"An excellent Pokemon Alternative"

When I heard this was due for an American release I rushed out to get a GBC. Was it worth it? Is there room for, what many will consider, another Pokemon clone? Bare with me and you will soon find out.

You play the role of Terry, a young boy (who apparently will later be the hero of one of the Dragon Warrior games) who has to go in search of her sister in a world where the kingdoms are trees. As stories go it is pretty basic but it does the job. In fact, unlike the pokemon games, there is a story thread that runs through the game, involving a mysterious character who keeps getting to the boss monsters first and causing some trouble.

This game is probably going to get overlooked by the majority of GBC users in favour of pokemon. This is a shame because this game offers a lot that pokemon doesn't. The aim of the game is to raise the strongest monster you can. There is no trying to collect every monster in fact you don't have the storage for it. Instead the aim is to breed new and wonderful monsters. There is 200+ monsters to catch. Breeding these monsters can either create a more powerful version of another monster you won't see till later in the game or a new breed that you just can't find. You want a monster that is both Ice and Fire based magic. Just mix two monsters that have these abilities and hey presto there you go. Well it isn't quite as simple as that. This does mean that instead of raising a squad of six monsters who can meet any possible outcome (like in pokemon) you raise a couple of monsters that are power houses and can meet any given situation.

Another addition is the abilities. Your monster can have up to 8 abilities and old ones can be removed for the newer better ones. In some cases though spells get upgraded to allow for a more powerful variation. These upgraded spells are a nice touch and are quite useful.

To find the monsters you need to leave the safety of the tree and enter the levels themselves. You travel through traveller's gates and are transported to a randomly generated map. This map changes every time you visit that location. This make's revisiting maps a little more fun and you will be doing this a lot to level up your monsters. The only problem here is the graphics for the maps themselves. The maps for the tree you inhabit is wonderfully designed making good use of the GBC's colour, it looks a lot nicer than Pokemon Yellow. Unfortunately though the maps for the levels you visit are bland and uninteresting. This is unfortunate, as you will be spending a lot of time here.

As you wander around you will face the standard random battles that you get in all RPG's. The combat system is slightly different from pokemon and allows you to develop a character for your monster. You can choose for your monster to just fight and the monster uses it's best judgement on what to do. You can also choose how it is to attack. You can select from Charge, Mixed and Cautious. Each one develops the character of the monster, whether he fights cautiously or goes all out. The AI your monster uses is pretty good as well. It knows not waste mp on a multi-hit spell when there is only one enemy and so on. It generally doesn't make stupid mistakes. The graphics are wonderful in the combat screen. You don't see the back of your monsters but you get a wonderful picture of the monster you are facing, each one faithfully recreating a monster from previous dragon warrior games. This more than makes up for the maps.

My major complaint about this game is the way you catch the monsters. You have to rely on them wanting to join you. I understand that Enix probably wanted to avoid similarity between DWM and Pokemon but they could have found a better way. The only up side to this is that catching monsters isn't that critical and most will sooner or later choose to join you.

Is this game better than Pokemon? Well it has many features that I believe surpass pokemon. I particularly find creating your own combination of monsters a lot more fun than just capturing and storing your monsters away. You feel that you have a use for the monsters that have been caught. Unfortunately it is let down by the method of catching monsters and the graphics used for the maps.

Overall this is both a wonderful alternative or companion to the pokemon games, it just fails to beat pokemon at it's own game. 9/10

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 02/16/00, Updated 02/16/00