This is an incredibly weird spin-off. I don't know much about the first Ape Academy game, but this one is a Collectible Card Battling/Minigame compilation and it kiiiinda works? The cards have a Rock/Paper/Scissors gimmick attached to them as well as a specific Minigame. If your card is the winner, you play the Minigame of the card in hopes of winning to activate the effect of the card. This mostly results in your opponent taking a specific number of damage, but can also result in you stealing or gaining bananas from them as well, which can help you play more powerful cards. These cards can also be chained together in a combo to do even more damage to your opponent if you use your deck correctly. The minigames in the compilation aren't too bad either, and I even enjoyed and mastered a decent amount, but the main problem with this game is that it just plain isn't fun to play it alone. Playing the single player story is so boring and tedious. The AI is mostly really stupid and more time than not will never pose a threat to you at all, not to mention that the whole card/Deck building system becomes a bit moot when you realize you really don't ever have to change your cards out of edit your deck at all in order to beat the game. Sure, you can find better and higher powered cards, but you could also chain your lower cards together for bigger combos as well. Not to mention if you care about platinuming this game, the grind to Rank A is so incredibly tedious and mind numbing mostly due to the fact that you are never given a specific amount of XP to grind to or even know how much XP each of your opponents give you. Your best chance is to grind the final boss battle, where while his AI can be a bit unfair in a couple of games, is just as much of a pushover as every other character. Would definitely recommend playing this game multiplayer with a friend. I could see this being a fun afternoon where you play 2 or 3 rounds and fuck around with different cards and games, but I'd say it's not really worth it in the end. If you're a huge fan of Ape Escape, then I guess just play through the main campaign and stop once you beat the final boss.