Jade Cocoon 2 expands the ideas of the original Jade Cocoon, but has a different lead character and evolution style. This is sort of like super pokemon battle.

Where the original Jade Cocoon required you to actually summon creatures and handle them one at a time, in this one you have a ring of 8 spots around you, split into four types. You have water for healing, earth for defense, fire for attack, and wind for special abilities. Where you put your creatures affects how they are used.

Creatures have levels, hit points, magic points, and then stats such as strength, speed, wisdom, and so on. You start with simple creatures, but you can evolve them from larval up through most evolved.

Unfortunately, where the original Jade Cocoon let you actually 'blend' your characters together to create totally new and unique monsters (a la Dangerous Creatures) in this one you simply take the ability of the "seed" and add it to your regular creature. So you might have a fish-shape and add "resist poison" to it. It'll look the same, but now it can resist poison.

You move through the levels in the various forests, collecting orbs, killing enemies and building up your creatures. There's a lot of good strategy involved in how to build up your levels, how to use the creatures you have, which to use at a given point of time, and more.

The graphics are a strange blend of old Final Fantasy style menus with well done anime-style images for encounters.

A good game for someone who enjoys creature-building and development, and turn based combat. For some reason Amazon doesn't have it though, so it might be hard to get your hands on.