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.
from Retro review