Large Monsters
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What are large monsters?
Any monster can have a large form. They end up taking 2 slots in your party, so you could either have 4 small monseters, 2 small and 1 large, or 2 large. Large monsters have 50% more HP/MP and have 10% of the other stats compared to their smaller counterparts. They can only have 3 talents, just like small monsters, but they will have 6 traits (3 more than small monsters). Large monsters will start out with 3 traits unlocked and an additional one at level 60.
Are large monsters always better?
There are some good things and some bad things. One good thing is that it appears most, if not all, large monsters will have one of the "Tactical" traits that allows them to attack more than once. However, half of the tactical traits say "sometimes", meaning they could actually end up only attacking once in a turn. This would make small monsters a better bet as you can guarantee 4 attacks. Some small monsters even have their own tactical trait, meaning you could get up to 8 attacks if you were lucky. If you had 2 large monsters, you could only get up to 6 attacks, theoretically.
However, tactical traits will reduce your stats 10%, 20%, or 30% depending on my many attacks you do. Thus, small monsters are going to be more potent than large ones. So while being large will increase your attack, defence, agility, and wisdom by 10%, any tactical trait will ultimately cause you to lose stats in these four categories in the end. Though, their HP and MP will still be higher.
Large monsters also have 50% better resistances to the non-damage attacks, meaning most will end up immune to at least one or 2 non-damaging attacks. However, when enemies have ultra crafty traits, this will still reduce your immunity quite a bit.
Spells that target all monsters would end up doing overall less damage since there are less targets taking damage. However, if an enemy ended up using stronger, single-targeting spells, it might end up being better for small ones. There are also some traits that allow more damage to large (or small) monsters.
Large monsters get 6 traits instead of 3, so they have more flexibility - but one of these extras will almost always be some sort of tactical trait so they attack more than once... meaning large monsters will only get 2 extra traits. The synergy of these extra 2 will need to be pretty large or else they would be useless. For example, if you have a monster that has Crackmeister and Ultra Crafty Cracker, you'd focus on cold damage. If one of the extra traits then increased your fire damage, it would be a total waste as they wouldn't do as much damage as your ice (ignoring resistances), so you end up not being as efficient. Though, a large Spiked Hare, on the other hand...
How do you find them?
At least for the demo, you can only seem to find large monsters once you win in the arena of a given area. The assumption is that you have to beat E rank, then large monsters have a random chance to spawn in the area. They look quite a bit larger than small monsters, but they are still seemingly rare. Perhaps the chance goes up as you win more and more arena ranks. Thus, you have to just randomly find them, normally in the 2nd area. Mole Hole DLC will have lots of large monsters for you to scout, though!