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As they say, the sequel is never as good....

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: April 08, 2003
Author: Amazon User

The short version: Pokemon [take-off].

The detailed version:
The original Jade Coccoon is one of my favorite console games ever, along with Final Fantasy 6. When I saw an ad for JC2, I was aglow with delight. I read the reviews, I downloaded the previews and comercials, etc.

I bought the game.

I started complaining.

This is a rather sad sequel to what was a very good game. I think it's very revealing that this game was *only* released in the US, and *not* Japan, where the first was more popular. This game was designed to sell to young American kids who think Pokemon is fun, and it makes this very obvious.

The game play is OK. In JC2, Divine Beast breading is more like an industry. Some elements of the original carry over, which is neat. The portrayal of Levant a thousand years after Mahbu died is very interresting. Ra, Mu, and Kikinak are also back. I also have to ashamedly admit, I like the sassy fairy. The graphics are quite good, and the music is good.

The plot is almost non-existant. The first game delt with issues like "why does man suffer?" and the fall from grace of both Man and Spirits. The sequel deals with such thought-provoking issues as "Kahu likes girls, but they think he's a dweeb". Late in the game, there are a few points where the plot gets interresting, and there is some very good dialogue. Then, it's as if the writers thought, "Oh, no! Too much thought! We'll loose the interest of sponge-brained American children! New scene! New scene!"

For light entertainment, this game is OK. If you think Pokemon is cool, you'll probably like this game. If you want something as good as the original, the total selling-out to the Pokemon mentality will sorely dissapoint you. I was waiting throughout the game for any of the characters to use the prase, "Gotta Catch 'em All!" (Thankfully, they didn't, but I would hear it in my head every time I'd play.)

Light hearted RPG with some flaws

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: June 05, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Jade Cocoon 2 is a refreshing RPG because it does not take itself too serious. Where most RPGs are about saving the world or something else that is very serious, Jade Cocoon 2 is just fun. There are plenty of strange and humorous characters that you will meet up with. From the Sweet Knights to a professor and his little wild man, there is plenty of people to interact with. The dialogue is among the funniest that I have seen in a game, which is both good and bad. I found myself laughing out loud at creatures as they made silly threats at you when you prepared for battle.

There is a wide selection of creatures to find in the game, with some being very unique in design. They also change in appearance as they go up levels. A creature can go change twice for a total of three different looks. This is very helpful as some of their early designs are pretty silly (one is an egg with legs). One bad thing about the game is that when you merge creatures, their appearance does not change. Bummer.

The game does get a bit repetitive as most of the levels look identical and there is too many random battles. The side quests do add some value and the arena is a nice touch, but you soon grow tired of wandering around the same levels, fighting again and again.

Overall, this is a fun game that could have been much better. I like the humor and I think the characters are entertaining. The dialogue is silly, but enjoyable. I just wish there was more put into level design and more control over your creatures. Now that the game has come down in price, I think it is a good purchase.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

Disappointing, monotonous, not like original Jade Cocoon

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: March 09, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I am sorry to have to say this, but this sequel to the highly entertaining and original Jade Cocoon is not only totally unlike its predecessor, but it is without doubt the single worst RPG that I have ever played. (And I did finish the game, because I didn't have the heart to stop playing the sequel to one of my favorite games without really giving it a chance.)

Why? First of all, all of the features that made Jade Cocoon fun and interesting, such as catching monsters and breeding them and coming up with totally new monsters, breeding monsters to have a variety of available attacks within one elemental power, and upgrading armor and weapons of the player character as the game progresses are TOTALLY ABSENT FROM THIS GAME. Instead of catching monsters and then breeding the monsters you catch to come up with a wide variety of different results, you have certain "Divine Beasts" (not "minions" anymore) that you hatch from eggs, and then you go and defeat a limited number of certain kalma (evil divine beasts) to get cocoons that you then PAY a FEE to merge with the beasts that you hatched from the eggs. This does not seem to affect the look of the beast or what it turns into at all. Furthermore, a beast can only have one ability in any one elemental area at a time--it cannot have more than one different earth special attack, for example.

Also--and this really bothers me--the battle system is totally different from the battle system in the original Jade Cocoon. You cannot select which enemies your beasts attack when you are fighting, if there are multiple enemies; and your beasts can only use the type of elemental attack that they are aligned with on your beast amulet. If a beast is currently on the fire side of the amulet, it can only do fire attacks--and it can only have ONE fire attack. As if having tremendously frustrating battles weren't enough, these battles are constant. You are constantly getting into stupid, very rarely avoidable little fights with the annoying little beasts that are roaming about everywhere. It is very repetetive, monotonous, and unsatisfying. Also, any battles that are supposed to be difficult are merely a matter of waiting until your enemy's MP is totally drained--then, even the bosses are ridiculously simple to beat.

Finally, there are two other major problems with this game. 1. The localization is not that great. Characters say things that sound unnatural. For example, they often say, "Yow" or "Yeow" to express surprise when a more natural translation would be "Yikes" or "Wow." (This happens a lot in translating from Japanese to English, with this particular word, as you will notice if you read any mangas. Don't ask me why.) 2. There is practically no plot. It is a common problem in current RPG's to have too many cutscenes, but this game goes to the opposite extreme--there are practically none. What little plot there is is simply uninteresting.

So, if you're looking for a good monster-breeding RPG, play the original Jade Cocoon. I regret to say that I would not recommend this game to anyone, especially fans of the original game.

Light and darkness its all good

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: September 08, 2002
Author: Amazon User

THE GOOD:
A vast aray of monsters to train each with their own stlye and flare. A few old favorites make it to the PS 2 like Levant, Mu, and Ra. The Sweet Knights are cute (they remind me of misty and her sisters from pokemon). Battle in tournaments. Take up jobs like a bounty hunter. Find a vast amount of different and unique items (like sweet knights collectables). Evolve durring a battle to give you the edge.
THE BAD:
Merging is possiable but you have to merge with a base set and it doesn't change their apperence all it does is cause them to revert back to their baby form. You can't capture any more you have to find or buy the eggs. The main character can't fight normaly like Levant could. The beast amulate battle type in my opinion is'nt as good as the original battle type from Jade coccon one. No anime cut scene like the originals opening. Your monster can only know two fighting techs at a time.

SUMMARY:
In my opinion this does not stand up to the original. This kid will always live in Levant's shadow in my eyes.

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.

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