It seems that with every game, Disney is managing to improve, but this poke-clone just isn't up to snuff quite yet.
The graphics are cartoony, anime style characters and those lovable creatures look pretty good. I'm actually surprised that the graphics looked any good, it seems that they really worked on them. The environments are well made, and everything is pretty slick looking.
Sounds:
Voice overs aren't believable and everything sounds the same when you hit it: a big "splat!" noise.
Gameplay:
In the first game, you played as Rallen and you would go into "Black Tornadoes" with 2 spectrobes and fight off enemies. In the second game, they took Rallen out of the tornadoes altogether. But in this game, they totally trashed the old formula in favor of a new one, and the funny thing is that this feels more satisfying than any other system. You are once again playing as Rallen (or Jeena, as you have that choice now, though there is no difference between the characters), and every once in a while you will fight in (sort-of) random battles. When a battle begins, your battle Spectrobe in your first slot will come out and assist by bashing other guys while you beat them up with your sword, axe, lance, or blaster, each weapon having distinct advantages (the sword is fast and balanced, the lance lands multiple blows but has a slow use time, the axe is powerful, slow, but can't be stopped and ignores armor, and the blaster allows for ranged combat). It is a fun beat-em-up system that is plenty entertaining, even though it may wear thin for some players after a while. They upped the element count from 3 to 5 in this game, trashing the rock-paper-scissors style for a rock-paper-scissors-laser-thimble or whatever you'd call it. Whatever, they added some new elements, isn't that enough for you people!? Don't make me explain it. Anyway, you have fire, water, wind, earth, and plant now instead of the regular aurora, corona, and flash. This allows for a greater variety of Spectrobes with different powers. As you level up your Spectrobes, they will eventually gain combo attacks and special powers that can be used in tangent with Rallen's attacks, and as you progress through the game you can find Artifacts for Rallen, which are basically different weapons with elements and attack variations assigned to them, so obviously there is some extent of customization to this game. You can have 6 adult Spectrobes with you and 3 child searcher Spectrobes. I almost forgot, searching! This is a major improvement. Instead of having to excavate every single fossil, all you have to do is look for the shiny spots on the ground and pick up the fossil blocks and minerals for later use. This saves you time and it is a welcome advancement for those of us who spent hour upon hour digging up every square inch of planet. The mineral system has been dumbed down yet again, ditching different element minerals and replacing them with a single type, which is the experience mineral (duh). They come in different gradients of color and each mineral will give your fed Spectrobe x amount of experience. I kind of which they kept the triple experience bar from the first game, as that just felt awesome being able to choose which stats to level up, but I'm sure the change is welcome to younger players or people who don't care for such things. They still kept HP, DEF, and ATK minerals, which is good because it allows for subtle variation with the Spectrobes. The feeding system has gotten much faster, allowing you to go into the environments and just drop minerals as you go on a jog. This is quite satisfying. As for environment controls, too many invisible walls, there's only two speeds for movement (running or stopped) and that limits the gameplay. When will people learn we want games without walls? And load times are extremely long, I shouldn't have to wait a minute between areas. Haven't they heard of preloading? And, once again, the return of crappy minigames!
Conclusion:
Not the best game ever, but this is a huge improvement from predecessors. It will not appeal to many people, but it's still worth checking out. I suggest renting it before you purchase, as the dumbed down gameplay, large load times, and limited areas will be a huge turn off.