A big upgrade from the first game! I would love to have the chance to capture the old legendaries from the first game in the future patches/ updates

I have conflicted thoughts about this game and therefore my review isnt gonna be as glowing as I thought it'd be.

For every (great) strength this game offers, it unbalances itself with an opposing glaring flaw.

+ the monster collection part is as common as it gets, weaken a monster, use your copyright protected not pokeball onto the monster, catch it, let it rot in your boxes or field it into your team, and level it up, increasing its stats and movepool. where this game differs is in its typing and fusion mechanics. there are 5 types, every single monster has 5 variants for each type, in addition to its base form. several monsters also evolve when given a specific item, and those "evolutions" also have 5 variants + base form. how to change your monster's form? you can temporarily do it in combat by using a resource that you accumulate each turn, or you can either breed two monsters together, to create an egg that will inherit a portion of the stats of each parent, and you'll be able to choose which species (of parent A or B) and color palette AND type the egg will be. by messing around with the types you'll get the monster variants. but the egg will be at level 1. you can also directly fuse both monsters, this will consume them but you'll get a monster carrying the average of the level of both parents (so he'll be efficient in combat potentially immediatly). this is obviously super cool, and if you consider there is about 200 individual monsters (counting everything, including "evolved" forms), then you get a total of around 1200 individual variants (5 variants+ base form per monster, remember).

- BUT the problem is that you're encouraged to fiddle with the genome sequence to inherit the best genes of each parent, as you breed or fuse monsters. this is really easy to do (a great thing), only costs some money, and has unlimited use. you won't spend hours like in pokemon trying to get an egg with perfect IV's. the problem is that after some goofing around, you'll eventually develop a "perfect" fusion of each type, and use that fusion into any monster you like to get a perfect model of that monster. so every single monster will have the same identical stats, often times the same moves (as moves ALSO inherit from parents). this removes any and all identity from any monster you hatch or fuse. the base monsters you catch in the while don't suffer from this, as they have defined movesets and stat spreads, but they are significantly weaker than the monsters you'll fuse, and they'll just struggle against some of the HP sponge bosses this game throws at you. so you're kinda forced into just fielding a blob of identically stat monsters into your team, and the only thing that will change is what species they are, and so what they look like.

+ the visuals are amazing, both the creatures and the environments. music (overworld and battle OST) also really good

- BUT the environments themselves are super boring. there are 4 main world region, none of these regions feel or play any differently that the others, besides obviously having different monsters to catch. there is no variation in traversal, there are no puzzles, no jungle with trees to climb, no beach with quicksand you have to get out of, no mountain with high winds blowing you off cliffs, nothing. those are just random examples, but the environments are completly empty, the loot is randomized and respawns, there are no secrets, no puzzles, all the trainers are optional and are also randomized and respawn... massive missed opportunity in the overworld, to make them feel more alive. the dungeons are even worse, besides their looks, they are purely copypasted. only a single dungeon featured any variety (a room with teleporters, you'll know the one when you get there). in contrast, the cities feel lively and unique.

+ there are some great QOL options (ability to manipulate stats without a huge pain associated to it (even though it went to far in that direction, the fact you can field 8 monsters and not 6 (huge W) the fact each monster can hold 6 moves instead of 4 (huge W), the fact monsters are relatively easy to catch and you don't spend half an hour and 50 hyperballs on Articuno, the fact you SEE the monsters in the world and can choose to engage or avoid them (huge W), etc)

- but there are also some obvious misses. i completed the game and afaik, no item or ability exists to allow you to exit a dungeon. you'll HAVE to go back the way you came, every single time.

+ the story started well enough with a much darker, mature, bloody start than I expected. but then, it gets killed by both the open world (which puts off the pacing completly as its impossible to write a coherent story if you don't know how long the players will spend in the fusion system or other mechanics fooling around) and the, i'd say cosmic nature, grand purpose, "he was chosen" direction of the story, which made identifying with the MC not easy.

- all in all, capturing like 95%+ of all monsters, I finished the game in less than 20 hours. the game is cheap so its fine, but most monster collector games usually will run you longer than that. i could have spent ages more experimenting with the fusion system, but there is zero reason to as there is no endgame. oh, and like most of these games, it has shinies, and those appear supposedly with a 1/1000 chance. i found one immediatly, like one hour into the game, and then never found a single one again. I must have encountered several thousands monsters in the process. i know they are supposed to be rare but whats the point of having shinies if you never see a single one? i suspect many players will finish the game without seeing any. just increase those odds.

i still recommend it, but its not without flaws.

This game needs to win some kind of award for "literally the most improved sequel to a game, ever."

I'm serious, if you have even the *slightest* interest in the monster-taming genre, stop reading this review and buy the game right now, because it is easily one of the best monster tamers on the platform.