Monster Farm Online
It's not too bad actually, and they've managed to integrate a lot of features from the old Monster Rancher/Farm games into online play, including usage of monster disks.
Character creation:
After you've chosen the Body Type (either Adult or Youth male/female), you can choose skin color, facial/eye type, eye color, hair style/color, as well as mix and match the color of the clothing (eg. Top 'A' with Bottom 'C' and Boots 'B'). There's about 3-5 options for each feature. Oh, you can also choose from 3 different voice styles as well. (Choose the least annoying to you, since you'll be yelling everytime you issue a command).
Buwahaha, they have Sey hair in this game too!
Monster Creation:
(Sorry about the jumpy sound. I had to piece it together from some smaller clips.)
Like the old MR games, you have the option of using a 'Monster Disk' (CD/DVD) to create your monster. However, it doesn't generate the monster completely randomly (just the stats, color and temperament I think) and you have to select the breed of monster before you begin. The other option to generate a monster is to use the in-game Monster Disk item. Each new character gets one to start with, and I believe you can find new disks off mob drops (this is how you'll get the rarer monsters with strong beginning stats).
The video above shows creation using a CD (I used a David Bowie CD lolol, the stats weren't very impressive). Once you enter the game, you'll start off at your Farm. Head to the Shrine (grey gate on the right), where you can regenerate your Monster Disk.
At 00:54 is where it gives you a choice of whether to use a disk, or in-game item (choose the second option, if so). At 00:50 you choose the breed of monster you want to make, I went with Korunu this time. Then comes up a whole bunch of "Don't remove your disk while we collect the data!"-type warnings (oh, I forgot to mention, you should set up which drive is your CD/DVD-rom drive in the game settings before you begin). Once data is collected, it will pop up the stats for the monster and you can Confirm or Cancel. If you confirm, it will generate your monster (and you can finally see what color it will be), as well as choose to Keep or Cancel it. Last step is to input the name for the new monster.
Gameplay:
The game itself is fairly uncomplicated and easy to pick up once you get familiar with things, imo. So far, I know there are item collection quests you can pick up from Quest Givers (indicated by the blue circle on the maps), and I've heard there are other quests that require you to defeat high-level monsters too. There's a few storyline-based quests, but I can't read enough Japanese to follow those!
In-game is actually is not very crowded, this is just around the item vendor.
There are several item (food, potion) and armor (for both trainer and monster) vendors in-town, as well as information guides. Once you head to the field for battle, you enter your own instance maps so there is no other competition from other players (which also means you can save yourself from any embarrassment as you learn the ropes). I haven't tried party play yet, but I imagine each party will have its own instance as well.
Battle:
Like the old games, you have to watch your Distance/Range and Guts meters during battles:
Meters are in the lower right corner. You'll notice my 'Distance Failure' at 00:16 because the enemy moved into Mid Range while I was trying to complete a Far Range attack.
The Guts meter is like a power bar and you can only execute an attack if you have enough Guts for it. Each attack costs a certain amount of Guts (indicated in the corner of the attack box), so don't go about spamming an attack or you'll get dizzy and be vulnerable for a while.
There are three attacks possible depending on the proximity of your monster to the enemy; a Close Range, Mid Range, and Far Range. The color of the ring around your target will change color based on how close you are:
Red = Close
Yellow = Mid
Blue = Far
White = Out of Range
The attack you issue should be based on which distance your monster is in, or it will fail. When an enemy attacks, a colored bar indicates what attack it is using and you can adjust against that accordingly (eg. at 00:17 in the video, the green enemy bug has tried a Close Range attack so a red bar shows up underneath it).
In addition to attack commands, you can command your monster to move closer to the enemy (GO), stay in spot (WAIT), or come closer to you (COME) thus allowing distance to be controlled. Ex. Since my Tiger's current strongest attack is the Far Range attack, I could keep moving away from my enemy target, calling my monster in close to me, and using FR attack. I can also use it defensively; if I see that my enemy is beginning a Close Range attack, I can call my monster back into Mid or Far Range where the enemy will miss.
Depending on the temperament of your monster, it may be too scared/shy to attack when you first start training (indicated by an emoticon). You can just keep telling it to attack until it builds up confidence. If you continue to do very well during fights (taking no hits, having no Distance Failures, etc) your monster will gain a Positive boost and begin dealing increased damage during the duration of this effect.
If your monster is defeated and faints during battle, you will be returned to your Farm after 10 seconds. (There's probably a Revive item available, but I'm too low level to have seen one yet!)
Monster Care:
Monsters seem to be fairly low upkeep in this game and food drops off mobs or can be bought quite easily. I noticed that the monster's age appears under its profile, so I think they will have a limited lifespan as in the previous games. That means you'll have to find the best way to make your monster as strong as possible before you'll have to start over with a new one.
...I finally figured out how to feed it orz.... It wasn't drag'n'drop or using the equipment window, it was double-clicking the food item!
From what I've read, the optimal time to feed your monster is when it is actually hungry (indicated by little stomach growl noises and icon flashing), so you can max out the points you can earn from the item. Not sure if that's actually true?
One of the neat things I find about MFO is that your monster will change appearance based on what sort of diet you feed it as it grows! If you want yours to be physically larger, you can feed it more Meat-type items. If you want it to have gigantic horns and fangs, feed it more Mineral-type items. Each food item will increase but also decrease certain stats, so you need to balance carefully.
*patpatpat*
Haha, you can also pat your monster by holding the left CTRL key and moving your mouse over it. Alternatively, you can scold it and 'spank' it, by clicking your mouse instead ;o;.
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Ah! If you intend to play, the game servers are IP-restricted to Japan IPs so you may need a VPN (such as SoftEther/PacketiX) to bypass that. Client download and account creation are open though.
Links:
Official Site (and Client DL)
MFO Wiki (Japanese)
SoftEther
tl;dr!
edit: ugh LJ, your new embed things are silly!