Sadly, when you least expect it, mediocrity strikes one of the best ideas since the Internet. That seems to have been what happened to Jade Cocoon: Story of the Tamamayu. While JC was walking along the sidewalk innocently, mediocrity ran up and mugged it with a brick or something. Jade Cocoon was still darn cool, but it's never quite been the same.

"The beginning of the end."

You are Levant, or whatever you choose to name yourself, a young man whose strong, passionate mother is still somewhat saddened over the loss of your father, Riketz, and waiting for his return. You are trying to move on with your life, to share it with a young woman named Mahbu in your tiny village of Syrus. But the past still haunts you, the secrets of your father's departure something you feel the whole village knows more about than you.

Who was your father? A cocoon master. Cocoon masters hunt Minions, or, rather, monsters, in the forests. They also have a special relationship with Nagi women. Mahbu, herself a Nagi woman, already knows her future. She will marry you, the next cocoon master of Syrus, when you come of age. She will purify the cocoons that you catch monsters in to support you both, and she will eventually die, due to the "brandings" caused by the rituals of purification.

You both are under the scrutiny of your entire village at all times, a couple trying to seclude themselves from the feelings of suspicion and fear of their village. But then, the Onibubu, the Locusts of the Apocalypse strike. Signaling the beginning of the end, they swarm your village, putting many into a deep sleep that they can only wake from if you are able to retrieve an herb from deep in the forests. But that requires that you become a cocoon master. Everyone knows that neither you, nor Mahbu are prepared, but time is short and you are forced to enter into marriage. While you hunt in the forests, she stays with Garai, a wise old Nagi woman, waiting impatiently for you to return.

Here we have a back drop for action, an extremely well constructed one which allows for intrigue and wonderful atmosphere.

"But if you're not the father, who is?!"

The tiny village of Syrus would make a great setting for a fantasy soap-opera. Everyone seems to know everything about everyone else, which makes sense, when their population is microscopic, even in comparison to many of the small towns in places like Indiana. I felt as though I were under a huge magnifying glass in everything I did.

You can choose to go to any location in the town, while you're in it, using a menu. Talking to the characters frequently, and I mean ALL of them, will give you a great idea of how the plot is evolving. The complexities in how Jade Cocoon is told lies not in the story itself, but in the characters and their relationships, which change constantly. Your mother, for instance, is shunned by those she works with at the silk mill. They are a bunch of gossips, sharp-tongued vipers who have nothing better to do but spread cruel rumors among themselves. They hate your mother, and they hate you.

Mahbu, on the other hand, is a strong woman, also hated by some in the village, but who doesn't care about it. She's as passionate as your mother, but much more resentful of her position, and perhaps a little resentful of you. She's stuck in a little old hut with a little old woman learning how to perform the magic that will eventually kill her. She is afraid. I felt a stronger attachment and understanding of these characters than I've felt for any others in any RPG, save for the Lunar series, and they have an amount of depth which may surprise players.

"Hiiii-YAH!!!"

Sadly, the battle system won't be inspiring any stereotyped kung fu movies, or anything else, including me. Eh, you get the idea. The point is, the battles aren't that great. But before I get into that, let me explain the monster breeding aspect of the game. While many will see the words monster breeding and immediately think, "eeek! Pokemon!" there are hardly any similarities whatsoever. The first step in improving your collection of monsters (or rather, minions) is to go beat the crap out of some. Once their HP is low enough, you can capture them and lock them away in a cocoon. Or you can have one of your minions kill them. If you choose the former, Levant will gain experience points. When Levant levels up, unlike most characters in RPGs, the only thing that improves is his ability to capture monsters. You'll only be able to do things like raise his maximum HP with items, and raise other stats with equipment. You should note that no one gets any points if Levant kills a minion. If you choose the latter, and kill the minion with one of your own, the Minion will get experience points. Minions don't get equipment, but they level up normally.

Then there's what happens when you get back to Mahbu. Mahbu, as a Nagi woman, is capable of "purifying" the cocoons you trap monsters in. Once purified, you have a number of things you can do with your minions. For one thing, you can have Mahbu spin them into silk. Since you don't get money for winning battles, you'll have to spin minions into silk and sell the silk. The better the silk, the more money you get.

