Lil' Monster

"Comes up a lil' short"

Once upon a time, during the height of the Pokemon crazy, all of America was waiting for Pokemon Gold and Silver. Agetec Inc. knew this, and wanted to take advantage of the growing need for pocket monsters. So they gave us this, Lil' Monster. They can have it back now.

Story
In the beginning of the game, you find some guy with a whale looking monster. You get named, and told that you can put gems in cans to revive monsters, like this one. You choose what gem you want to use to make a monster. You fight a quick fight with the weakest monster in the game, then get hit with a back story of ''My brother Cool Joe has been breaking the rules *blah blah* you must stop him.'' There you go, there is the whole story. Has an ole' NES feel to it, doesn't it?

Sound
When I bought this game (yes, I was one of the fools who bought this waiting for Pokemon G/S...) I lucked out. My Gameboy's sound was broken. More or less, the music serves its purpose. If you don't have anything else to listen to, you can turn it up a little. After a while it will get repetitive and annoying, and you will turn it down. Assuming you like the game enough to keep it on that long, of course.

Gameplay
An arguably good idea, which faltered on the actual execution. The main game consists of leveling up your creature by ''setting'' gems down on the ground (or is it supposed to be in the can? The monster just appears in front of you), beating up the monster, getting a gem from them (which does NOT summon them, btw) and repeating. If you do this enough...you get to do it again. And again. And again. Soon, you will be able to enter the tourney area where you fight your way through 4 ranks. There you go. Your ''side-quest'' of sorts is to collect the Gemchips (which as far as I remember, were never mentioned as needing to be collected. You just had to guess.) In your search through the lands, you fight Cool Joe, who is WAY stronger than you (unless you KNOW where he will be ahead of time) and if you lose, you lose. No way to fight him again. And of course, each battle gives you a Gem that you can't get elsewhere.
The only good part is that you can customize your ''deck'' of gems. Its not organized, and certain gems are way to powerful, but still, you get a good amount of control over that.
The main amount of battles that you fight (by setting gems) can get annoying. If you want a certain gem, you have to find the gem that happens to revive the monster that happens to drop that gem upon death (or KO.) Only problem here...you will more than likely wind up fighting a monster that will massacre you, until you spend another hour for another level...that doesn't add a whole lot of anything.
(If you are REALLY wanting to get all you can out of this game, you can try to own every monster in the game. Down side of this? You have to let your current monster die to get a new one, and you lose the gem of the monster you lose to. Right, nice plan there.)
The controls are good though, that's a good thing.

Replay
I have a funny feeling you WON'T be playing this game long enough to try and play it over. If you are obsessed about 100%ing your games, it might be worth trying to own all the monsters though.

Overall
There are a few good ideas in there, but it is glossed over by poor ideas, and the gloss is pretty thick. Only for those that truly obsessed about catching them all, and need a new game to do so in.
Might be worth a few bucks, but otherwise, I wouldn't bother with it. I WOULD NOT waste 30 bucks on it, maybe 10 at the most for the monster fans. (If you can find a place to rent it...it's your money.)

Story 3/10 -It's there, but you have to search for it.
Sound 6/10 -Uncatchy light hearted RPG fare.
Gameplay 5/10 -There is some good to it, but not enough.
Replay 2/10 -Only the devoted will.
Overall 4/10 -A game made for the time between Pokemon games. Not good for much else.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 02/02/04