I have a question about this game....
I kinda liked FF3, but hated the job system....too much fiddling about with your characters. Pokemon doesn't interest me, nor does Tomagotchi type games. Will I like this? I have it on my card and the graphics look good for the couple minutes I looked at it, but considering my preferences and hearing about raising monsters (or whatever), I'm skeptical.
If you enjoyed FFIII, chances are you may enjoy Joker as well. The battles play out in much the same way. Whereas in Pokemon you're basically throwing one pokemon (sometimes you're battling with two) out there and then selecting from one of four moves they can perform, Joker has more of a traditional RPG approach to battles. However, the battles are done via your monsters, so your character never actually fights (so far that I've seen). You'll have to scout monsters to join your quest, and then they can fight as part of your three-monster party; you can keep as many as you like, but only three at a time can form a battle party.
Breeding also plays a larger role in this game than it does in Pokemon. In order to have more powerful monsters in your party, you'll eventually have to breed them to create new, more powerful creatures. There's also the cool feature that you get to decide on how to use skill points earned by leveling. Pokemon only gives you the option to learn certain moves at various levels, but this seems to give you a bit more control over honing the monsters into what you want them to be. That's not to put down Pokemon. I loved Diamond -- one of my favorite games -- but Joker is quite a bit different.
One last feature you might find especially cool is the fact that there are monster indicators on the field, so you won't just randomly run into monsters unawares. That can definitely get annoying after a while, and this game gives you the ability to see who's around (ala Tales games).
@ Osaka: I believe the total number of monsters is 210.
