Battle Monsters is what you get when you are completely out of ideas, but you need to make a Mortal Kombat ripoff. You have a whole room full of Halloween costumes and throwaway clown outfits, so you decide to put them onto whomever they would fit. There is a difference between using martial artists with their own techniques for your character models and just taking pictures of some random people in silly clothes while they look like generic movie monsters from the black and white era of films. This game is a serious eye sore to look at, which is only the beginning of why it is absolutely horrific to play and not in a good way.
The fighting in this game feels so awful because of the controls and the hit detection. It's a coin toss whether you're close enough or far enough to hit someone and let's face it, your characters look awful! Some of the characters barely appear to be humanoid and that takes away from their playability. Not that it really matters, though. This game is ridiculously easy. As janky as the controls are and as terrible as the hit detection is, you can still just mash two of the attack buttons and you'll kill your opponents. The only real challenge comes when you face the final boss and by then, you're just ready for this to be over.
The real problem with this game is that the graphics are so bad and the characters look like they disappear into the background. Where Mortal Kombat characters look unique enough to intrigue a player into wondering what their backstory is, the characters of this game look like people with discount Spirit Halloween gear on. You can literally see the actors in cheap makeup and the immersion is ruined from the very beginning.
It's quite possibly the worst fighting game on the system and is mostly only good for a laugh. Battle Monsters is not worth getting angry over, especially if you can't get past the final boss. The controls are so terrible, you can't help but shake your head at its ineptitude. The level designs are derivative of just about every other fighting game, dumbed down into confusing multi-leveled structures that make the gameplay that much more annoying. It felt like they were trying pretty much anything to make it unique from MK but the whole endeavor was for nothing.
It was panned by critics for good reason and only ever released for the Sega Saturn, so we can't share the joy of this title with other consoles. If you break this game out for a whole bunch of friends to play, be sure to have Virtua Fighter or Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 up your sleeve just in case they don't get the joke. It's fun to point and laugh but loses its flavor about as fast as Zebra Stripes.
