Favorite MONSTER SEED Monsters!

Screenshots and assistance by Rollinrolly!

Welcome to POKELIKES, where we're going to break up the usual Pokemon reviews with other, more obscure and overlooked monster catchers! We've already dipped into these waters with a look at Creepy Freaks and Robopon in the past, but those were "April Fools" posts. We're getting a little more serious here with 1998's MONSTER SEED. This sometimes slow, sometimes tedious PS1 tactical RPG is unfortunately not remembered all that fondly for its gameplay, but anyone who played it, or tried to at least, might find the monsters themselves fairly hard to forget, with some wonderfully bizarre designs and sometimes adorable, sometimes bewildering descriptions. Though I never played it myself, I do remember it piquing my interest back when it first came out, and I remember finding a cheat code on Gamefaqs to unlock the entire bestiary from the beginning. From there, I would immediately forget to actually look for the game, but a full decade later, I saw a copy in a friend's collection and immediately remembered that we could look at all the monsters by cheating.

We spent around an hour marveling at the many lovely friends you can grow from these "seeds," which was of course when I originally decided to review some of them, but first I'd need to get any halfway decent screenshots. This was a plan that, once again, my brain decided to file away in a buried to-do pile for what became almost two decades, when an internet friend who goes by Rolly asked if I'd heard of the game, and just so happened to have it emulated. Without Rolly, we would not have the crisp, clear images you are about to see, and I wouldn't have even remembered to do a review at all.

This, to my knowledge, will be the very first time anybody on the internet has actually talked about any of these creatures in depth, but with well over a hundred of them in the game, we will of course be narrowing them down to just a few of particular interest:

I feel like this was the first monster in the game that I really took notice of, and in my mind, it still feels like one of its flagship entries. In Japanese, gerogero is sort of like the "sound effect" for feeling repulsed, so it's sort of like this monster is named "EWWWWWWW!!!" This of course is already awesome. It's also one of many monsters categorized as a "Harassment Type," which I think refers to the use of status effects. Its profile states that it comes from another world and grows via spores that travel on the wind

Every monster has a little profile picture of what is usually its face, which I have to word this way because the designs really get that unusual, and our dear friend "UGH!!! GROSS!" looks even more endearing here, though its design was already nearly perfect. "BLECCCH!" consists of just a roundish, pale green head with two clawed arms, one stalk-like clawed leg, a toothy mouth that opens vertically, a big purple tongue, and two huge white eyeballs on short, snaily stalks, like a much more threatening and alien looking Numemon.

Every monster also has its own completely unique ability descriptions, which I don't need to actually show you every time, both because they're only text and because not all of them are interesting, but "YyyyyYUCK!" here says that it "sandwiches" the enemy with "a giant hand," and then goes on to say that to its own kind, this is just a greeting!

You might have noticed that I said "ICK!!!" was only "nearly" perfect, and that's only because it has a variation I like even more! The profile information is exactly the same, and its anatomy is basically the same, but it's colored a vivid purple, it has much bigger and nastier looking claws, its eyeballs have those rad cross-shaped pupils, and its larger, more circular mouth is densely lined with long, thin, needly white teeth in such a lovably menacing looking way!

Despite the claws, however, Oodal's attack is said to not be "very serious," except that, quote, "poisonous bacteria is stuck on the hand." So it still attacks by essentially high-fiving you, but now its hands are really dirty, and with the sharper nails, probably more likely to give you some kind of an infection.

Cool as HECK! Garoba is some sort of alien looking exoskeleton monster with a face like a Gigeresque piranha and two claw-tipped arthropod-like arms, but it doesn't have any lower body or legs. Instead, it has a fleshy blue orb hovering in front of its stomach with a giant red eye.

Its profile ominously states that the "eyes on its main body" can "control dead bodies sleeping in the other world." I have no idea what any of that could actually mean. Which "eyes" on its "main body?" It's completely eyeless looking other than the single hovering one. What's the "other world?" Why are dead bodies "sleeping" there? What makes them dead bodies if they're sleeping? If they're in the other world then what does controlling them do? It's probably just really messed-up English translation, but I absolutely love it.

