Like its companion title Dragon Warrior: Monsters 2, Tara's Adventure, the plot of Dragon Warrior: Monsters 2, Cobi's Journey takes you to the island of GreatLog, where, as a member of a family of monster farmers, you complete a series of missions to keep the island from sinking. Cobi looks for magical keys, explores a number of alternative worlds, performs reconnaissance for an impetuous king, and even joins the circus. But collecting and breeding monsters is the real meat of this game, and is the area with the most intricate and addictive gameplay.

Each monster has its own complex set of characteristics, and can be matched with any monster of the opposite gender to produce a new member of Cobi's monster menagerie (don't worry: the actual breeding takes place offscreen). The results of monster breeding can be surprising, and allow for nearly endless experimentation. Of course, your responsibilities don't end with breeding: you must also take your monsters out on missions to give them experience and keep them sharp. Let your monsters languish for too long on the farm and they'll get lazy and disobedient.

The monster breeding by itself wouldn't be much fun if it weren't for the game's imaginative settings and strong characters. Despite the Game Boy's modest graphics and sound capabilities, the game evokes distinctive atmospheres and personalities through an inventive use of textures and dialogue boxes. The multiple menus necessary for successful navigation of this world at first appear dauntingly complex, but the interface does a good job of leading you along until you get the hang of things.

Dragon Warrior: Monsters 2, Cobi's Journey stresses creativity and constructive behavior over conflict. While it's true that you can hardly take three steps without your monsters getting into another fight, the
Like its companion title Dragon Warrior: Monsters 2, Tara's Adventure, the plot of Dragon Warrior: Monsters 2, Cobi's Journey takes you to the island of GreatLog, where, as a member of a family of monster farmers, you complete a series of missions to keep the island from sinking. Cobi looks for magical keys, explores a number of alternative worlds, performs reconnaissance for an impetuous king, and even joins the circus. But collecting and breeding monsters is the real meat of this game, and is the area with the most intricate and addictive gameplay.

Each monster has its own complex set of characteristics, and can be matched with any monster of the opposite gender to produce a new member of Cobi's monster menagerie (don't worry: the actual breeding takes place offscreen). The results of monster breeding can be surprising, and allow for nearly endless experimentation. Of course, your responsibilities don't end with breeding: you must also take your monsters out on missions to give them experience and keep them sharp. Let your monsters languish for too long on the farm and they'll get lazy and disobedient.

The monster breeding by itself wouldn't be much fun if it weren't for the game's imaginative settings and strong characters. Despite the Game Boy's modest graphics and sound capabilities, the game evokes distinctive atmospheres and personalities through an inventive use of textures and dialogue boxes. The multiple menus necessary for successful navigation of this world at first appear dauntingly complex, but the interface does a good job of leading you along until you get the hang of things.

Dragon Warrior: Monsters 2, Cobi's Journey stresses creativity and constructive behavior over conflict. While it's true that you can hardly take three steps without your monsters getting into another fight, the violence itself is not at all graphic, and outcomes rely as much on strategy and relationships as on brute force. The world of the game is a gentle and whimsical one where nothing too bad ever happens. Even if one of your monsters has the misfortune of getting killed, it follows you around in a cute little coffin until you can arrange for a resurrection.

The one disappointment with Dragon Warrior: Monsters 2, Cobi's Journey is not so much with the title itself as with its much-hyped interaction with its companion title, Dragon Warrior: Monsters 2, Tara's Adventure. Linking with another Game Boy Color running either the same cartridge or its companion title enables, among other things, monster swapping and multiplayer adventuring, but the layouts, plots, characters, and dialogue are virtually identical in Tara's Adventure and Cobi's Journey. The addition of a few extra monster types and spells hardly justifies the expense of a second game cartridge.

But never mind. Dragon Warrior: Monsters 2, Cobi's Journey provides more than enough fun missions, engaging characters, and imaginative settings to rate as a smashing success as a standalone. --David Stoesz

Pros:

• Minimal violence
• Battery save feature lets you bookmark your progress without using passwords

Cons:

• Virtually identical to Dragon Warrior Monsters 2: Cobi's Journey
• Missions can lead to aimless wandering

Cobi and Tara, brother and sister, move to the island of GreatLog to take up monster farming. Soon after, the island starts to sink into the ocean, forcing the siblings to find, capture, breed, and train an army of Dragon Warrior monsters to save their beloved GreatLog. Dragon Warrior: Monsters 2, Cobi's Journey features the brave Cobi, while his daring sister Tara is featured in the linkable companion title Dragon Warrior: Monsters 2, Tara's Adventure.

