Games with Creature Collecting

[Saelune]

I like collecting monsters/creatures in games. Its one of the reasons I absolutely love Pokemon, but Pokemon is not the only game with that.

I am curious of games I may not have known or heard of with any sort of mechanic like this. It doesnt have to just be like Pokemon. Viva Pinata also counts.

What you do with them is not so important, whether its raising, battling, farming, or whatever. Doesnt even have to be the main focus of the game.

If you have a game in mind that you're unsure might count, just throw it out there, I may be open to it. (I certainly never expected to love Viva Pinata as much as I do)

Side Note: Not phone games. So no Pokemon GO or some Facebook BS.

 

[McMarbles]

Dragon Quest.

There are the DQ Monsters spinoff titles, of course, which center entirely around monster recruiting and battling, but most of the later mainline games had some element of monster collecting. V and VI had them joining your party, VII had the "Monster Meadows" sidequest, and VIII had the Monster Arena.

 

[meiam]

Various shin megami tensei, like devil survivor or summoner, you mostly just fight with them and there a bit hit and miss. There was digimon cyber sleuth last year, but honestly it wasn't that good, super repetitive and grindy. FF13-2 had some form of monster collection too.

Honestly outside of pokemon I can't think of any really good one, its a good concept but I think it suffer from having one dominant player, so every other entry are either shallow copy or C-team level.

 

[DoPo]

Probably a suggestion that comes a bit from the left field but Shadows of Mordor. I know it's not exactly what you mean but I just want to put it out there - it's basically Assassin's Creed with orcs in it but the cool thing is that most of the game revolves around the leaders of the orcs. There are captains and warchiefs. Both of those function pretty similar - they have extra traits on top of normal orcs, for example, they might be able to break blocks or might deal more damage or might be immune to arrows or any combination of extra strengths. They might also have weaknesses, like they might be afraid of fire (lighting them up will cause them to flee) or might be vulnerable to sneak attacks, etc. The main difference between captains and warchiefs is that captains can just be found in the world by wandering around, but warchiefs can't be, also warchiefs have several captains as bodyguards, so when you do spawn them, they will come with backup.

So, with that aside, why I'm suggesting this is because most of the gameplay you can help certain captains advance in ranks. Whether to kill them (which gives you loot) or to make them usurp a warchief is up to you. You do get the ability to mind control orcs as the game progresses, so at later stages you can do stuff like arranging for the right collection of mind controlled captains to be the bodyguards of a warchief and then going to kill him with his own menorcs. It's pretty fun and you can spend a lot of time just collecting the "right" captains (e.g., they need to have good traits, like dealing more damage, and not have weaknesses that can hurt them, e.g., "fear of betrayal" which causes them to flee if orcs start fighting orcs) while eliminating the rest, in order for more captains to spawn.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Ni no Kuni and every Dragon Quest I think.
Also Legend of Legaia (PS1 era JRPG).

 

[go-10]

Dragon Quest Monsters is the best one imo, at times it's even better than Pokemon

there's also Shin Megami, which is sort of monster collect a thon type game and while I never played them I ear the Megaman Star Force series is really good and Pokemon like.

 

[Specter Von Baren]

There's Fossil Fighters for the DS, Yokai Watch for the 3DS and Siralim on Steam. I rather liked Fossil Fighters, I couldn't really get into the gameplay og Yokai Watch and Siralim felt a bit too number focused.

 

[Igor-Rowan]

There's Yo-kai Watch (3DS), I've heard the sequel released recently improves greatly from the first, that isn't awful, just a little off-putting.

There is Digimon World DS, Dawn and Dusk (DS), a series of version-exclusives where you collect data from random battles and make your own Digimon. It just falls a little bit short on the leveling system, and the fact that it's impossible to reduce or avoid random battles, and since the game's sidequest-based that'll get annoying.

Then there's Digimon World Championship (DS), a sort of a cock fighting simulator, you raise Digimon to do nothing but battle and up their stats. The game has no ending and you have absolute no input in the battles the game names itself after, but there's something cathartic about watching the tiny creatures you raised battling things above their level and win.

Crystal Warriors (Game Gear/3DS eshop), basically a what if Fire Emblem had Pok?mon? The collecting is part of the rock-paper-scissor theme where you get monsters to cover your weakness and/or be damage fodder.

The only other thing I know that wasn't mentioned here was that new Monster Hunter game that's still on Japan, I wonder when it'll come here (if ever), the thought of taming one of the Monster Hunter's... monsters seems magical. And there's World of Final Fantasy.

 

[nomotog_v1legacy]

ARK has a big creature collecting element. You can even breed them for stats.

 

[Potjeslatinist]

Starbound has it. But of course we all just get gun-toting penguins.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Folklore

You fight monsters and rip their souls out, then use those monsters to fight other monsters and rip their souls out.

It's been a really long time since I played it, and I never got too far it since it kinda bored me.

 

[aozgolo]

Two indie titles called Siralim and Siralim 2, a bit of a call-back to the classic Dragon Quest Monsters formula where you have a big hub world and go into procedurally generated dungeon levels to collect monsters, loot, and grind.

An older classic on the PS1 is Jade Cocoon, a very fun monster collecting game with a great setting and story, and some interesting monster merge mechanics... There's a sequel on PS2 but I would always recommend the original far more.

World of Warcraft is an interesting one, in addition to playing a hunter and finding a good hunter's pet, you can tame just about every little critter in the game and fight them in pet battles with other critters, it's surprisingly a fun system that can eat up a bit of time.

I believe World of Final Fantasy has some creature collecting as one of it's big components as well.

 

[Fox12]

Persona and Shin Mekami Tensai are, beyond the shadow of a doubt, the best. I would highly reccomend them. You're basically collecting various figures from world mythology and religion.

Alternatively, World of Final Fantasy is surprisingly excellent. It's like a turn based kingdom hearts game with monster collecting.