Can't say I've played many. Hmm...Digimon World 2 (rental) - what can I say, it was a boring dungeon crawler. And as a fan of the show first, it was disappointing that several iconic Digimons didn't by default evolve into the same forms as the show.
Digimon World 3 - more personality than the second and promised to feel better for sure, but didn't have much of a story hook and early battles could feel incredibly unbalanced based on level ratios at low stats.
Monster Hunter Stories - a capable spinoff that did well for what it set out to do. The sequel seems to be missing ... something that the first one had, even though the gameplay in battle is SO MUCH BETTER.
Monster Sanctuary - a pixelart 2D Metroidvania combined with collectible monster battling. Creatures have nice little designs, but gets dragged down by an inconsistent difficulty curve -- Keeper Duels are so much MORE difficult than simply fighting off wild monsters it may as well be a completely separate game (and not helped by an untutorialized "hurry up" mechanic which stacks flat DPS buffs onto both sides the longer a duel goes on, something which is NOT similarly present in wild monster battles). I get that Keeper Duels are sort of the "boss battles" of this game, but at least Pokemon's level of difficulty is generally consistent!
Spectrobes: Origins - This is the only one on the trilogy I've played but it was pretty good. Monster designs do feel sort of Digimon-like, but its version of fossil restoration is surprisingly fun. It is a shame that despite having a clear pair of protagonists, you can't team them up (I hear 2-player co-op has P1 controlling their player and P2 controlling their monster).
I'm kind of looking forward to "Palworld" when it releases -- a few of the creature designs may seem suspiciously Pokemon-like (such as: Boltmane, an electric lion, black fur with yellow highlights) but the pitch that they are going all-in on some of the ethical/moral undertones of a "monster collecting" environment makes it ... kind of impossible to ignore.
- Using creatures as labor, at both small scale (penguins helping construct a house) and large scale (creatures working in an assembly-line "sweatshop" factory)
- Poaching (using an electric monster as "bait" to stun many fish at once)
- Fighting monsters not just with your own monsters, but with actual weapons (from bows to guns to rocket launchers)
- Using your own monsters as cover, or arming them with guns too
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