Jade Cocoon 2

After the original Jade Cocoon proved to be a modest success, Genki tried their hand at a sequel, mixing up virtually every aspect of the original's gameplay and design and keeping only the core monster breeding element.  But does this change-up ultimately result in a better game, or is this just an ill-advised sequel that sunk a promising franchise?

Well, the fact that there has not been a Jade Cocoon 3, nor any attempt by Genki to revisit the monster breeder RPG genre, probably answers that opening question for you.  But let's take a closer look at the game and see exactly where this franchise met its downfall.

One of the first things the player is bound to notice is that the overall aesthetic of the game bears almost no resemblance to the original.  Katsuya Kondo is no longer in the role of character designer or animation director, resulting in a drastic aesthetic overhaul.  The setting of the game is no longer that of a lush, natural environment, but now has the player hopping between dimensions, going from one surreal alien locale to the next.  The tone of the original game is lost as well - Jade Cocoon 2 takes on a much more irreverent, almost campy feel to its narrative, with silly story elements, over-the-top acting and outlandish character redesigns at every turn.  Many characters return from the first game, though they bear little resemblance to their old counterparts; even Levant, the protagonist of Jade Cocoon, returns as what I can only describe as a "space hippie", sporting an exaggerated colorful outfit, a yin-yang pendant, an enormous purple lute and mile-long hair bangs.  While never atrociously annoying, and some elements of this can be amusing - Nico's irreverent narration of the storyline easily being the highlight - it's a very stark contrast to the heavy, somber mood of the first Jade Cocoon game.

Secondly, the overall style of gameplay is heavily overhauled from the first Jade Cocoon.  Instead of an RPG with pre-rendered backgrounds and linear progression, Jade Cocoon 2 is overhauled into more of a dungeon crawler.  The player travels about lengthy dungeons, entering rooms in search of a spore pod which will allow them access to the next floor.  Said rooms can also contain random items, monsters or trainers - either mundane ones who provide a modest fight or "Rivals" who provide much more of a challenge.  Defeating other trainers earn you medals, which in turn unlock new challenges that can grant the player rare monster eggs.

Jade Cocoon 2 also has a more generic and utilitarian RPG setup overall, with the player being encouraged to undertake a number of fetch quests and defeat-the-monster challenges.  These in turn grant a variety of rewards, such as rare items or monster eggs, and all will boost the player's Reputation, certain levels of which are required to take advancement exams in order to be able to unlock and use more monsters simultaneously in battle.

Which leads us to Jade Cocoon's most distinct difference: its combat system.  While the first game was a standard turn-based affair not dissimilar to its main inspiration of Pokemon, Jade Cocoon 2 takes things in a far different direction, attempting to add more of a strategic bent.  In essence, combat now operates with both participants having a 3x3 grid, with the protagonist and his rival in the center space and the surrounding spaces populated by up to eight monsters.  The row facing the opponent is the one that deals out attacks and takes damage whenever the player takes their turn, and the shoulder buttons rotate the grid to face a different set of up to three monsters toward the opponent.

What determines the winner of a fight is not so much the monsters themselves, however, but taking care to balance attacking, defense, and not leave the player character open to attack.  If the center space on the row facing the opponent is vacant, the opponent can then attack the other character directly, depleting one of their Shields; once all of their Shields are depleted, the fight ends immediately.  Thus, a significant part of strategy in combat is rotating one's monsters at the right times to tank opponents' attacks, heal their group of monsters, or go on the offensive.  Placing one's monsters strategically is important as well - each side of the grid is aligned with one of four elements (Earth, Wind, Water and Fire) and placing monsters that match that alignment will grant a bonus to their attacks and abilities.  Monsters cannot be placed in the center space of the grid that opposes their particular element, and they will always use an attack correlating to the element of that side of the grid if they have one.  Essentially, it combines elements of Ogre Battle into the formula of the first Jade Cocoon and ends up being a much more complex experience on the whole.

What it all boils down to is that Jade Cocoon 2's big failing wasn't being a bad game; it's a competently designed experience in almost every respect with some interesting mechanics and an enjoyably strange atmosphere.  The problem was that it made the same mistake Chrono Cross did only a year prior, billing itself as a direct sequel despite bearing little resemblance to the first game in terms of direction, and in fact actively going out of its way to upend many established elements of the first game's lore and characterizations.  Its irreverent tone, heavier emphasis on mundane quests and dungeon crawling, and a larger random element all contribute to it being a much different experience than the original.  Those that were drawn in by the first game's appeal as an interesting Pokemon alternative felt left out, and the overall design and atmosphere was too bizarre to draw in fans of older and more traditional RPGs, or even ones who jumped on the bandwagon with recent hits like Final Fantasy VII that sold themselves on having a heavier tone and more adult themes.  Basically, it simply failed to find much of an audience, selling about 100,000 copies to its predecessor's 270,000, and in an industry driven by revenue, that's the worst sin a franchise can commit in a publisher's eyes.

