I’m not the world’s biggest Ultraman fan, but I love kaiju media. The old Godzilla films hold a special place in my heart after plenty of holidays spent growing up and watching them with my uncle and cousins. The Ultraman tokusatsu is widely beloved across the world and makes for an incredible collaboration with the Monster Rancher franchise in Bandai Namco’s new Ultra Kaiju Monster Rancher, a Nintendo Switch eShop exclusive. Here’s my impression of the game after playing it.

In this kaiju spin on Monster Rancher, you are in fact raising Ultra Kaiju to become powerful and take on tournaments. Iconic creatures like Alien Baltan, Zetton, and Gomora are just three of the over 200 different types of kaiju you can create by fusing a collection of monsters together. The game works in a week-to-week format where you participate in various training exercises and battles to grow your kaiju to new, powerful heights. Best of all, each kaiju has different mannerisms and elements that make it unique, meaning you have to pay extra close attention to bring them to their maximum power.

Unlike utilizing your CDs in the main Monster Rancher games, you’re able to use NFC devices to generate random kaiju. That does include Nintendo’s line of toys-to-life, the amiibo figurines. As you find your favorite monster to raise in the weekly training, you can eventually enter into tournaments and make some money. There’s even the occasional surprise battle that turns into a partnership with monsters you fight who come to train with you at your ranch. It’s nearly identical in this aspect to the Monster Rancher games, which is great if you love the series, but a bit too familiar for my liking.

Part of the reason that I’m not fully in love with the likeness between Ultra Kaiju Monster Rancher and the mainline series is that this is so unique to have so many giant monsters on the roster. Even as you reach the top echelon of the kaiju tournaments, you’re left feeling a little like something else is supposed to come, but it never does. Tournament progression is also limited to the defeat of certain monsters. Lose a fight to one of those key progression kaiju, and you’re left waiting for a whole other cycle of training to battle them again.

That said, there’s still a lot to love about the game, even if you’re not an Ultraman fan. I, for one, only recognized a handful of these kaiju, but still thought their designs were great. If you find one you love, you can usually train it for a couple of years before they’re ready to hang up its metaphorical gloves. Here is where you fuse them to new kaiju to create your next combatant. This does mean you’re going to cycle kaiju out relatively often, so don’t go picking a favorite.

As far as the battles go, you’re playing a side-scrolling match where you choose attacks based on your distance from the opponent. When you get closer for maximum damage, you leave yourself open to the same. There’s some strategy here but not enough that you’re going to be unfairly matched up at any point. That is if you’re properly trained. If not, then you’ll need to grind away on those exercises to get your stats up to defeat higher-level enemies.

Battles and the monsters benefit from great visuals and fairly decent audio. I’ve been told that some of the sound effects in the game are from Ultraman but again, I wouldn’t know them. They’re fitting for the experience, however, which is an overall positive one that I’d recommend for Monster Rancher fans. If the turn-based action RPG genre is interesting to you, as are giant monsters, then you’re looking at $49.99 for the experience in the Nintendo eShop. To me, that’s fair for the amount of game that you can squeeze out of the different combos and training approaches.

A Nintendo Switch review copy of Ultra Kaiju Monster Rancher was provided by Bandai Namco Entertainment for this review.

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Ultra Kaiju Monster Rancher

$49.99

7

Score

7.0/10

Pros

• Great Mix of Over 200 Kaiju to Raise and Train
• A Fun Twist on the Monster Rancher Series
• Ultraman Flair for Fans of the Iconic Franchise

Cons

• You're Playing Cycle after Cycle of the Same Thing
• There's Limits to What Happens and What you can Accomplish in a not-so Fulfilling Way