The game, taking place in the BOMBA region, involves raising, fighting, and breeding monsters.

There are two primary methods for creating monsters: drawing pictures in the Magic Field using the touchscreen, and reciting an Incantation using the microphone.

In a fight, your monster starts with a fixed amount of guts, which is basically energy to spend on the moves they know.

[1] A major change from the previous games is that you are able to use the touchscreen to move your monster forward or backwards, as well as to order it to attack.

[2] This gave rise to speculation that both games would not be localized in North America at all which would be a first for the series since every past game in the series had been localized with all of the past portable titles: Monster Rancher Advance and Monster Rancher Advance 2 being released in North America.