I initially got into pokemon because I loved warriors and monsters. Since I was younger I longed for monster heroes like the turtles or Jim and this seemed to the next step.

Honestly I didn't like the whole "pet/trainner" thing, I wanted them to just be warriors without the system they implemented.

Eventually soon after, I would go on to liking better jrpgs and anime which had these, without the whole trainer stick.

Honestly, mystery dungeon came too late for me.