Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, but in the case of Gaia developed Monster Kingdom: Jewel Summoner what we have here is nothing more than a straight up tracing paper job. Although the graphics are distinctly beefed up in comparison to the Game Freaks creation for all of Nintendo’s various handhelds, the immediate impulse I get in my brain while playing this game is to hum the Pokemon TV show theme. I don’t even need to go so far in the series as to hum Johto, I can just stick with the first season’s catchy tune and be right on track with Jewel Summoner. I guess though you can’t really complain with this title though because at least it gives a slightly better story, although it’s plodding and feels very straightforward and in the end is made all the more forgettable by a cast that you don’t care about.

I guess I can’t be totally negative on a game that replicates another title’s systems so well, aside from the fact that it runs much slower than Pokemon. Battles seem to drag on as the monsters you control take forever to act and some of their moves have additional animations that just exacerbate the situation. Hell even the introductions to battles can waste a good amount of time after putting up with the load time to enter battle in the first place. Another thing that makes this game feel slow is the rate at which the monsters will level up, they take quite a while, and then even if you spend time leveling them up, there is the possibility that they are not going to obey you. For you see, your summoner’s rank will determine what level your monsters will cap out at when it comes to listening to you, and you raise this intermittently by completing objectives and jobs that the game shovels your way.

Each monster has an elemental type that has its rock-paper-scissors type weakness to another element. You can also augment monsters by adding elemental crystals to them which will unlock new abilities and allow them to learn more moves. Like Pokemon each monster can learn up to four abilities and then when learning a new one, an old one has to go. Something I liked about this over Pokemon though is that there are skills that target multiple enemies at once, and some skills can heal hit points inside and outside of battles. So unless Pokemon Diamond and Pearl have somehow sneaked these types of tweaks to their game I must say that Jewel Summoner has offered a better alternative. Are you getting tired of the Pokemon comparisons yet? Okay I think I will stop now. Oh wait one more, the monsters, yeah they can evolve. By combining a certain amount of elemental jewels to a monster you can cause it to evolve. Ok now I am done. Another slight plus here though is the ability to level up your monsters outside of battle by spending points that you acquire as a result of battles, so you’re not wasting a huge amount of time grinding and you can get those low-end monsters up to speed quite quickly.

In battle this game looks really nice. Each of the monsters is finely detailed and for what the PSP can offer they all look really detailed. This is to offset the typically bland backgrounds and dungeons that you’ll be wading through. And when I say wading I mean it because there is no map system while in dungeons. Also there are not a terribly large number of monsters. There are one hundred and ten in the game and there are a number of palette swaps, so you’re really only looking at about sixty to seventy unique monsters. But the monsters that are there do look really nice and the PSP screen is well utilized as monster attacks are highlighted by giving them a larger chunk o...