Retro Review - Jade Cocoon: Story of the Tamamayu

Pokemon games have been a big part of my childhood, I remember when I had my Gameboy Color and spent hours playing Pokemon Blue or Pokemon Gold, undoubtedly one of the best memories of those years. The success of Pokemon was enormous (even today maintains much of that success) that many developers wanted to copy the formula of success of this saga, that's why when I discovered this PlayStation 1 game could not help but notice that the similarities with Pokemon games were many, however, this was a title that despite their similarities, knew how to create its own personality and essence, and although I consider a fairly good title, has been forgotten and eclipsed over the years.

Today's Retro Review is about: Jade Cocoon: Story of the Tamamayu.

This story and like many other games of this style, tells the story of a young man, this one in particular has the name of Levant, he lives in a peaceful village with his mother and like Pokemon, he wants to become a Pokemon master... I mean, in a master of cocoons as was once his late father (cocoon are the Pokémon of this universe). But according to the traditions of the people of Parel, the place where our protagonist lives, before he can become a master of chrysalis, he must marry a woman of a tribe known for possessing great magical abilities, tribe whose name is: Nagi.

Our protagonist's wedding day has arrived, but to start a story or better said, every RPG begins with an event that endangers a people or the world, in this case, when the people were in full celebration are attacked by strange creatures called "Onibubu", which after causing chaos throughout the village, induce much of the inhabitants in a deep sleep, yet are driven away by the oldwoman sage of the Nagi tribe, but that's not enough to wake up the inhabitants.

Only a few were saved from this "curse", among those people who were saved is our protagonist, who seeing the current situation of his people, is sent to the forest to find answers and the cure to save all people in Parel, during his adventure to find the cure, he will have to go through different forests, meeting many people, capturing cocoons, improving them and for it will have the help of his friend and now wife, Mahbu.

The graphic aspect of Jade Cocoon: Story of the Tamamayu is really good, with pre-rendered graphics (something very characteristic in PlayStation 1 games), I can easily say that this title can be on par with games like Final Fantasy, since in Jade Cocoon with respect to the backgrounds of the scenarios have enough details to make it visually a wonder to see, but of course, all this taking into account the old graphic standards as far as videogames are concerned, although it is proper to say that as far as the modeling of characters is concerned, they are noticed with a little less quality and the definition in them is not so good, nevertheless, in design as much of the characters as of the Pokemons.... I mean, the cocoons are pretty good, the characters as well as the chrysalides have good details, good use in the color palette and good movement, although this could have been used more if they had a better definition.

But the best aspect of this game (in my opinion) is the character design, because all the characters in this game were created by Katsuya Kondo and maybe for many people this name is not familiar (for me neither), but what can be made familiar is the name "Ghibli", because Katsuya Kondo is one of the best designers that has this Japanese animation studio, which has behind them great animation film works like: "My Neighbor Totoro", "Princess Mononoke" or "From Up on Poppy Hill", therefore in this game we will find excellent graphic arts characters, scenes and above all, cinematic that visually are a wonder.

Having this game much of the magic of the Ghibli studio as are its characteristic character designs and visual art, it is no surprise that in Jade Cocoon: Story of the Tamamayu we are going to find wonderful musical pieces that adorn each of the moments we live while we are playing, besides this, the sound effects are also very well elaborated, especially in battles. A good list of sound effects is necessary so that together with the melodies an optimal environment can be created, in such a way that the game experience is adequate for a greater immersion in the world or the situation that the game in question is presenting to us at that moment, and this is an aspect that this game does really well.

Video Author Soundtrack Games

Just like Pokemon, the main aspect of this game is to explore the woods and capture all the creatures that this game has at our disposal, but unlike the Pokemon saga, which only at the beginning of the game give us an initial Pokemon to choose from, in Jade Cocoon at first we will go without any kind of creature and is through the use of Levant's own skills we must capture our first creature, after having our first Pseudo-Pokemon and we can use it in battles, the battles will be by turns, like the classic RPG and with the help of our creatures we will be able to capture others.

Jade Cocoon has certain similarities with the saga Pokemon, since % of capture of a creature of these will depend on the amount of life that we have lowered to the creature itself, ie, the weaker the cocoons is the greater the chances of capture, just like Pokemon. In addition, after capturing a cocoons we must take it to Mahbu, Levant's wife, so that she can purify it and we can use it later in battle, but also thanks to the magic powers of Mahbu, we can merge our creatures, in such a way that we can create really strong cocoons taking into account the basic abilities of each creature, like its elements, abilities, statutes and even the appearance of each creature in question, all these aspects are going to have consequences in the fusion of our creatures and as we advance in the game, we will be able to create really strong cocoons and the quantity of fusions that we can do is quite big and varied.

Unlike other RPGs and even with Pokemon, in Jade Cocoon we will not improve our skills by defeating our enemies, is quite the opposite, as we can only improve our statutes by capturing any type of creature, so it is very necessary to capture a large number of creatures to improve considerably our character, in fact, we will not even get money defeating the creatures, in order to get money we must sell them, this way gives a very important level of capture in this game.

If I could highlight a negative aspect in this game is the control of the character, as it has the typical controls of "tank", ie, the control of our character resembles what we see in Resident Evil or even Silent Hill, so many times it is quite uncomfortable to move our character on the stage due to the limit of movement that has this mode, in addition to that in many occasions it is difficult to us to be able to avoid some creatures, since in this game the creatures appear in real time in the map, in such a way that in many occasions we will be able to avoid them and thus to avoid some fight, but due to this type of movement, in some cases it is very difficult, but in the end we end up getting used to it.

Jade Cocoon: Story of the Tamamayu is a game really forgotten, I know very few people who know about this game and although obviously the developers tried to create a game based on the great saga of Pokemon and retains much of its already classic features, I have to say that this title has enough personality and charisma so that it can be catalogued as an excellent RPG, despite its obvious defects, this is a highly recommended game.