“One of my absolute all-time favorite Game Boy Color games ever. Scratch that, DEFINITELY my all-time favorite Game Boy Color game. Also one of the most overlooked titles ever. The game was released after Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow, but before Silver/Gold, and it had a far deeper monster system than those games.
In DWM, monsters have a level limit that is pre-defined by how well bred they are. Monsters who join (you don't catch monsters, you convince them to join your party by bribing them with meaty treats) always have a level limit of 50, but your bred monsters can have a level limit of up to 100. There's some formula for figuring it out, but I didn't bother with it. Additionally, each monster has a growth rate, which determines how much EXP is required per level; monsters with a really high growth rate are GENERALLY weaker, although not always, and monsters with a slow growth rate are almost ALWAYS powerful and rare monsters.
Monster breeding relies on a few things: the 'pedigree' monster, which determines what family the monster will be a part of (family is similar to 'type' in pokemon, and it only applies if you aren't breeding a one of a kind combination of monsters), and then the other monster just contributes some stats and skill to the baby as well as helps determine the "+" which is the measure of how well bred your monster is. You lose your two parent monsters and get a Level 1 baby that can learn ALL the skills of both parents, and has higher starting stats,a higher level limit, and often a faster growth rate than the parents. There are also some skills that can only be learned by a monster who's parents' combined skill pool includes a number of specific other skills. The clearest example of this is the skill Big Bang, which can only be learned by a monster who's parents knew the highest level of fire and ice breath attacks, and the highest level explosion attack (WhiteFire, WhiteAir, and Explodet).
Other than standard "this family as pedigree with this family as the other makes this monster" type combinations, there are a large number of "one of a kind" type combinations that result in a specific monster when two other specific monsters are mixed. Some of these seem pretty random, like mixing two Gorilla-like monsters to create an Elephant, and then mixing two of the resulting elephants to get a 6-legged lion called KingLeo, who happens to be pretty beastly (pun intended, but also true). The other noteworthy combination I can mention quickly is by combining a Phoenix and it's icy counterpart, Blizzardy, you get RainHawk, which is basically a griffin, and learns some very rare skills, has amazing stats, but a painfully slow growth rate.
Anyways, with 220 total monsters, collecting them all is a much more lengthy task than in Pokemon, especially when not every monster is available for 'capture' as a wild monster. However, every monster, including the bosses, can be created through breeding, although the maximum HP is limited to 999 for your monsters, while 'wild' boss monsters can have up to 100,000 HP (namely, the final secret boss in the game, DarkDrius).
Overall, the game is highly challenging and highly addicting, and if it wasn't so damn hard to get now, I'd tell you to buy it, but since you can't, I'll just tell you to get yourself a copy of VisualBoy Advance and download the ROM to this hidden gem for the GBC.”
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