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An awesome Monster game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 14 / 18
Date: August 09, 2001
Author: Amazon User

In this game you get to buy cocoons and capture monsters within them. You would think this would be like some kiddy pokemon game but this had a creepy, eerie feel to it. Not only that but When you capture the monster you can fuse it with another to form a more powerful and cooler form. I love this game and I think it is a must buy for gamers and anime fams (yes it has anime cutscenes). Buy it!

a RPG with a dash of anime

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 12
Date: December 09, 2001
Author: Amazon User

think of this game like pokemon (but alot better) on steroids, minus every thing cute

Jade Cocoon 2 Flexes a Playable and Enjoyable Journey

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 24 / 34
Date: December 19, 2001
Author: Amazon User

By popular belief, a system will not reach phenomena-status unless it gives rise to every kind of genre. It isn`t a ham-fisted deduction to assert that Sony's unwavering PlayStation came out on top, smashing the Sega Saturn and N64 into smithereens. Their current powerhouse, the PS2, has yet to be outperformed. Thus, it's not another speculation to believe that Sony's success is due on the behalf of a certain genre. What's now an essential ingredient for gaming diets everywhere, RPGs determine fates. As the eagerly-awaited spectacle, Final Fantasy X, closes in ever so slight, Genki's Jade Cocoon 2 will clearly fill in the gap. Released about the same time with Square's Goliath, Jade Cocoon 2 struts the muscle of the PS2 harness and flexes a playable and enjoyable journey.

I'll be quick about it, "pika, pika," is finished, Pokemon is at last. . .dead. Now stop comparing it to Jade Cocoon's awesome rudiments to that nauseating craze. Genki's previous attempt was all about an extremely glossy monster-breeding simulation, and round two remains unchanged. Where others flopped, JC2 hypnotizes gamers inside an experience none can rival. Modifying the previous monster-raising system, plunking great innovations, and keeping an authentic structure to its predecessor, the follow-up soars well beyond the first. Simply among the most enthused RPGs this year, the 3D atmosphere sizes up a faintly tricky learning-curve that may overshadow the great depth this RPG endorses.

The first game ended when protagonist, Levant, cleansed the Forest from its wicked aggressors. With his village mending wounds from the ordeal, the Cocoon Master gained immortality. Centuries have dragged by and now Levant is proven to be a critical guide to our newest hero. Enter Cafu, an aspiring Beast Hunter. Taken by the art of capturing and playing God with monsters, Cafu has unexpectedly been cursed as a demon himself. Now time is his own future slayer, slowly it bleeds out his human existence. Branded as the Seeker of the Orbs, Cafu must scour uncertain mazes of woodland and snatch particular orbs to reclaim his true self. Feral walls of wild beasts must be tamed, grown, bred, brought onto battlefield as allies, and go deeper in the elusive forest to prevent Cafu from unavoidable doom.

Revamping all the nooks and crannies from the original, there is still an elegant bag of surprises. Once into the game, Levant bequeaths Cafu with an amulet to control two friendly critters. In combat, the amulet has a total of eight openings for your creatures to be planted on. Leveling up Cafu's stats and his reputation at town earns additional slots. Battle, menu-based, is focused on Cafu and the adjacent challenger who are surrounded with a ring of their own monsters. Behaving like a rotating wheel, if there is a hole in the shield of monsters, both Beast Hunters are open to damage. Dishing up some strategy degree, each monster keeps an elemental makeup (Fire, Water, Wind, and Earth). Working almost via-rock-paper-scissor style, combat accelerates chunkier as you advance through your journey. Dipping you in a series of engrossing fights, Jade Cocoon 2 goes around the Turn-Based dud.

JC2's chief point is its respectable monster-raising system. Adding bucket loads of involvement, you must perform a sequence of undertakings to modify, collect, and form a monster of your own zest. Staying true with the concept of amalgamating two creatures to share parental traits, JC2 also has the option to let newborns be bred endlessly. It'll take continual experimenting to model a flawless pedigree. Collecting monster eggs require Cafu to trek within the woods. Featuring better, prearranged areas, you are to mostly penetrate giant plants and furrow for their keyspores. Serving as keys to open subsequent, accessible areas, the exploration level is huge. Yeah, it's linear, but the direction in the game is still far better than the often puzzling original. Customary procedures of moving between town to town, gathering information, and throwing a bargain of vast voyages, Genki's second effort is a virtual textbook on "How to Create a True RPG and Monster-Breeding Simulator Done Right."

