Format: Advance
Genre: RPG
Developer: Konami
Publisher: Konami

POKEMON! But no seriously, this game is legitimately pokemon, or maybe persona? Personamon! That would be the best way to describe this game in a nutshell. You play as a kid named "Yoh" who just wants to take things easy. His catchphrase seems to be "It'll all work out." as he repeatedly gets his ass kicked by mentally broken psychopaths/possible rapists. There are many many MANY questionable things going on in this story, but let's just say that the story itself isn't the strong point of this game. The quick-witted humor is on point and a very nice addition that keeps the attention of the game, similar to a persona title. The gameplay itself is almost verbatim 1:1 of that of a pokemon game, with less graphics and options. An example, would be the move "hide in fog" that one of your pokemon can have which enables it's evasion to increase. This "hide in fog" move can be used six times and then it's maxed out until you switch out that pokemon. If that sounds like the move "double team" to you, that's because it is. The few stat enhancing moves like that are overshadowed by the simplicity of the game however. In truth, this game is NOT very long, but rather, most of my time that I spent in this game was wasted trying to find good combinations to make new "pokemon". I call them pokemon but in truth, the game calls them spirits. Things like "earthbound spirit" and "korogashi" and "big oni". There really isn't all that much difference in it's design at all. Each "spiritmon" has an element, a type, stats, etc etc. What sets this apart from pokemon is the combination style of spirits in this game, which is more akin to persona. Unlike persona, you can have more than 1 of the same type of spirit. If you wanted a team full of hamsters, go nuts, have all the hamsters you want. Combining 2 of the same type of spirit makes the next "rank up" in that type list, but you can also combine different types much like the persona graph from the persona games. Something weird and kinky about this game is that there are 2 colors of each "spirit" and 3 different backgrounds for each 2 colors. It makes it look really cool, but at the end of the day, a shitty spirit is still shitty so you're gonna end up upgrading to get that hamster just do mud dumpling on their faces. This game was clearly inspired by pokemon and persona, even referencing the butterfly analogy. It wasn't that bad of a game, but if you screw around like I did and try to make multiple spirits to fill out your "pokedex"(R button btw), then it will drastically increase your time. Best advice, start the game by licking some cats, it will help you learn kung-fu. Hamsters are badass. Gab-Guy(Soldier) is also very good. Your main samurai guy is probably strong enough to beat the game by himself. DO NOT RE-ENTER TAO CASTLE IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO! Ending was a total A-Button Grindfest.

Hot Tips:
Element Circle: Water -> Fire -> Ice -> Wind -> Earth -> Thunder -> Water
Element Anti-Circle: Light X-> None X-> Dark X-> Light?
Hamster is the ultimate personamon!
20 Spirits is Max Inventory.
All in All, A score of 8 is pretty appropriate for this game. Here are a few gripes I have about this game: Having to figure out the element circle and element anti-circle was a pain. Trying to figure out how the spirit fusion worked was horrible without a guide. Story is fairly weak. MISS-city. A-Button Spam gets tiresome and makes you miss important criticals. No attack animations.