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chuckroIn a world of floating islands in the sky, where the ocean is a legend and the earth is blocked off by toxic clouds, a young warrior named Kalas bonds with a Guardian Spirit (the player) to seek revenge for his brother and grandfather, killed by the evil empire.
I usually try to keep my reviews spoiler-light, but to really talk about this game requires spoiling a lot of the major twists. If you’re planning to play it, you might prefer to remain unspoiled.
This game can pretty much be summed up as: “Some things work, some things don’t.”
The card-battle system definitely grew on me. Like the ring system in Shadow Hearts, it gives you something to do during turn-based battles and adds a bit more variety and customization that other games don’t have. On the other hand, it’s another way the RNG can screw you with a bad draw. Similarly, the cards themselves have some neat ideas, but I would have preferred more in-battle combos (use these two cards in the same hand for a special effect) as opposed to combos that don’t seem to have an effect but unlock a special card or change one of your current cards. Also, many of the cards (particularly foods, which are your healing items) “age” into other cards as you play, which is neat when your useless wheat becomes defense-increasing beer and totally annoying when half a character’s healing items are replaced with useless rotten fruit midway through a dungeon (or you first notice it during a boss battle).
Also, bacon is an attack item, but it doesn’t have a custom attack call in battle (it uses the generic “Hyah!”), which lead to me going, “Fire Burst! Bacon Burst! Light Flare!” when I used in it a magic combo.
The game has a special approach to the fourth wall: The player is called out specifically in the game as a “Guardian Spirit” from another dimension and the characters actively converse with you. (Though only some of them can see you.) The main character is actively “accompanied” by the spirit, and gets special attacks that appear in their hand when certain combo conditions are met. I thought this was clever as it pulls the player into the story and gives them an active role. It hits a snag with the voice acting, though, because there’s a gap any time your name (which you choose) appears in someone’s dialogue. Unlike Final Fantasy X or Dragon Quest 8, they don’t even try to cheat around it.
Leveling up can only be done at the church, reachable through certain save points (typically the ones in towns and safe places). This often means you’ll either be grinding and running back and forth to town, or gaining 4-5 levels at a time after completing a dungeon sequence. (In practice, grinding for levels isn’t necessary, but grinding for better cards to stack characters’ decks with is. That’s important in several dungeons starting about three-quarters through the first disk. You can change your deck any time you’re not in battle.) Also, enemies don’t drop money and most cards sell for very little. You need to use a camera card on an enemy and pick the resulting photograph as your loot (you can only take one non-plot-critical card as loot per battle), which you can sell at a reasonable price (unless you used too many light or dark cards before taking the picture, or the enemy blocked it). But again, money isn’t that critical, because stores have a limited inventory (so you can’t restock your deck in every town, even if you could afford it) and there are only a handful of consumable items.
Several of the plot twists really work, particularly Kalas’ betrayal—you spend half the game playing with him as the main character and being kind of an ass, then he reveals that he made a devil’s bargain to get his revenge and joins the bad guys. The Staff Chick then becomes the main character. The part that doesn’t work is that you get him back. He’s saved by the power of love and the power of friendship, blah blah blah, but I didn’t really buy his redemption, and I certainly didn’t think he deserved to become the main character again—demote him to second banana and leave the compete and non-traitorous girl in charge. Or leave him as a villain.
This would actually be a great concept for a game, whether or not it was a twist or obvious from the start: The first disk is played as the villain, setting up their evil scheme and seeing it from a sympathetic point of view. The second disk would be seeing the actual repercussions of the scheme and ending with a battle against your original main character.
Also, the ritual to resurrect the dead god requires the power equivalent to a god—so the villains arrange for the party to muster The Power of Friendship powerful enough to punch god in the face, and use that for their resurrection ritual. (Of course, that genre-savviness fails when the power of friendship brings Kalas back to the good guys, which hurts the entire scene, but it was still an awesome maneuver.)
And the conservation of detail was amazing, when they pulled tricks like the greythorns, which appear from the very beginning but don’t seem to have any purpose, turn out to be the hidden magical whale. Which also explains Meemai’s connection to Xelha neatly.
What I think they were going for with both Kalas and Melodia was a metaphor for growing up “different”. Kalas only had one wing, Melodia was the sickly princess. They get caught up with a bad crowd (Malpercio’s influence) but they’re really just misguided, and good kids at heart. The thing is, they played evil too convincingly and the redemption was too easy. And the Kalas-Xelha romance would work with stupid teenagers, but not with clever, scheming adults who manage layers of deceit among their close friend circle. Actually, upon reflection, this reads as if the writer and director disagreed on the themes and characterization, which caused the conflict.