The graphical department is breathtaking. If you thought Pikmin for the GameCube was the mind of an alcoholic, Jade Cocoon 2 is the mind of a Sci-Fi writer. "Big" isn't fit to express how large this RPG is, extraordinarily gigantic is more like it. Geared in a watertight execution of polygons, the environment bolsters nicely with the sprite-based characters. Integrating anime-style characters, the uncanny look on this game is mesmerizing. Beaming with shady, yet delicately dazzling eye candy, the emphasis on creativity doesn't bog the game down. From house to towns, from caves to never-ending flora, Genki illustrates how much flair they can achieve graphically. With a technically advance face-lift, JC2's soundtrack is just as rich. In tides of duel and all over between, the tracks are relentless and tasteful. Swallowed in a convincing 3D realm, packed with 200 cut-scenes, and speaking in full English voice-overs, I know where my fifty bucks went.

Localized with high-quality text, Ubi Soft was right to publish JC2. It`s just an attachment of great gaming from beginning to end. Heaving with a barrage of slick-looking animated characters and flowery special effects, this title could be a tad bit of competition against the fearsome Final Fantasy X. It's just THAT good. Teasing you with two hundred different types of monsters to discipline and an easy to learn battle interface, Jade Cocoon 2 has all the trappings of an RPG which shouldn't be missed under the Holiday flood.

Have to buy

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 21
Date: December 24, 2001
Author: Amazon User

As I went to Best Buy I was looking for Final fantasy 10 but they ran out then I looked around and found this game. I couldnt wait to play it. I played it for a few hours and loved it. Its like pokemon but lot better. In this game u get to have 4 elements then you have 8 people in a circle so 8 aniamls. Then they do there own thiing then you can merge them and make them strong. There are 4 island with 5 stages and they are short forest levels. It is not like Dark Cloud where its a huge place. I recomend you to bye it. The story line is ok but game play is great.

Jade Cocoon 2 almost perfect. Almost.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 22 / 23
Date: January 15, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Jade Cocoon 2 is a great game with a few flaws. ... I'm going to concentrate on a few details ..., some that I really like and a few that I'd really like to see fixed for Jade Cocoon 3.

First, the good stuff. As you might guess, you are limited to the number of monsters that you can carry around to do your fighting. This number increases as you advance in skill, but you always have more monsters than you can keep with you. One of the best features is that your monsters gain experience even when they aren't with you. The monsters on the bench get about a third of what the active ones get, and over time it adds up. It is great not to have to keep swapping out monsters in order to get them all built up.

Also, you can leave the forest any time you want. (Except during a battle, of course.) This is good because you are fairly limited in the supplies you can carry - even after buying all of the backpack upgrades you can only carry 30 items. Plus, you pick up a lot of stuff in the forest. If you get really beat up, run out of supplies, or have too much loot to carry any more, you can easily teleport back to the main area.

My third favorite thing is purely visual. The animations of the spell effects are great, and get better as your monsters learn tougher spells. Further, each animation is pretty short, so the battles don't take any longer just because your monsters are more powerful.

On the down side, the menu system really gets old quick. For instance, something as simple as moving an item from your inventory to the warehouse requires a menu choice, a confirmation of that choice, then choose the item, then confirm the item, then an acknowledgement that the move was made. I much prefer the inventory system in, say, Dark Cloud, where you moved stuff back and forth between your inventory and the warehouse, and then just got out when you were done. Every single action has the same hoops to jump through, which makes monster management more of a chore than it should be.

I've read on the game website that there are more than 200 cutscenes with a bunch of different characters. I am betraying either my age, my lack of appreciation for anime, or my years of soaking in American media, but I think about half of both the characters and cutscenes could have been removed. Maybe it made more sense in the original Japanese. Or maybe it makes more sense if you are used to Japanese pop-culture. I've got nothing against storyline, but a lot of these scenes seem to do nothing more than slow things down. I found the storyline in the original Jade Cocoon more compelling.

Along with that, I wish they had done a little better job with the English translation. I can always tell what the characters intend to say, but the dialog doesn't flow smoothly. It doesn't sound like native speech to me, which probably adds to the feeling that the cutscenes are breaking up the flow rather than moving the game along. In Jade Cocoon 3, they definitely need to get some young Americans to help them write the dialog for the US release.

Note that I gave it 4 stars. These things detract from the experience, but not so much that I've stopped playing. Even with these issues, it is still an addictive gaming experience. The good things more than make up for the bad. I'm past 30 hours with the game and my guess is that I'm about 60% done. ...

I bought this one when it came out on the strength of the original Jade Cocoon. I'll be picking up Jade Cocoon 3 as soon as I can, based on the strengths of this one.

