It's been a year now, since my last (And only...) review (So far...). I promised a review and a review you people shall get. This time I'm reviewing a game from one of the most unknown yet exciting series,
Dragon Warrior Monsters 2: Cobi's Journey. Released for the Game Boy Colour, this little gem is one of my personal favourites. The original, Dragon Warrior Monsters, was awesome in it's own right.
In the game, you take on the role of a monster tamer, and you have to build this team of monsters to help you fight the evil guy. JRPG's, am I right? There are more than 100 monsters in the game, and breeding plays a major role.
The game also has a sister game, in which you play as... the sister. There are some slight differences between the two games, and different monsters, too. Like Pokémon Gold and Silver.
That's the game in a nutshell, I guess. Now onto the review!

GRAPHICS: 8
In the game's defense, this is the Game Boy Colour we're talking about. But the game did an excellent job of capturing each monster's individual characteristics. The over world sprites were good, too. You can actually differentiate whether the sprite is old or young, male or feminine, monster or human!
Speaking of monster over world sprites, they have each and every one of the monsters as sprites. Compared to the Pokémon Gen 2 Pokémon Sprites, the DWM2 sprites beat them by a mile.
The lands and terrain were magnificently portrayed through the graphics themselves. They didn't take shortcuts, either. Compare a square of sand and a square of snow and you can see more than different colours.
For a GBC game, this game did great.

SOUND: 7
I'm not much of a game music fan. Sometimes, I even mute the game, and open a custom Marina and The Diamonds playlist instead.
But this game? I can still remember the sound when I'm fighting wild monsters. I can recall the sound it gives when I successfully convince a monster to join me. Every land's personal music accompanies their respective terrains beautifully.
The sound is also different for each individual spell the monsters use. You can hear the fire when your monsters use Flame Slash. A Hellfire attack can be lethal yet music to your ears at the same time.
But sometimes the music can become annoying at times. Hearing the same thing over and over again? Imagine playing through 500 battles, and hearing the same music play over and over and over... Back to my Marina and The Diamonds playlist it is...
Bottom line, the music's great, but hearing it for 10 hours can give you a headache.
And I've played more than 40 hours of the game.

ADDICTIVENESS: 9
Read DEPTH and you'll understand. Or play it. 2 playthroughs, 20 hours each man. Tell me that is not addicting.
Of course breeding and training monsters sounds like boring. But people who play this game would try multiple combos to breed their monsters to get stronger ones. Even if the story's finish, you can always try to... catch 'em all.
Or breed them, for that matter.
Of course not everyone likes the idea of endlessly training and breeding, but the minority who do enjoy it a lot.

STORY: 7
Okay, the island you're on is sinking. Find a plug. No joke.
That's not to say the story's boring and all. Heck, the story's actually interesting. Never before has finding a plug been so interesting. Along the way, though, you'll be plagued with more and more problems, as the plot thickens. You'll confront a desert bandit and his neatly hidden hideout. You'll encounter a haunted ghost ship to find the treasure within. A game of kings and princesses, and the puppeteer who plays them. You'll ride a cloud, adventuring a land in the sky.
All this, because you're finding a plug.
To sum it up, the story's interesting, I give it that. It's memorable, too. You can play this when you're 9 and still recall the story when you're 90. Simple, yet elegant. Fun, yet deep.

DEPTH: 10
What makes this game so deep? A number of things, such as:

• The breeding. Every single monster out of the... what, 100? 200? Each one of them is given their own movesets and stats. Breeding them means combining the characteristics of two monsters of different genders to create another monster. Straightforward, ainnit? Well, imagine a third generation monster, or a +2 monster as referred in the game. That's a lot of things to be taken account of. Now imagine a +3, or a +4. Some monsters, at the endgame, can reach +10 sometimes. And it's not as easy as mashing together stats and skills just like that. Gender is random when the egg is laid. 
• The lands. Not just the main ones. You can get keys to other lands, too. Each individual key leads to a land of different type monsters of different strengths and rarity. No two keys (And lands) are the same. In the game itself, there're more than 100 worlds to visit. Each one with it's own dungeon and monsters.
• The skills. Some of the skills, when learnt by the same monster, can give the monster a new skill. It's like knowing how to heat a pan and knowing how to crack an egg, and with enough intelligence, you know how to fry an egg! A lot of stats are taken account when the monsters get new skills.
• And others. There's too much to list, so I won't bother and just give DEPTH a fat 10.

DIFFICULTY: 6
It's difficult, all right. But given time, any player will know how to breed a team worthy to take on the big boss. My 9 year old brother at the time did a bad job of everything yet still managed to finish half of the game. Well, half of the main storyline, that is, but that's how easy it is once you get used to it.
But then again, breeding an awesome monster takes time and patience. You need to know what to do and how to do it. You can't just do everything hanky-panky. Strategy plays a big role in battles. Knowing your monster's personality is a weapon when you can't give orders and they have to fight for themselves.
So yeah, not that hard, but not that easy either. But still fun.
Cuz what's the use of playing an easy game?

OVERALL: 8.5
And that's it, I guess. To be honest, I was writing this review from the point of view of a gamer, and not a critic.
Screw gamer. I was writing this as a fanboy.
The game deserves an 8.5 because seriously, this review does no justice. Overall, this game is great. I cannot capture into words the joy I had as a I played the game. Twice. And it wasn't boring the second time, either.
Finding new monsters, breeding new monsters, exploring new worlds... and all of them unique, no less. One of the best experiences I had as a gamer.
I'm an avid player of RPG's, and this one goes up in my Hall of Fame.
If you're a Pokémon fan who's tired of the same all, same all. Be my guest. Play this game.
If you're a gamer who wants something different, try this. Play this game.
If you're someone who wants to play the old games, start with this one. Play this game.
And if you're just plain bored because you have no game to play at the moment, be my guest. Play this game.

No wonder your review was downgraded; you DARED saying there was something better than Pokémon .

On my side I thought your review was excellent. You went into great details about the game without getting lost in them, and you made ample comparisons to similar games (Pokémon) and other games of the era (GBC). I hope this becomes the featured review for the game!

It's a nice review, but I personally disagree with some of the points that you put forth. I thought the music was alright, but not as great as you described it to be. I felt that the game required either a guide to figure out what monsters to bring to which situations and how you should breed them, or you had to grind for hours on end to even come close to having a team powerful enough to do anything, which I hated. I disliked the way that the game prevents you from saving unless you have a certain item taking up valuable slots in your inventory. I disliked the Arena, where you have no control and it's pure luck whether your monsters actually do anything useful or if they just waste their turns doing nothing. As I'm sure you can tell by now, I didn't really like this game.

I don't know, maybe I might like it a little bit more if I went back to it, but I just hated a lot of the annoying parts about the game. But that's just my two cents. Keep up the good work, and you'll improve even more with time.

NovemberJoy :
Well, music was alright, but to have each attack their own music? That's impressive. Anyway, the Arena's not actually pure luck; whether your monsters attack how they should is actually based on their personality. You wouldn't get a Hot Blooded Green Dragon to heal, would you?

janus :  
Downgraded? I'm not a critic, I'm a gamer.