Combined, these releases let you collect more than 300 engaging monsters from up to 11 monster families as you explore strange and mysterious worlds. Each version offers exclusive monsters and items. While these games play fine by themselves, you'll need to link up or purchase both to collect them all the items and creatures. Each title has different hidden quests accessible only with secret keys. Trade keys to uncover the mysteries contained in both titles. Best of all, it's up to you to breed the most powerful monster by customizing it with magic abilities and inherited skills. Link to another system to fight your friend's monsters or join up to fight as a team!

Customer Rating:
Summary: One of the best RPGs ever
Comment: This may be one of the best games I have ever played, the artwork/ graphics are some of the best on the Gameboy color. the music is catchy and fits the mood, it is also incredibly addicting. This game is a unflawed masterpiece, if you own a Gameboy color, or a Gameboy advance then you have no reason not to get this. also this game is not rated M it's rated E Amazon just messed up.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: the most addicting game on the planet!
Comment: Dragon Warrior Monsters 2 series is by far the best RPG available. The play value alone makes up for the "primitive" graphics and sound. It never gets boring, it is far more satisfying than any of them "Blackjack" or "Tetris" cheapies played by old ladies on the bus to the nearest casino!

My secrets for fantastic gameplay are to first take the time to create 3 of the ultimate monsters: three Granslimes with Swiss Knives of reparative and utilitarian spells. These monsters are invulnerable to most spells cast by other monsters, and other monster attacks just take on the average, 1 "HP" from your beloved Granslimes. This team can hastily clean the clocks of even the most powerful boss monsters, making collecting all 311 other monsters a breeze!

Another tactic I use is to make a "crip" sheet of all the families of monsters with all the monsters listed in the family. As I collect the monsters, I check them off in the crip sheet, avoiding countless visits to the "library" to check my monster farm status. Also I hurry up and breed useless monsters to create one needed to complete my collection. Also I take them out and fight with them to get them to level 20 to learn most all their native and inherited spells before once again pouring them back into the breeding soup. I dont pay much attention to their temprament, that can be changed later on with books you can buy with the fortune made by selling items I pick up on the way. Also I discard most all offensive and defensive spells, leaving just the utilitarian and reparative spells.

Another thing to do is to go to the arena often, and save before fighting in the "S" catagory. If anything other than magic keys are given as a prize, reset the game and fight again to avoid squandering your hard earned money. The goal is to get a "lord" magic key, fighting in the "lord" world will level up any monster, pronto!

Also I dont use offensive spells. I primarily make it just a slugfest, and use reparative spells to repair my damage after every fight.

With the virtually endless magic keys opening up magic worlds to explore, this game never gets boring, even after you collected every single monster!

I only wish that Square Enix would release Dragon Warrior Monsters 3 for Game Boy Advance!

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Dragon Warrior Monsters 2: Cobis Journey
Comment: Game is worth buying. Legend of Zelda Series is better.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: it's NOT a flaw...
Comment: I just wanna say that the 'flaw' some reviewers mentioned IS NOT a flaw. The 'supposed to be fixed' flaw is..

"Another flaw is that the bugs in the combat system were never fixed (if you assign a monster to attack another monster and the monster you want it to attack dies before yours has a chance to strike, the attack goes to waste. In other RPGs, when this happens, the attack is usually inflicted onto another target, but not here.)"

What this means is that instead of just executing commands or button-smashing, you gotta assign appropriate command to your monsters; you gotta know your enemies. There is no such thing as 'wasted' attack/command because you should know how much attack and magic would take an enemy monster away, what specific spell/how many times will wipe them out, and etc. You are playing a role-playing game here; monsters simply follow what YOU ordered them to do...they don't simply decide on their own and decide to be 'effective' by cutting down the 'wasted' attack all of sudden.

I know I'm being a 'jerk' here...and may be they are right..it was a bug, which was supposed to be fixed. However, being a Dragon Warrior Mosnters lover, I just had to get it out of the system. Any game has some kind of flaw. However, when a specific feature of a game, which is specifically designed for a specific reason, is being labeled as 'flaw/bug' then it's a different story.

My apology for those who said it's a bug/flaw (not trying to criticize your review, simply stating my opinion), but you gotta say what you gotta say, right?

Enjoy a 'flawless' game, at least before my 'biased' eyes.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Even Better Then Dragon Warrior Monsters 1!!!
Comment: I never thought it was possible to make a game better then DWM 1. But somehow, they created a game with better graphics, faster walking, cooler guys, KEY WORLDS, and a whole new family of cool water based monsters. The key worlds make it way easier to train your monsters. The all new water family is super cool. There are all new "Best of their family" type monsters and cool new ???'s. It is also a lot easier to make Darkdrium(the "best ??? family monster"). It only gets better. There are 2 parts of this game Cobi's(older brother) and Tara(younger sister). Tara's is better for making the ??? family monsters anf Cobi's is harder to beat. The game is just to good to put in one cartrige. To bad it isnt like those never ending Final Fantasy games and stops at #2. I would really suggest buying this game!!!

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