Jade Cocoon: Story of the Tamamayu

"Like Pokemon, but not exactly"

Jade Cocoon made my jaw drop to the floor, an amazing game. It might be short and seem limited but still a great game. Character animation is made by Studio Ghibli, makers of anime that you may have heard of: KiKi's Delivery Service, Princess Mononoke or Laputa: Castle in the Sky.

Graphics 10/10! Absolutely marvelous, very beautiful 3-D graphics. The backgrounds are very well done, and the characters seem very realistic in terms of actions (running, talking etc.) However, in forests, the graphics are so nice, that you might not be able to see an exit or entrance. Also, items in the forest are sometimes hard to spot because it blends in very well.

Sound 10/10! Why? Because there is speech for almost every person that you talk to, I have never seen or heard this in a game before. Plus, the dubbing is very good. The voices match their respective character perfectly. However, some tend to talk very slowly so I usually skip some of them.

Fun Factor 8/10: Well..the game is fun, but leveling up and catching is boring, not as fun as it would be in Pokemon. You get to merge monsters in this game, some may be weak and ugly, but some maybe strong and look very nice. The bad thing about fighting though is that you can only have one monster fighting at a time when in some battles, there are two or three monsters!

Great game, great graphics, but short, but don't let that get you down from experiencing this game!

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 11/01/99, Updated 11/01/99