~*~Finally, a revolution~*~

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 7
Date: February 10, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Ah... amen. Miracles do happen. Jade Cocoon's graphics and controls where so horrible, I can't believe how much this follow-up game has impressed me.

Take the role of Kahu, the new beast hunter boy cursed by that good ol' fairy Nico. Tame beasts and meet a million new and old faces. Trust me, this game's no washout.

Enjoy the improved graphics, the new characters, and the revolutionary new battle system. Final Fantasy X has a rival...

Still not convinced? Rent it. Play it. Be changed by it. If that isn't enough, ahh... what about the "Sweet Knights"?

=)
-=Dandi=-

Got Monsters?

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 17 / 19
Date: March 03, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Jade Cocoon 2 is the kind of game which invariably will be explained, failingly, in comparisons: Final Fantasy X, Monster Rancher, Pokemon, etc. It is no less fabulous for the seeming inability of gamers to describe its pleasures for what they are. If I were to compare JC2 to another game, the title that springs to mind would be Okage: Shadow King, and that simply on the virtue of its irreverent charm and heavy stylization, for be assured that the gameplay stretches leagues and leagues deeper, and the experience becomes far more addictive than that relatively lukewarm RPG. JC2's prime offering for you, prospective customer, lies in the endless drip feed of pure RPG dungeon crawling, monster evolving joy -- and the game's developers have stuffed JC2 with enough side quests, arenas, dungeons, and monster variations to keep your thumbs rooted to the dual shock for just one more level, one more merge... Before long, you'll start marking time with your bladder. Critics who whine about repetitiveness apparently have never spent an afternoon with Monster Rancher 3 or Phantasy Star Online -- and even those games are enjoyable. After all, who cares about going back for seconds if the game makes it so entirely worth your while? Other selling points include JC2's cute character designs (including a faux girl band with a dead ringer for Scary Spice), inspired voice acting (yes, probably better than FFX) and very nice graphics throughout, from the actual battle animations to the high-res boss cut scenes to the anime narrative bits. JC2 is every bit worth your time and money, and for all the love that went into this title, it's also well worth yours too.

Solid adventure

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 10 / 10
Date: May 16, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Jade Cocoon 2 won't win any awards for being a deep, meaningful RPG. But it is a solid adventure that'll please fans of other creature-catching games like Monster Rancher, Digimon or Pokemon.

The story starts in familiar territory for the genre with a young boy taking his first steps to become a master of monsters (in this case, a legendary Beast Hunter). The plot takes a refreshing twist into uncharted territory: you become possessed by an evil spirit and end up being hunted by the very hunters you're trying to join.

Despite the engaging storyline, there's too much repetitive gameplay. Most of the time is spent wandering through maze-like forests, battling a few monsters and Beast Hunters until you find the key that gives you access to the next area. That's about it. Its saving grace is that the environments look amazing. The games visuals are great-- anime style character designs and nasty-looking beasts.

JC2 has a unique battle system. You surround yourself with monsters you've caught or bought and place them in a circle around you based on their elemental strengths. Depending on which element is in front, you can attack, defend or heal. Although it has a good amount of strategy, it unfortunately lacks the ability to let you decide which attacks are used on specific members of the enemy's party. You just send your front line into battle and hope they use an attack to do some damage.

Jade Cocoon 2 is a pretty fun monster catcher game. The repetitive environments lose points, but it's story, strategic battle system and graphic style make up for this.

POSTITIVLY ADDICTIVE!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: June 16, 2002
Author: Amazon User

This game is amazing. I think it must secretly relese some addictive substance into the air while being played! I spent something like 5 consecutive hours playing and i had no idea it had been so long! The plot is by no means deep, and the animation is in no league close to FFX (another great game) but it's still fun. Battles are tough enough to hold intrest but not so hard that you are ready to turn the disk into a frisbee. One of the things i love about the game is that your monsters constantly evolve and oyu can merge them as many times as you like to make them stronger. Plus, by merging, you can either upgrade their skills or give them new ones. There is a huge selection of beasts so you can choose what your ultimate team will be- there is no "best or storngest", you make your monsters what they are. If you want hours of entertainment without a lot of stress and anger, this is the game for you!

Not for mature gamers

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 6 / 7
Date: September 07, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Jade cocoon is cute. Graphics are above average. Creating strange looking beasts was interesting. The girl rock stars are adorable. On the other side of the coin, the cartoon bubbles depicting the characters while speaking are redundant and annoying. Lack of variety in character's movements is boring. In my opinion the creaters of this game should have rated this game for a younger crowd. It's too slow for a mature gamer.

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