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Playstation > PlayStation Game Cheats > PlayStation Reviews > Staff Review | |
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| Setting the Scene: Monster breeding has become all the rage across the universe with people coming from all over to pit their most competent monster against others. Before long things started to become chaotic with unskilled breeders raising defective monsters, treating their herds badly or just leaving the business and leaving their monsters to freely roam the land causing near riots and destruction. In an effort to bring some control, structure and rules to the latest craze people demanded regulations and permits. The result is what follows: It all started many years ago with the formation of an organization known as FIMBA. FIMBA is the official company overseeing the certification of individuals to the lofty position of Monster Breeder. Bringing order to chaos, FIMBA created and sanctioned events where monsters could be fought against one another. These fights were categorized so that registered breeders of all skill levels where able to participate and show their creations. As the popularity of this sport increased, FIMBA found it difficult to track and stay on top of every single monster breeder in the land. This resulted in the formation of another, competing organization calling themselves the IMA. Operating under the same basic rules and regulations as FIMBA, IMA was able to receive the overflow of applicants and continue to produce expert breeders as a result. Special events were later scheduled which pitted breeders from FIMBA against IMA. These events proved to be extremely popular and successful. All was well in Monster Rancher land. As the sport become more and more popular children were of course drawn to the events and left with the hopes and dreams of someday becoming a monster breeder. To help keep their dreams alive, a card game was created called the Monster Rancher Battle Card game. This game actually became so popular that it was sanctioned by FIMBA and the IMA into a jointly run organization called MCA (Monster Card Association). It was here that the children and adults as well could collect monster cards and challenge others in a game of skill with the prize generally being a hard to find monster card or battle skill. Ultimately, the grand champion of Battle Cards was given the coveted title of Monster Breeder. Here now is the story of one such would be Battle Card champion.umm, that would be you! Type of Game (Genre): Monster Rancher Battle Card Episode II is a strategy card game that involves pitting your monster cards against others in a battle for supremacy. Sound and Vision: The music in MRBC is rather lofty and whimsical with cute little melodies that play in the background during non-event interludes and changing to somewhat more aggressive themes during battle. There is nothing here that will make you stand up take notice, but it does the job of fitting in well with the games premise. Sound effects are rather weak and consist of unimpressive "thwaks" and "pows" when monsters do battle. There are some decent effects sound bytes for some of the more involved attacks but overall the sounds are rather placid and unassuming. Unfortunately this presentation carries over to the graphics side of the house as well. MRBC is a game that for the most part could have been graphically presented on a SNES or Genesis console. The graphics are extremely 16 "bittish" and will probably surprise a lot of people at first glance with their mundane appearance. Luckily high-end graphics does not a game make and after a bit of playing gamers will realize that the display works just fine for the type of game that you are playing here. Click HERE to read the PLAYABILITY and SCORES for this Review... |