-{Ziedrich's Blog}-

(This is just a short post about my opinions and notes on certain games in the next 30 days, this is pretty common on Facebook but they normally just ask themself a question and what game they think answers that question the best, not for me though, I will just talk about games for 30 days, lol)

Released in 1999, Jade Cocoon came out for the Playstation and it’s a game very similar to that of Pokemon and it was followed by a sequel that pretty much ruined the whole thing and so a third one never came to be, which is a shame coz this first one was very good, I almost like this more than Pokemon.

The game is set in a world covered in forests and there is a town called Syrus where the hero of the game lives and you are the young hero, Levant, his dream is wanting to become a Cocoon Master, but to become so, the boy must marry a Nagi woman. Levant marries his friend, Mahbu, and with the aid of the elder Nagi woman, Garai, the hero tries to find out the reason and to repel the attack by the Onibubu, a demon race that has put his village to a deep slumber.

The base of the game is the Minions in which the hero attacks and either defeats or captures and which he can use to fight in his stead, but in order to use them, you need to bring any recently captured minions to Mahbu in order to purify them and only then can you use them in battle. You can hold upto 4 minions and you can store others back at the village, if your low on money, you can tell Mahbu to turn minions into silk to sell, the better quality the minions, the more expensive the silk.

One of the best parts of the minion system is the ability to fuse minions together to make improved versions, some might look awesome after the fusion and some might look quite ugly but all the same, each fusion comes with some positives and negatives. The main part of each minion you have to remember the most is that each minion has a elemental strength which also means each one has a weakness, the 4 main elements are – Wind, Earth, Fire and Water and the weakness goes like this - Wind beats Earth beats Water beats Fire beats Wind. If your lucky with your fusions, you can make a monster that has multiple elemental strengths, even more so if you manage to make one that has all 4 elements.

This is when it differs from Pokemon, as you know, even the trainer can get involved in these fights and is always the first to start, you have to go into the summon section and pick which minion you want to replace you in combat. Capturing minions works almost like Pokemon, using a technique such as your flute and some luck after beating up your opponent, you can capture it, you have a limited amount of capture space so take them all back to Mahbu for purifying and then either fuse, equip or turn them into silk.

There are quite a few boss battles, most of them are actually challenging, it all depends on how well developed you and your minions are, still, most battles are fun and collecting and combining minions to finding the best sorts for your party can take many hours. After completing the game, you get the chance to play The Eternal Corridor in which you face a endless labyrinth of randomly generated elemental stages in which tests your battle skills to the max, it’s very good fun I must admit, got me entertained for weeks.

Thats it for Day 6 of 30 on my days of gaming….

(This is just a short post about my opinions and notes on certain games in the next 30 days, this is pretty common on Facebook but they normally just ask themself a question and what game they think answers that question the best, not for me though, I will just talk about games for 30 days, lol)

Released in 2001, The Bouncer, came out for Playstation 2 and this is a game that many fans didn’t expect Square-ENIX (Squaresoft back in the day) to make a 3D beat m up and of course, it flopped big time, the sales and reviews were very mixed and thus the game never really gained a foot-hold. Square fired Dream Factory (The guys behind the project) not long after it’s release and thus the game just disappeared out of the gaming radar after a year or two.

Getting straight down to the point, The Bouncer was a underrated game, If you could just look past the long cut-scenes and very short story mode, stands a decent beat m up with much to offer and plenty of replay value and not to mention a very fun multiplayer mode.

The game is split into 3 modes, Story, Survival and Multiplayer

Story mode puts you in the role of 3 “bouncers”, Sion Barzahd, Kou Leifoh and Volt Krueger, doing their typical shift when their bar was overrun with troops called MSF, they beat up the guys and kidnapped Sion’s girlfriend, Dominique Cross. It soon becomes a fight for survival aswell as a rescue mission to save the girl that Sion loved as they pit themselves against the army of Dauragon C. Mikado, the head of a major cooperation, the fight takes them from their bar, to the streets, to Dauragon’s HQ and even the sky and space.

The combat system is pretty easy to remember, the main buttons all do attacks while the shoulder buttons do things like block and holding one while pressing an attack button unleashes a special attack, the special attacks for Sion, Kou and Volt can be purchased via story mode after each stage. How well your 3 characters develop also effects how hard the enemies are in story mode and beating bosses on harder levels improve them in multiplayer mode.

The major problem to Story mode was the fact that there is alot of cut-scenes which lasts as long as the gameplay itself, trying to fit alot in to such a short mode but the fighting itself was good and this was one of the first major games that used the ragdoll system, in which when knocked over or hit, the person acts like their have no bones in their body, it was funny sure but when 2 ragdolled people collide, it causes a chain reaction as the two bounce off each other and class it as another hit, you could lose tons of health if it happens at a corner.

In multiplayer mode, there is a choice of 2 matches, singles battle and team battle, singles battle can have upto 4 players and even though teaming up is possible, having a free for all battle is much more fun, choosing from a surprising number of playable characters, from such a short story mode, it fit alot of characters and each character is unlocked after beating them in story mode.

The team battle section, pits 2 teams against each other, each team has 3 players a side and it can be quite chaotic if all 6 of them are in such a small area so good thing there is alot of stages that vary in sizes from a huge factory to a small carrying ship. The winner is decided when the leader of a team is defeated, so not all members need to be knocked out in order to win/lose.

Survival mode pits you into a type of tower style battle where you have to progress down Dauragon’s factory, the mode is about 10 floors long but each one gets drastically harder so make sure you use a very well developed character before hand, beating survival mode will result in unlocking Sion’s secret outfit.

Thats it for Day 5 of 30 of my gaming articles….