When I started up Ape Academy 2, known as Piposaru Academia 2 in Japan, for the first time I didn’t have high hopes. The first one is currently being massacred by the press for load times, worthless mini-games, and a just plain un-fun experience. Thankfully the developers must have heard all the complaints when it was released in Japan since they have completely reworked the game to great success.

The single player game opens up with a world map which amounts to an island, one highlighted monkey hat, and a bunch of other symbols which are blacked out for the time being. To get things stared you select the available monkey hat with your monkey hand cursor and you’re presented with an opponent. You can either choose to face off against this monkey opponent or cancel the match and try again for a different enemy. Once you select a monkey to face off against you head into the card playing screen. This is where you’ll play an advanced game of rock paper scissors to see which mini-game you and the other monkey will face off in.

Each of the two players is dealt four cards from their deck at random. These cards each have a certain monkey on them which corresponds to a certain mini-game. In the upper right corner there will be a hand symbol which dictates whether it is a rock, paper, or scissor card, and in the upper left corner there will be a bunch of bananas with a number next to it. You can only see whether the opponent’s cards are rock, paper, or scissor and based on that you will have to choose a card to play against them. Once you pick a card the game will show you what your enemy has chosen. Based on the rules of rock paper scissors one card will prevail. You’ll then head into that card’s mini-game to face off.

Once the mini-game’s winner is decided points are tallied and damage is dealt to the looser and bananas are adjusted, that is if the winner was also the winner of the rock, paper, and scissor battle before the mini-game started. If the looser of the rock, paper, and scissor battle wins the mini-game then no damage is dealt but bananas are still changed. You always have 1000 health points but your enemy’s hp varies unless it is a boss. Also, you can only play a card if you currently have enough bananas to play it. Once either player goes to zero hp the match is over. Matches can last one round or many more and can involve tons of different mini-games. The winner gets one of the loser’s cards. In single player mode you’ll always get the card that was shown on the world map before you started the match but you’ll loose a random card if you loose the match.