I will go with MasterEn on dragon quest monsters 2
Do Palworld count ?
not so many I can think of on PC.
And Pokemon is just to basic.
palworld. that would depend on what you do in the game. i don't have much on it besides the meme: pokemon with guns
pokemon can count, but the pet raising stuff comes very late game; possibly even post game. and it's mainly for breeding pokemon for competitive play. or shines, if you give enough of a shit about that.
dragon quest is something of an anomaly. set up like pokemon, [3v3 instead of 1v1]
but it can actually hit you kind of hard when you get into one of the core mechanics, breeding.
the monsters leave after they perform the marriage ceremony [ i don't recall off hand what it is called]
they are gone forever. and in their place, is their baby; entrusted to you to look after and care for.
the baby has stat influences from its parents and learns as many moves as they did before leaving.
and the combo of parents leads to crazy results too.
you can have a basic looking slime who knows flamethrower and instant death. a giant manta ray with healing spells and enough stamina and defense to rival senator armstrong. or a dracky with lots of buffs and debuff spells.
and the best part, you pretty much start this stuff after the first boss. its a core mechanic of the gameplay loop and can give you a wide range of emotions and thoughts about the monsters that you meet.
i've started the game over a few times. i'm still always a little sad when slash the slime, your first buddy, leaves after the ceremony. i name the baby slash the 2nd; in his honor.
apologies about going a bit off the rails. this is my third attempt at this post. i kept rewriting every time that i got to pokemon and i remembered that games exist after the first gen.
