Are ??? monsters different from the main type?

Again, apologies if this is covered in another thread, but I didn't find it at first glance. Recently I've been digging through the CD collections of my friends to get some of the [type]/??? monsters. My three most recent acquisitions are:

Bronze Suezo (suezo/???) from Tool "Aenima" White Birch (mock/???) from Deep Forest III Swimmer (mew/???) from Nirvana "Nevermind"

My question is: has anyone else who has raised special ??? monsters noticed them being any different from the main type? In Monster Rancher 1, the ??? monsters were exactly the same as the main type, as far as stats and raising go. For example, a dino/??? was the same as a dino/dino, it just looked different. Is this the same in MR2? The only one I've tried raising is the White Birch. He seems to get SPD and DEF easier than the pure Mock, but he didn't gain much LIF. Have other people have good/bad experiences raising these special monsters? Just wanted to get some feedback before I started trying to raise these guys. Thanks!

-- Bill Mick (otterzero@hotmail.com), November 10, 1999

Answers

Yeah I raised a Ruby Knight (Durahan/???), and in addition to looking awesome, I found that it seemed to increase in Strengh and Defense more than the average Durahan. I think that the ??? monsters are the same as the basic monster of their type, except that they do beter in whatever the basic monster naturally does good in. Did that make sense? Also I got the Ruby Knight from 3rd Eye Blind - Self Titled.

-- El_buttweasle (el_buttweasle@yahoo.com), November 11, 1999.

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I can't really answer your question as my only two specials are sueki suezo and the chinois metalner from men in black (I don't have a pure metalner and getting one through combining could skew the results). I hope there are some 'tweaks' though (i.e. sueki's short life/insane stats) as the lack of a third starting tech dependant on breed (ala mr1) has kind of hurt the diversity of the sub-species. It would be neat if in mr3 the rares all had one special technique or something, I think it might be a bit unfeaseable for every sub-breed though. Perhaps an oposition system where a golem/pixie say could learn (or start with) some of the more int based attacks fairly easily but be unable to learn one or two power/defense atacks at all, with pure breeds having acess to everything... Anyway, I hate to ask a question without really being able to answer yours (yet, I'm going shopping/renting tommorow) but was your copy of nirvana the one with the extra track? I looked for one without the extra when I was trying to get a rare for the original mr, but I never could find one. The other version though is a dime a dozen around here...

-- WildCard (rincewind@uswest.net), November 11, 1999.

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isn't it Fnema?

-- Ehh (aka_cp@hotmail.com), November 11, 1999.

-- Black Razor (Allanmontalvo@mindsping.com), April 13, 2000