Oh, and the Geldoblame fight in the ending? Totally random, unnecessary, unexplained, and in fact only raises lots more questions.
When I first complained about the voice acting (particularly the in-battle attack calls) Bigscary warned me about a particularly annoying character who joins. When the Great Mizuti showed up, I knew exactly what he’d meant. She wears a mask and speaks with a weird muffled, echoing voice that is intensely annoying and was the entire reason I didn’t use her in battle. The worst part is, when you meet her people, they all wear the masks but all have perfectly normal voices! There’s no reason for hers to be so terrible! (The game also tries to have a “twist” by never using a pronoun for Mizuti until you visit her hometown, when several characters are shocked that she’s female. She uses female-only equipment, is animated to move in a feminine way, and gender-balances the party at 3 men / 3 women. Why would I think she was anything other than female?)
The rest of the voice acting ranges from passable (the main characters and important NPCs, for the most part) to “did they find a random person on the street?” for some NPCs, particularly in sidequest sequences.
Some of the dungeon designs worked better than others (there was definitely a feeling that, in order to fill 40+ hours of game, they needed to put in every single idea they had). The block-pushing tower was awesome (but only the required part—the optional part required either mind-reading or a guide). The 8-bit dungeon was confusing, but a cool concept; as was the first-person perspective labyrinth. The mud swamp and the snow cliffs (both of which made your character walk extra-slowly) were stupid and annoying. And pretty much every dungeon managed to forget that your characters have wings and can fly, which they otherwise do infinitely in battle and occasionally in cutscenes. (Which is perhaps the most wasted feature of the entire game.)
I liked the world building, and the pacing of exposition was pretty good. I would complain that they fell into the “you must play console games for long periods without stopping” trap, particularly in cases where there was a cutscene, a boss battle, four more cutscenes, then a town or dungeon segment before the next save point. It doesn’t have to be a save point every ten minutes, but I shouldn’t be sitting there for half an hour after I finish a dungeon going, “Gah! Just let me save!”
Overall: It’s a fun game. It has some glaring flaws, but it also has some really clever ideas. (The same developer made Xenosaga, and that’s totally believable.) It was worth being on my list to buy a Gamecube for, and I’ll happily play the sequel when I get that far.
I usually try to keep my reviews spoiler-light, but to really talk about this game requires spoiling a lot of the major twists. If you’re planning to play it, you might prefer to remain unspoiled.
This game can pretty much be summed up as: “Some things work, some things don’t.”
The card-battle system definitely grew on me. Like the ring system in Shadow Hearts, it gives you something to do during turn-based battles and adds a bit more variety and customization that other games don’t have. On the other hand, it’s another way the RNG can screw you with a bad draw. Similarly, the cards themselves have some neat ideas, but I would have preferred more in-battle combos (use these two cards in the same hand for a special effect) as opposed to combos that don’t seem to have an effect but unlock a special card or change one of your current cards. Also, many of the cards (particularly foods, which are your healing items) “age” into other cards as you play, which is neat when your useless wheat becomes defense-increasing beer and totally annoying when half a character’s healing items are replaced with useless rotten fruit midway through a dungeon (or you first notice it during a boss battle).
Also, bacon is an attack item, but it doesn’t have a custom attack call in battle (it uses the generic “Hyah!”), which lead to me going, “Fire Burst! Bacon Burst! Light Flare!” when I used in it a magic combo.
The game has a special approach to the fourth wall: The player is called out specifically in the game as a “Guardian Spirit” from another dimension and the characters actively converse with you. (Though only some of them can see you.) The main character is actively “accompanied” by the spirit, and gets special attacks that appear in their hand when certain combo conditions are met. I thought this was clever as it pulls the player into the story and gives them an active role. It hits a snag with the voice acting, though, because there’s a gap any time your name (which you choose) appears in someone’s dialogue. Unlike Final Fantasy X or Dragon Quest 8, they don’t even try to cheat around it.
Leveling up can only be done at the church, reachable through certain save points (typically the ones in towns and safe places). This often means you’ll either be grinding and running back and forth to town, or gaining 4-5 levels at a time after completing a dungeon sequence. (In practice, grinding for levels isn’t necessary, but grinding for better cards to stack characters’ decks with is. That’s important in several dungeons starting about three-quarters through the first disk. You can change your deck any time you’re not in battle.) Also, enemies don’t drop money and most cards sell for very little. You need to use a camera card on an enemy and pick the resulting photograph as your loot (you can only take one non-plot-critical card as loot per battle), which you can sell at a reasonable price (unless you used too many light or dark cards before taking the picture, or the enemy blocked it). But again, money isn’t that critical, because stores have a limited inventory (so you can’t restock your deck in every town, even if you could afford it) and there are only a handful of consumable items.
