addition to the weeks when you want to rest and rejuvenate your kaiju, there are adventures (“expeditions” in this game) that occur several times a year during certain months. One takes a full month to get into, and your perspective turns into a dungeon-crawling mini-game. Here, he has a stamina meter that decreases with each move or action, so you’ll have to explore a small section of the maze and return to base his camp with the loot you’ve earned. My main problem with the return of this feature is that it moves incredibly slowly. Also, your stamina depletes so quickly that you have very little time to do anything before you are forced to end the adventure. reduced and loot found will be confiscated.
In addition, I receive letters regularly on the screen of the ranch, but about half of them are advertisements for sales at local shops, so they are not very exciting. A second character in the form of Kanego (another kaiju), Kanezou, offers his own thoughts and insights on the ranch screen, but feels more like a comedic relief than a meaningful addition. It’s fun to watch the giant kaiju roam the farm, and the UI remains familiar, easy to read, and easy to navigate. Added to the bottom of the screen is the anger meter. The angrier the kaiju is, the higher its viscera (which gives it power to attack in combat) and the more damage it does. On the downside, anger can also lead to kaiju becoming confused during battle or refusing to rest or complete training. It is great to consider aspects that may give
Arena combat takes the form of round robins, single elimination, and even head-to-head matches in best-of-five type competitions. The prizes for the fights were outrageous, and in just a few hours I had so much money that I had no idea what to do with it (at least I was playing the game fairly casually ). AI opponents are generally very stupid and rarely attack even if they are highly ranked. But no matter how you choose to play it, Ultra Kaiju Monster Launcher feels the same.
Despite numerous small tweaks to the Monster Launcher formula, it’s unlikely that this Ultra Kaiju entry will be a breakthrough for the series. And Adventures continues to feel like a relic from the early days of 3D gaming in the ’90s. After messing around with the first two remastered Monster Rancher games, this release wasn’t enough to grab our attention, but the updated graphics and The presentation could be a decent place for newcomers to the franchise. I’m here.
