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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Great, but have you got the time for it?, 10 Jan 2005
How can i describe Jade Cocoon 2? Pokemon for adults seems to be the best desciption. You play as Kahu, who has only gone and gotten himself a tail (thrilling) and because he doesn't want to turn into a Karma (nasty creatutres) he sets off on an epic journey to try to reverse the process. There the story.Its the gameplay, that, at the time, really made this game stand out. You aquire "Monsters" throughout the game, not by capturing them like in pokemon, but by finding eggs, and you can use these monsters to fight for you. Now, just as in the game there are four types of level (this becomes REALLY tedious) there are four types of monster you can have. Fire, Wind, Water and Earth. They level up, just like in pokemon, but this is really what makes it different, you can also merge them! You can merge 2 monsters so that you can either increase its level of evolution (i.e. merge with same type monsters) or increase its range of attacks (merge with different type monster) and you can place these in varying positions around you. You can have up to 8 at one time. You find these merging monsters in the areas you visit. However, there are also a number of EXTRA features. You can complete tasks for certain people (either find this or kill that) you can go and compete in a battle arena, (for money rep or so you can hold more monsters) and theres also the story to follow with many cute characters popping up to say hello. The graphics are ok, but the problem is repetertiveness. Each area (there are 4 remember) has a number of sub levels with a boss at the end, thats ok. HOWEVER, there are about 40 levels of each to fight through and they all look incredibly similar. This really does dampen the game and limit its graphical potential. There are some nice cut scenes though with a mixture of anime and some really impressive realish looking cutscenes of boss monsters your gonna have to battle. The Sound is irritating, imagine a "sound of the jungle" tape stuck on repeat OVER AND OVER AGAIN! The only relief from this is the character voices in the FAR TO MANY (like 4 in each section AND NO ACTION) pauses in the game to chat to someone. the character voices are all extremely varied, and the variety is nice, but they dont half winge on about this and that and for what reason? Im guessing just to lenghten the game out. All in all, this would have gotten a 4/5 at release, but its now dated and there are many BETTER RPGs out there now, (Star Ocean, Shadow Hearts etc) and your better off getting them, but if you want to spend 60 plus hours of your life breeding and merging some of the ugliest (how on earth tghey made them so ugly) monsters, and continually battle over, and over, and over, and over again, this game is for you.
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