Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 2

Incredibly unique monster hunter/jrpg hybrid. Imagine the concept of Pokemon, digimon, and final fantasy all combining into one game and this would be it.

You can equip weapons onto your monsters, as well as assign them stats and skills. They use the same stat points system and require a significant amount invested into a specific skill path that each monster starts off with. You can either level these up for skills corresponding to their breed, or you can invest them into raw stat points which are also unique to the monster. Some monsters will have agility skill, defense skill, etc which having a milestone reward of +5-+15 of the stat. They also have these things called traits, which are essentially passives that have a chance of activating at the start of the battle, just as adding attack boosts for the whole team, or stunning your opponents at the start of a battle, as well as defensive passives such as neglecting poison effects, or being healed by specific nature spells like ice attacks. This makes building your monster incredibly fun when you learn that these monsters don't evolve, but instead you synchronize two from your party and morph it into one new monster in which you can pick what skills/spells you want to transfer to the new monster. They keep the stat points of the original two monsters you fused together as well, meaning you have to clearly plain which monsters to breed, along with the traits that each monster carries which are separate from their skills/spells.

Not only that, but the world is actually evolving. New monsters come out when you beat the area, and depending on the time, with new monsters coming out at night, dawn, and morning. You also have weather which changes what monsters appear, as well as mess with the environment by destroying specific pathways.

I think this system of monster collector is perhaps the best I've ever seen in the sense you can really control every aspect of these monsters and make them all equally viable. However, my biggest complaints is that this games world just feels so dull. You don't spend too long in each area which is a blessing, as each area is just 4-5 portal levels that all look the same with the same monsters every time. The world feels weirdly empty and unimaginative. You get rewarded for exploration, however there isn't much to really explore outside of small dents in the map leading you away from your objective just for a simple herb. After awhile, it just feels meaningless and too linear. I would love to see this game get a more fleshed out environment if this installment ever continues. I heavily recommend it to fans of jrpgs and monster collectors alike as it's a very fun twist, but in the end, it just leaves you wanting a little bit more from it.