This is another that sticks out strongly in my memory! At first glance Granj resembles a bright yellow beehive-like orb with four gnarled, twisty wooden looking legs, but then the yellow pod thingy splits open and a teeny, tiny, adorable green embryo looking thing floats out?!

Oh my god, look at it. It's like a little tiny curled up baby lizard!!! The profile says this IS Granj, but then goes on to posit the question "is it the main body, or is it a resident?"

"Flarge Bird" is described as "a ghostly figure with one leg and the face of an old man, but when you look at it from the front it has the face of a parakeet." Do they actually mean when you look at it from the side? When you look at it from the front, what you see is that one big clawed leg and the "old man" face, or kind of like a middle ground between a human face and a plucked bird. Like a peach colored turtle face.

But, then it has these huge "wings" that each look kind of like one half of a bird head, each with a big eyespot and a beaklike claw! So it can look like a giant bird face if it closes those together? Really love this physiology. A Flarge Bird indeed. The Flargest!

EPE is a jelly creature that really looks exactly like a gelatinous fishbowl, with a trumpetlike tube on top, and hovering inside - usually - is a spiky red nucleus, which kind of evokes the fish. Looking like a fishbowl with a fish in it isn't part of its lore, but you can tell that's gotta be exactly what inspired it.

Its own nucleus is shot out as its main attack, and this is explained by the bio as Epe becoming "very naughty" since it learned how to spit things out of its mouth. That's adorable. I love that this big gummy vase thing was given a personality, and that personality is basically like a badly behaved pet.

This monster, or perhaps its color variant, appears on the cover of the game as one of those the publisher must have considered iconic mascot material, and they're right, Dipshi Lob has very unique charm! It's only explained away as a "prawn" that moved onto land, and then for some reason we're told that it suffers from anaemia.

The design is a bit odder than just some kinda shrimp, though. It's an armored, pointed crustacean when viewed from above, with eyes on top and a pair of insect wings, but its whole fleshy blue underbelly has its own separate face, with yellow eyes and a little mouth more like a baby Digimon! Cute!

Many monsters recycle the same basic layout, so you might have noticed this one obviously shares its skeleton with Garoba, the corpse-controlling eye guy. Instead of a hovering eye, it has a sort of segmented pink sphere. From this angle it looks like a simple face with dot eyes and a line mouth, but the dots and lines repeat around it like a wheel! The profile states this is the main body, and all the rest is a "figment of the imagination," so basically it's psychically projecting the rest of the thing.

And the rest of the thing, the illusion-body, is a VERY cool biomechanical looking whatsit, like a UFO with arms and antennae and a psychedelic color scheme. Mostly purple, but with fiery orange filling a visor-like eye or mouth and a gaping torso cavity, webbed with black. There's a real "Ultraman Alien" aesthetic sense to this guy.

Tarkod is a mollusk said to "always be cheerful," and emits a sweet smell that puts you to sleep! What a strange, interesting combination of things.

I LOVE the design, a peach colored bulbous head with shiny green orbs for eyes and a pointed "nose" giving it a weirdly human streak, though the rest of it is a bunch of slimy pinkish tentacles hanging out the bottom like a pile of guts that it slithers around on, attacking with its two larger, thicker arms. Everything about it looks so cool, it's just the icing on the cake that it's also apparently a real happy fella.

I really love the names in this game, seemingly heavily distorted from Japanese to create more "monster" sounding names, like ZERIBADY! A floating creature that absorbs and produces light. That's basically all we know about what it does.

Zeribady's design is like a bright yellow glowing jellyfish, with only two limbs that dangle from within its bell...or maybe those are heads? They end in flat diamond shapes with what almost look like eye markings, like a couple of flatworms, but it's difficult to tell on PS1 graphics. Alternatively, the head is the yellow egg-shaped thing sticking out of the top on a stalk, which has a number of differently sized, dark holes that give the impression of a wonky face. Either interpretation is charming, I think.