Several of the plot twists really work, particularly Kalas’ betrayal—you spend half the game playing with him as the main character and being kind of an ass, then he reveals that he made a devil’s bargain to get his revenge and joins the bad guys. The Staff Chick then becomes the main character. The part that doesn’t work is that you get him back. He’s saved by the power of love and the power of friendship, blah blah blah, but I didn’t really buy his redemption, and I certainly didn’t think he deserved to become the main character again—demote him to second banana and leave the compete and non-traitorous girl in charge. Or leave him as a villain.
This would actually be a great concept for a game, whether or not it was a twist or obvious from the start: The first disk is played as the villain, setting up their evil scheme and seeing it from a sympathetic point of view. The second disk would be seeing the actual repercussions of the scheme and ending with a battle against your original main character.
Also, the ritual to resurrect the dead god requires the power equivalent to a god—so the villains arrange for the party to muster The Power of Friendship powerful enough to punch god in the face, and use that for their resurrection ritual. (Of course, that genre-savviness fails when the power of friendship brings Kalas back to the good guys, which hurts the entire scene, but it was still an awesome maneuver.)
And the conservation of detail was amazing, when they pulled tricks like the greythorns, which appear from the very beginning but don’t seem to have any purpose, turn out to be the hidden magical whale. Which also explains Meemai’s connection to Xelha neatly.
What I think they were going for with both Kalas and Melodia was a metaphor for growing up “different”. Kalas only had one wing, Melodia was the sickly princess. They get caught up with a bad crowd (Malpercio’s influence) but they’re really just misguided, and good kids at heart. The thing is, they played evil too convincingly and the redemption was too easy. And the Kalas-Xelha romance would work with stupid teenagers, but not with clever, scheming adults who manage layers of deceit among their close friend circle. Actually, upon reflection, this reads as if the writer and director disagreed on the themes and characterization, which caused the conflict.
Oh, and the Geldoblame fight in the ending? Totally random, unnecessary, unexplained, and in fact only raises lots more questions.
When I first complained about the voice acting (particularly the in-battle attack calls) Bigscary warned me about a particularly annoying character who joins. When the Great Mizuti showed up, I knew exactly what he’d meant. She wears a mask and speaks with a weird muffled, echoing voice that is intensely annoying and was the entire reason I didn’t use her in battle. The worst part is, when you meet her people, they all wear the masks but all have perfectly normal voices! There’s no reason for hers to be so terrible! (The game also tries to have a “twist” by never using a pronoun for Mizuti until you visit her hometown, when several characters are shocked that she’s female. She uses female-only equipment, is animated to move in a feminine way, and gender-balances the party at 3 men / 3 women. Why would I think she was anything other than female?)
The rest of the voice acting ranges from passable (the main characters and important NPCs, for the most part) to “did they find a random person on the street?” for some NPCs, particularly in sidequest sequences.
Some of the dungeon designs worked better than others (there was definitely a feeling that, in order to fill 40+ hours of game, they needed to put in every single idea they had). The block-pushing tower was awesome (but only the required part—the optional part required either mind-reading or a guide). The 8-bit dungeon was confusing, but a cool concept; as was the first-person perspective labyrinth. The mud swamp and the snow cliffs (both of which made your character walk extra-slowly) were stupid and annoying. And pretty much every dungeon managed to forget that your characters have wings and can fly, which they otherwise do infinitely in battle and occasionally in cutscenes. (Which is perhaps the most wasted feature of the entire game.)
I liked the world building, and the pacing of exposition was pretty good. I would complain that they fell into the “you must play console games for long periods without stopping” trap, particularly in cases where there was a cutscene, a boss battle, four more cutscenes, then a town or dungeon segment before the next save point. It doesn’t have to be a save point every ten minutes, but I shouldn’t be sitting there for half an hour after I finish a dungeon going, “Gah! Just let me save!”
Overall: It’s a fun game. It has some glaring flaws, but it also has some really clever ideas. (The same developer made Xenosaga, and that’s totally believable.) It was worth being on my list to buy a Gamecube for, and I’ll happily play the sequel when I get that far.
