What's that you say, young trainer? You want a pet monster to battle with? Well, I'm only going to let you have the kind that crochets! Oh, alright, you can have the battling kind, but you better take good care of it! Only the best trained monsters can make it through Little Giant World's Monster Arena, a turn-based RPG, adventure, and sim game all bundled into one neat package.
Gameplay consists of three kinds of activities: taking care of your monster, training it to raise its attributes, and battling other monsters. While at home base, you can spoil or discipline your pet to alter its behavior, shop for items to increase its strength both on and off the battlefield, or spend ability points earned by leveling. Alternatively, you can train a monster by playing a series of mini-games that vary from platforming races to typing challenges. Of course, all of that is just the icing on the cake. The real fun takes place in the monster arena, where you go head-to-head against a trio of increasingly tough enemies in a series of weekly tournaments. Wait for your abilities to charge, click your face-stomping attack of choice, then watch the gold and trophies pile in.
Monster Arena strikes an interesting balance with cherry picked features inspired by similar titles like the Monster Rancher and Digimon World series and then reconfigured into something completely unique. The game is slightly held back from perfection by the unfortunate presence of minor bugs, but the developer has been making diligent adjustments in response. While not particularly challenging (especially the incredibly weak rival trainers) the varying aspects of gameplay are both engaging and totally addictive. The addition of two secret monsters and a long list of achievements also allows for some great replay value. Whether you'd love a fire-breathing companion or a game of rock-paper-scissors, Monster Arena has something for everyone to enjoy.
EXTREMELY heavily Monster Rancher influenced, but cute. I like the addition of minigames to the different training modes, although the rock/paper/scissors one seemed a little random... I got a perfect score in practice mode, and 50/50 when I actually tried to play it. :[
There is quite a bit of Engrish which might turn some players off, but I grew up playing Monster Rancher so it doesn't bother me as much. I consider the poor grammar one of its charms. ♥
It's a small bug, but it's a serious bug. Some of the timed effects will fail to work, not terminate in the correct number of turns, freeze the entire game, or render negative points and freeze the entire game. Since the negative effect is on the enemy, those matches are essentially fixed. I was inexplicably able to beat the boss with a terribly weak monster because of this.
Played this on Kongregate awhile back and while it was a good game, at some point the game froze and got corrupted and I couldn't continue. I hope they've fixed this as others have had the same issue.
Un.Believable. I played for about 90 minutes, leveled it up from stats in the 130s/2300hp... and it froze in mid-battle. I reload, and it's all gone. Trophies and achievements included. If saving only happens if you go back to the main screen (and I have no idea if it does - my computer is saving flash correctly on other sites), someone please say so. Because it doesn't make that clear in the game.
The bugs keep coming. It's monsters going triplicate and then not attacking, it's scores going to negative numbers and freezing, it's the calendar randomly jumping forward (and ha, and "undefined" trophy.)
It's a shame, otherwise it's a cute and by-definition casual game.
To 300 stats / 3000 hp, I should say. So about 70pts and almost a "year" gone.
I'm sorry that happened to you, Shudog. :(
We even waited before featuring the game until some of the bugs were fixed that we found during our initial play testing from when the game was first released.
I hope the developers continue to update the game. We will update it here if they do.
Yeah, saving seems to be borked. I had a L25 monster but had to turn it off for the night, came back today, and it's all gone. I could deal with the other bugs (found a couple that made the game easier, actually) but yeah, won't be touching it again until the saving at least is fixed.
To add, the game was enjoyable overall...I'd tried Monster Rancher before but was kind of put off by the amount of time you had to dump into them, so this was a welcome change. However, the activity points really became excessive after a while since all you could do was change your monster's mood or occasionally fight a wild monster with them (and why would you when they didn't give EXP?) so it would have been nice to have something to do with them. The rival characters, were rather, well, terrible and cliched - I get that they only get like five lines, but how about something a little more original? It was also annoying that they always seemed to want to challenge me during a championship week. I was also a bit annoyed at the fact that the game assumed I was a guy - either a gender-neutral script or a choice would have been better.
UPDATE: New version now online that the developer says should address some of the concerns observed here in the comments.
Just refresh the game page for the new version.
I played the game today and also got the bug where the time bars fail to load/monsters cannot attack. It was when I was experimenting with activating extras I bought in the store. I reloaded the game and played for another 15 minutes or so, but all the monster's were so underpowered compared to mine I didn't feel a challenge/felt like a bully/was too grind-y.
Has anyone else hit this glitch?
In one battle (cup battle in winter against snowman monster thing) the enemy took its last health in damage from poison, bringing it to -17 health, where it failed to die. I had to wait for it to regenerate to 1 health and attack it again to kill it. Not sure what combination of effects caused it, but yeah...
i found a couple of glitches but only after i had finished the game (the main story) first when i get challenged by the bug guy that you face after the main boss it wants me to either practice the battle or fight for real but wont let me click on either. the second glitch is my energy meter doesnt seem to want to work so i cant attack (on the bright side 500 agility has its advantages)
Can you get more than one monster?
Grinding out 2-3 levels in one week is soooo easy, I'm not gonna tell you guys though. My secret ;)
It's a great game, but I've been wondering what exactly those two Question Mark boxes are on the monster select page. Can we play with more than 3 possible monsters or something? And for anyone who is finding it really difficult to grind:
Get the mood of your monster up really high (In the green) and do whatever kind of training you feel like (I did Power because it's the fastest) and fight any of your 'Rivals' when you can. Don't bother with the trophies for a while. You'll start getting "Bleg Berries" from your monster who is now finding items. Sell the berries for 1000 a pop but keep any Golden Ginseng or Sacred Flowers you might get. Once you've got a reasonable stack of monies, go into the "In-training Item" section and use all of your Ginseng/Flowers. Once you've done that, go to the shop and buy items that are specifically for one attribute. (E.g Milk, Fish, Wine, Meat.)Buy 10 at a time and then use them on the in-training item screen. Once you've done that, repeat again and again for as long as your cash flow holds out. Near the end of your money, you may consider buying some Apples so that you can level up. Once you've done all of that, go out and fight a Monster or do a round of training to reap the results! I levelled all of my stats up by 150 in one training session! Good luck! :D
This game is acually quite easy. I haven't had any problems... yet and i hope i don't i have a level 17 ceb which owns up :). This is a great game overall
Does any one know how to get the last monster that isn't flashbug?
@MuteVampire2: Same here. I even overkilled the Frostman to -326 HP and didn't bother to wait. I refreshed.
@redrocker64:
Getting the last monster, Elgi, requires defeating both Draiga and Warlord to get the Grandmaster and LittleGiant Cups.
And to put another question out there, how in the world do you get the skill achievements (1st Degree Monster, Double Degree Monster, and Genius Monster)? I haven't seen anything about skills. If they're the monsters' attacks, then the skill achievements are bugged, because I have a Cebolla with every attack. *confused* Maybe it's the Kongregate version I'm playing that the problem, or just me. Anyone?
how do you get flashbug?
This game was fun and easy. I over killed everything and I unlocked almost everything. How do you unlock everything by the way?
Oh dear, looks like someone forgot to proofread. I'm just in the tutorial and I'm already seeing a lot of typos. For example, "But that doesn't you won't". Seriously, who wrote the dialog for this game?
Update