The big deal though, the most innovative and interesting thing in the game, and perhaps one of the coolest gimmicks ever seen in a game, is that you can merge monsters. And I'm not talking about anything pitiful like combining monsters and hoping to get a new pre-designed one. When you combine monsters, the game actually goes through mathematical equations to create a monster, which is new in just about every way. Let me give you a quick rundown on how it works. You choose two monsters, one for the new monster to be based on, and another to give extra attributes. The first one will provide the basic template for the new monster, but will get attributes from the other monster's appearance, its EXP, and other attributes, and abilities. The results are often just plain awesome in their originality, and were awe inspiring to me, a guy who started gaming with the NES.

Then, you can go battle some more. I'll describe the battles as nothing more than mediocre, simply a backdrop for a lot of tedious character building. It would have been MUCH cooler if you could use all your monsters and Levant at once, but you can only have one out at a time. That becomes somewhat important to the strategy, but in the end it's hurtful by far.

Something very important and cool about the game is that there's no such thing as Game Over. No longer must you worry about the complete pain of leveling waaaay up and then getting killed due to a slight miscalculation. Thanks to an item called the "hunter's earring", which you will have for the entire game, you can leave the forests any time you want, and whenever Levant's HP is reduced to zero, it returns you to town automatically.

One of the only big complaints about the gameplay is the control. Like in Silent Hill, for instance, movement is relative to Levant rather than you. You'll probably adjust to it relatively quickly, but it simply wasn't necessary.

"Disco Stu? Who the heck is that?"

Mood music is good in RPGs, rather than music which is meant to stand on its own, at least most of the time, and the composer in Jade Cocoon knew this. When you're in the jungle, haunting tunes dripping with solitude resonate all around you, leaving you under a blanket of uneasy tension. There's voice acting in Jade Cocoon too. As a matter of fact, almost all the dialogue in the game is spoken. Cool, huh? While most of it is a little lackluster, it keeps a relatively high average of quality throughout, with some voices (such as Mahbu's) really shining.

"Trees are cool."

And so are Jade Cocoon's graphics. Coincidentally, both statements have a relationship. Jade Cocoon has the most beautiful and organic representations of jungles I've seen in a video game. They're 2D, pre-rendered, CG backdrops. The village of Syrus, and other settings? They look darn cool. As for the characters, they're darned cool; polygonal Anime-styled characters which take after Katsuya Kondo's rich character design, and are thankfully proportioned like normal people. While they do experience a good deal of clipping, it's definitely worth dealing with to experience the over-all cookieness of the characters. Also worth mentioning are the animations for your characters. They normally have a good variety, and are very expressive and natural in comparison to most other Playstation 3D characters. You'll see 2D character portraits, by the aforementioned Katsuya Kondo, accompanying dialogue boxes. While they are beautiful, with a soft palette of colors, they lack true illustrative strength. They simply cannot get the emotional response they want; and no matter what they are meant to express, they still feel serene and gentle, perhaps due to how truly soft and passive they really are.

The minions, like the characters, are polygonal and well designed. Many of them are very original and interesting. One of them, a tree-like minion, has the coolest and most bizarre 3D animations I've ever seen. I was actually shocked when I saw how they walked, like demented wooden tripods with many little arms. And the rest have cool animations too, fluid and convincing.

In battle, effects are mediocre, nothing more.

Last off, of course, FMV. The game opens with a beautiful anime sequence which was made in the same style as Katsuya Kondo, but that you won't see any more of in the game, which is really disappointing. You will, however, get to see CG FMV's showing something similar to cave drawings, which display the deep legends of the past of Syrus. While lacking in eye candy, they are clear and fantastic at creating atmosphere.

"The end.or is it?"

When you get done with the normal game play, which will last around thirty hours, you get to enter the eternal corridors. Endless, mindless character growth, that's all I'm going to say. A nice extra, especially for those who enjoy the gameplay. At the end of it, if you ever reach it, you'll see another ending.

"Now it's really the end!"

I mean that. My advice is to go rent Jade Cocoon. If it gets you hooked, buy it. If it doesn't, don't. It's really that simple, although I personally think it's a somewhat above average game that was worth my money, and very interesting to play. No matter who you are and how you feel, though, you won't be able to deny the complete coolness of the gimmicks this game features.