|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
 A greeting card from hell. By Christian Nutt | June 16, 2003  28Lousy
The Lowdown: It's everything you never wanted in an RPG -- an awkward and tedious mess.
Discuss this Review How the review scores work
Platform: PlayStation 2
 Game Type: RPG Developer: Square Publisher: Square Enix USA ESRB: Teen Full Game Information Unlike most RPGs, you have seven very different heroes and heroines to choose from. What's cool about the game is that their stories are intertwined; they're all gallivanting around the world simultaneously, and you might even run into one or more of them while you're pursuing a different quest. The game offers a nigh-endless amount of play across these seven characters' adventures, and easily eclipses every other RPG available on the system for play length should you want to complete each and every facet of all of the quests. Whether you want to or not is another story. While the idea of seven interlocking stories in a vibrant world sounds enticing, the sad reality is that the stories are paltry and limp things comprised of scanty clods of poorly-written and brief text dialogue and a few clumsily-acted voiceovers. The game's presentation is so simplistic it almost defies belief; I'm a fan of well-executed 2D games --check out my massive GBA collection -- but US doesn't revisit the tried-and-true storytelling conventions of previous generations. Instead, it forges ahead with bizarre and stilted story sequences that offer little insight into the game's world or the characters' largely thin and predictable motivations. It seems as though one character's worth of dialogue is dispersed amongst seven, and the locked, freakish grimaces of the bizarrely tacky and uniformly hideous character portraits only underscore this inanity with a sad irony. That the gameplay systems don't stand out after these superlatively weak scenario segments is almost disturbing. Battle Monsters The best gameplay system US has to offer is easily its combat system, which is marginal at best. When you're launched into a battle with enemies, you'll get to experience the two innovations touted by the developers before the game's release: the Sketch Motion artwork, and the Reel System, used for selecting attacks. In truth, neither of these amounts to anything. Square didn't have to sign a license with Adobe for Sketch Motion to come up with poorly-animated 2D sprites -- I remember NES games that used this fascinating technology. Bizarrely, enemies typically have much better animation than the main party members. As for the Reel System, it confounds the battles by requiring pinpoint accuracy and a healthy dash of luck to get the best out of them. It's not innovative, either -- early PS2 RPG Shadow Hearts' much more workable Judgment Ring system was similar and superior as it relied on skill.  Smack, smack, smack, smack, smack, miss! This half-baked mess of a battle system is further confused by the game's hit point system. Each character and enemy has both hit points and life points. You fall in battle when your LP are depleted; even characters with zero HP can soldier on for round after round of combat. The same goes for enemies, of course. The assigning of LP damage is more than a bit arbitrary, as HP and LP damage is assessed separately. A fair amount of the time, a high-HP-damage attack will pack an LP-draining punch, but there's no guarantee. More confusingly, a weak attack may drain LP for no obvious reason. Using the combo system increases your chances of LP damage, but as discussed it can unpredictably give the enemies an advantage and worse, if you combo together attacks but the lead character misses, the whole combo fails -- resulting in no damage whatsoever. The game doesn't force you to use every character during encounters, but you'll utilize your weaker characters because you want them to absorb the LP hits enemies dish out so your tough guys don't get hosed. Of course, there's no way to heal LP but going back to town. Next: The Pain Continues » Page: 1 2 |
Most Popular
Video Games
Powered By PriceGrabber
|
||||||||
By continuing past this page, and by your continued use of this site, you agree to be bound by and abide by the User Agreement.
Copyright 1996-2007, IGN Entertainment, Inc.
About Us |
Support |
Advertise |
Privacy Policy |
User Agreement |
IGN's enterprise databases running Oracle, SQL and MySQL are professionally monitored and managed by Pythian Remote DBA.
 RSS Feeds
|
