You are Levant, a Cocoon Master in the making. Being a beast of knowledge is tough in a world such as this, and even now, creatures from the forest are trying to destroy your village. So your quest begins, in a classic attempt to fill your father’s shoes as a Cocoon Master. The story unfolds piece by piece as you find out more about the world around you and the way it works. This is classic RPGing, and it’s a great feeling. All the time, you’re wandering around an elaborate world with its own true mythologies, own sense of “being.” Although it’s not quite the level of something like
Panzer Dragoon Saga, where everything fit into the ecosystem and such, and the world was effectively its own self-contained reality,
Jade Cocoon draws you into its twisted reality better than most any RPG out in the market today. This is a Good Thing.
The gameplay itself is great as well -- it’s sort of a Pokémon meets Final Fantasy thing, where you capture monsters, breed them to make new combinations with more powers, and use them to beat the crap out of enemies that Levant himself couldn’t damage much at all. Since Levant cannot die, the game has a failsafe mechanism -- but your creatures can, and that’s a real kicker. You find yourself conserving your best warriors, and using your weak ones just to strike the death blows. The game has its own internal consistency in the ways that it works, and it really makes for good gameplay. The battles mesh well, the exploration scenes mesh well, and the story ties it all together. I find myself purposefully getting in random battles so I can play with my creatures. It’s lots of fun. And then you get around to the actual story of the game.
