Ok, I didn't have time to do much but I'll try to post what I know. You have a customizable character, although there weren't a whole lot of options for the character.

You move around the environs by clicking the mouse to select a point and your character moves to the point. You can buy food, accessories, and potions from shops.

There's a place to practice battling with other monsters, like most places you can warp to it by going to special spots that kind of glow.

I'll post more and some screen captures later.

Did you manage to regenerate anything whilst you were playing?

Also, did you notice anyone battling?

What are the new stats?

My husband started playing while I was asleep, and used the one random disc stone the game gave me. I made the monster that sort of looks like a deer. I am posting from work, so I don't want to type the wrong thing, so I won't mention the breed.

Other people were running all over with monsters. I could only see the names they had named them.

Tigers are pretty small in this game in relation to the people, about the size of a 25 pound dog. At first, I was wondering why some people had coyotes follwing them, then I realized they were Tigers.

Pixies are very small, maybe a total of two feet tall in relation to a human.

I battled a monster that was a sort of wasp. And I had to leave because I hadn't studied the controlmenu enough. I sort of wound up fighting by accident. So, I wasn't paying attention to the menus as muchas I was trying to not get killed.

There are nice sub menus showing you and your accessories the monster and it's accessories, your items, etc.

The environment is pretty much as shown in the art, except you are close up in it. It's all in pastels, like a watercolor painting.

In terms of character customization, there's male/femaleto choose from, then three skin tones. The three skin tones are, unfortunately, very pale, light and honey. There are no darker skin options. Hairstyles and colors were also limited. IIRC there were about 7 hairstyles, and the option of brown, grey, black, green blue or bright apple red as colors. There were three eye types, and several colors there, including red. I did not have the option for black clothing

I saw a Plant, and many of the new breeds. I did not see Joker, Henger, Golem, Phoenix, Worm and many others. But, it was a very limited test,4 hours a day for two days. I got in abut 2 hours of play.

I did get tossed out of the game 4 times in the time I did play, so I wasted a lot of time starting up over and over. The system does allow you to save your progress or start a new game.

Nice. Sounds excellent.

According to a number of screenshots in the blog, when newborns,
the Tigers are indeed extremely small. But when adults, are as big
as any human character. Pixies can get pretty big, too.

Apparently, you can get more accessories later on in the game.

Oh, yes. More questions.

What was battle like, in your very brief experience? What would
you compare it to? Does the breeder have any statistics or carry
any other means of defense besides the monster?

Is there a place where you can face other human characters and
their monsters?

Were you able to explore any of the other options?

Do the guide and BBS have anything relevant you can share with
us?

Will there be another server test sometime later?

The BBS is for bug reports only.

You can talk to other people in the game, you see their avatar and their monster follows them, like a dog follows his master. If you go up to a person, you can talk to them. I didn't because I didn't want to waste time trying to converse in Japanese -I knew my time was limited.

Battles are in a true 3D environment, so you can back up and go sideways, etc. The person's avatar stands to one side, sort of coaching. The battle interface is all new, with a little tiny lifebar above the monster's head. There was also pretty much no time between attacks, unlike mr2 where the animation stops for an attack.

The environments and graphics are a bit sparse, but, I was able to see 20+ people with their monsters onscreen at one time.

It makes sense that these are babies. The absolute most play time anyone could have had was just under 8 hours.

The breeder can acquire some accessories that look like they do something. I saw a man with horns peeking out of his hair. I also was able to shopfor some acc for myelf, but ot booted off before I could put them on, then decided that playing dress-up wasn't a good use of time.

At the potion shop there were at least 10 types of potions in vials for sale. Sorry, I didn't stop to translate it.

BTW, lag is not an issue. Aside from being booted off a couple of times, the play was seamless.

No word on more tests. I's Sunday in Japan right now.

Sounds splendid.

A couple more questions, if you don't mind. Does it look like
human players can square off against each other? And finally, how
does the music sound? How was the ambience?

Humn players cannot interact or fight, I didn't see any techs or anything, jus chat options.

The music is pretty consistent with MR3 & MR4's music, kind of quiet pop-classical/smooth-jazzy. It was a fairly serene experience. My husband actually liked it (he ever got into any other MR game, and believe me, he's become thoroughly familiar with all of them) and wants to play when it goes live.

In many ways, it's like MR4 blown out into a 3D world, with a more sophisticated look.

Ah, I see. I guess breeders might only be able to square off in a
field like the one where you faced the wasp, if the screenshots on
the blog are any indication.

I assume the game will have some mission-based gameplay. Sort of
like like the Monster Guild missions from MREvo, only with a lot
more meat to them.

One last one for now: Did you find any drill options? Or do
monsters only get stronger from battle?

I couldn't figure out about drilling. It's possible I just didn't go to the right area.

Here's some pics (sorry they aren't very interesting, I didn't think to do screencaptures until right before the test ended):

https://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v667/LisaShock/?action=view&current=mr1.jpg
https://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v667/LisaShock/?action=view&current=mfo2.jpg
https://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v667/LisaShock/?action=view&current=mfo3.jpg

Hmm, the HUD menu seems a bit different than that one video
which showed regeneration, in which there were a number of
English options, including Guild. I can see Breeder and Item
options, but I can't read the rest.

The radar on the top-right side looks to be more important than
the older ones this time around. And the command window
shows chat and recent actions.

If I'm not mistaken, the little profile box on the top-left corner
shows the name of the breed, as well as its nickname, level and
Lif.

In regards to the classic attack menu on the field, it appears that
monsters can once again hone their skills in a manner similar to
that of MR3. It seems you can store up to four items in those
quick selection boxes for immediate use in a pinch.

mm looks really beautiful, i like the monster disc as the radar :P

Wow... Pretty nice screens Lisa! =)

I can't wait any longer to play this...
It is going to be free or paid?

It's free, but you need a Japanese copy of Windows XP to use it.

I'm not sure if installing Japanese unicode will have it work on a US
version of XP. How were you able to play the game, Lisa?

I am running Windows NT Server Japanese. I am a bit lucky that it worked, but having the JP version did allow the client menus and buttons to display properly. On my non-JP machine it was all question marks, squares and franc symbols.

I should mention that there were three areas on the main map. I could only access three points out of 7-8 available in the first place, the rest were locked to me.

Oh, I think I recall seeing that I was at breeder rank 1, and weirdly enough, that was in English.

"I am running Windows NT Server Japanese. I am a bit lucky that it worked, but having the JP version did allow the client menus and buttons to display properly. On my non-JP machine it was all question marks, squares and franc symbols"


Well, maybe sort of Japanese language patch could solve this problem.

Like I did in Digimon Online RPG. The way the text looked was tha same as you say Lisa.

(sry for the double post)
In the case of Digimon Online, I used an "Korean Patch"

Yeah, I played Digimon Online. I used a couple patches and was able to play it. Figure it won't be too long before someone cracks this.

Yeah, it won't be hard. It is a text-heavy game, though.

I wonder if there's an encyclopedia?

How will new content be handled in the event of such a patch?