Developer: Genki
Publisher: Ubisoft
Platform: Playstation 2
Released: 2001
Recommended version: N/A

Jade Cocoon: Story of the Tamamayu

Coming out on the heels of Final Fantasy VII and Pokemon, Jade Cocoon represents Genki's attempt to cash in on two popular giants in the RPG genre in the late 1990s.  But does the tale of the Tamamayu prove to be a worthwhile one, or is this just another forgettable copycat?

Jade Cocoon was the first (and to date, only) RPG franchise by Genki, a company mostly known for making racing games.  However, they certainly made a valiant effort to create a game that would hold its own against other RPG giants of the time.

For a start, the game has quite an impressive budget behind it.  Not only does it have a full complement of FMV videos and prerendered backdrops for the story to take place against, but character designs and animation direction are provided by Katsuya Kondo, who made his name as a  designer and storyboard artist on Studio Ghibli productions.  Also unusually for the era, the game featured professional voice actors even in its English incarnation, with a few prominent names like Michelle Ruff, Brianne Sidall and Richard Epcar lending their voices to the characters.  A surprising amount of the dialog is voiced as well - even much of the incidental dialog with minor NPCs has voiceover behind it.  Cutscenes are even able to be skipped, which, believe it or not, was a fairly rare concept in the era in which Jade Cocoon came out.

Another nice changeup (in my book at least) is that the game does not feature random encounters - enemies are always visible on the map, allowing the player to engage or avoid them at their leisure.  Most of the time, at least, as Jade Cocoon also makes the odd decision to utilize Resident Evil styled "tank controls" rather than freeform movement; in short, rather than simply pressing a direction and moving in it, the left and right buttons cause your character to rotate in that direction, while pressing up moves him forward and back moves backward.  While this does aid a bit in navigation (allowing the player to keep their bearings as the camera cuts to new angles), it can prove annoying at times too, as it makes it considerably more difficult to maneuver around enemies in some situations.

Jade Cocoon at its core is a monster breeder/combat style of game, so like Pokemon, a significant emphasis is placed on capturing and breeding new monsters (referred to in-game as "minions").  Levant himself can fight as well, but this is of limited use as he has minimal combat options and gains no stats from levels.  Instead, his primary role is either as a supporter (healing his minions with items) and of course to subdue weakened monsters, executed by using his Capture Flute; the lower their HP, the higher chance they have of being successfully captured.  As more monsters are defeated, his "capture level" will increase, allowing him to capture and control progressively stronger creatures.

Minions themselves operate somewhat similarly to the Pokemon games, having innate traits, elemental affinities, status resistances and special attacks.  However, the player doesn't get to use them immediately after capturing them; instead, they must return to the village and have the creature's cocoon "purified" to bring it under their control (or converted into cash).  Once under the player's control, they can be summoned in battle to fight other monsters and gain new skills and stats by earning experience points.

Jade Cocoon draws some elements from the Shin Megami Tensei franchise as well, as a significant portion of the game's strategy is focused around fusing captured monsters into newer, more powerful ones.  These can be slightly powered up variations on your existing minions, carrying over some of the moves, stats and elemental affinities of their parents, but some combinations will also result in completely new creatures, carrying over some traits of their parents but having their own new movesets as well.  This gets taken even further in the postgame, where the player is given the option to customize their monsters with new skins as they venture through an endless labyrinth and face progressively stronger enemies as they go.  All in all, there are some 175 minions and variants thereof to collect in the game, though it is unfortunately not possible to get them all in a single playthrough as some share a slot on the Minion List and will prevent the other from being acquired once collected.

Alongside the main campaign, there is also "arena battle stage" where players can pit their monsters against those of their friends, pulling data from their respective memory cards to make two teams of three monsters each.  This mode even has a hint of a story behind it, as well as character narration throughout the battles, showing a surprising level of polish for something that is, for all intents and purposes, a minigame.

In the end, Jade Cocoon is an interesting, if not outstanding, take on both story-driven JRPGs and monster breeding sims.  While not the deepest of these kind of games, nor the most diverse in terms of design, its high production values and well-crafted fairy tale atmosphere make it clear that Genki was putting effort into making something interesting and not just trying to churn out a low-quality cashin for a quick buck.  If you're not a big fan of this style of game then Jade Cocoon likely won't do much to change your mind, but if you've already played through Pokemon, Monster Rancher, Dragon Quest Monsters, Shin Megami Tensei and Dragon Seeds and are looking for another game with mechanics in that vein, Jade Cocoon will probably be one you want to check out.

Developer: Genki
Publisher: Crave Entertainment
Platform: Playstation 1, Playstation Network
Released: 1999, 2008
Recommended version: The game was given a rerelease on the Playstation Network, though only in Japan.  As of the time of this writing, the only way to play the game in English is on the original Playstation.