NOOT! What the heck did "NOOT NOOT" come from? It was the penguin show right? The clay penguin. Pingu!!! Who knew Pingu was all along calling the name of his beloved pet monstrosity? A monster whose description only tells us that it's "quiet," it's hard to tell what it's thinking or where it's looking, and that it likes talking to itself.

These are wonderfully unsettling characteristics for any monster, but especially for a monster that seems tailor made to freak people out. Its round, flesh colored head has big lips and sharp teeth, like the head of a piranha plant, but turned upwards with the mouth opening vertically. The head is also scattered with bright yellow but otherwise kinda human like eyes, and it walks around on four big, blue-grey armored crab legs. You may notice that it's based on the same model as GRANJ!

Kam Foe is a really interesting one! All we really know about it is that it floats and wields magic, but the design feels like Monster Seed almost parodying or referencing Pikachu.

We have almost the same round, yellow rodent face, but the "ears" are huge, broad, segmented things more like weird beetle elytra. It has a single unicorn horn, a bunch of spiny whiskers flaring out like fins, and nothing at all resembling a mammalian body. Instead, the whole yellow pikacorn face is situated like a mask on the front of a hovering pink blob, like a brain made up of little gelatinous eggs. Or maybe like fleshy pomegranate. I don't know what they were going for, but it sure is Monster Seed of them.

We're now getting into my favorite category of Monster Seed Monsters, if not my favorite category of monsters in general: the messed up little weaklings! The Monster Seeds that came out WRONG! First up is Gutchon, which is said to be dirty and filthy "like a stray dog after it's rained."

Gutchon even carries around a stick with what's probably supposed to be feces on the end, covered in "many bacteria that are unknown to man."

I think the filthiness of Gutchon is all the more entertaining given that the design is so innocuous, basically an adorable dumpy platypus.

Para, another of the first monsters I ever saw, is "a normal species in the process of dividing into two parts," so basically the embryo of some other monster that began mitosis, and got stuck that way?

Para's design really looks the part of something incompletely formed. It doesn't quite look like it's beginning to divide in two, no, but it does look like a wrinkly, peach colored fetus with a sort of turtley face and big, solid pink eyes. Poor little guy doesn't know WHAT it is!

Pire has almost the same description as Para, but with the added note that it "thinks it is a complete body." Huh!

Pire's design is also embryonic, but it's a blobbier, pear-shaped embryo with dull yellow skin. It has a big puffy lower jaw, a really dopey looking toothless underbite, and it has what are either two different sets of eyes or embryonic eyeballs and ears.

Then there's another, different monster also called Para, so we'll have to call it Para II. "A poor thing that was not hatched in a perfect shape, everybody calls it deformed, but it is potentially dark." Okay??

Though it reuses the name Para, its model is modified from Pire. It's a purple dumpling shaped creature with a wrinkled, veiny texture, and it has a single yellow cyclops eye where Pire had a mouth!

I think I might love DROOCH most of all! It's described as having a "very pretty face" despite its dirty, bacteria-ridden body. What do they consider a "very pretty face" here exactly?

Apparently, that means basically the face of a seal, with big shiny blue eyes. It also has short little tusks and an antenna on its head like an anglerfish, while the rest of the body is basically a penguin. It's a design that could have been generically cute, and it's definitely kind of sweet and innocent looking, but there's still something distinctly "not right" about it, especially considering that while we don't have an animation or screenshot of this, its primary attack is to strike with hidden tentacles! What the heck happened? What were you TRYING to grow that you got whatever a Drooch is?!

There are many more monsters worth mentioning in this title, but I feel like cutting this off here. Will we review more? I guess that depends on how well received this is, though there are a few other Pokemon-esque games I'd also enjoy going over like this.

WAYS YOU CAN SUPPORT THIS SITE!