orphenreview

A popular anime series makes its way to the PS2 -- blending RPG elements with third-person action and a little monster collecting, too.

Based on a marginally well-known (in the US anyway) anime, Orphen blends third-person action with RPG elements. It's also one of those games that somehow manage to be both
incredibly frustrating and not very challenging at the same
time. The graphics look generally decent, but no better than would be found on, say, Dreamcast, and they still leave the player with less than ideal camera angles. And worst of all,
any game in which a player's character can't even move during realtime battles has a major strike against it from day one.

Orphen isn't the most incompetent game available for PS2, but it has a rushed, "we didn't think this thing through very well" feel from beginning to end. The character models are a little on the cartoonish side but not bad looking, yet their animation, especially during cutscenes, borders on pathetic -- Orphen's
apprentice, Magnus, has a habit of flapping his arms like a stuck chicken for no reason, while "dancer" Sephy's hip-wiggling walk cycle is mostly good for laughs. Likewise, any walls between the camera and the player's character go instantly transparent -- a technique that can work if handled correctly, but here it just lets the character occasionally look like he or she is floating adrift in a big blue nothingness.

The RPG elements aren't much better. There are chests scattered everywhere, but most contain perfectly useless (or at the very least, unnecessary) items. Puzzles are generally no-brainers, and the storylines -- there are three, plus a final showdown -- aren't terribly compelling. The dialog is laughable and the voice acting is pretty obnoxious even when it's competently delivered. The cutscenes are also interminably long, and while most of them are done in-game, there's the odd 2D anime one thrown in here and there for no discernable reason.

And incidentally, as bad and as long as the cutscenes are, there's no way to skip them. None. Combined with the fact that there's no direct control over opportunities to save the game, and that they happen almost at random -- messages pop up asking, "Do you want to save?" sometimes within minutes of eachother, sometimes after nearly an hour -- there are points when an untimely or unlucky death can set you back quite a long way.

The battle system ain't great either. Although occasionally there are critters roaming in the 3D environment that can be attacked directly, in most battles all combatants remain frozen in place. It's in real time, but what this means is that winning is a matter of proper timing between launching attacks and raising a shield. Getting the timing down is made
easier by the fact that bosses, especially, will act according to a small number of set patterns, but unfortunately, there are strange split instants after a character launches an attack or shield when pressing the button doesn't register at all. Since holding down the button is required to charge up attacks, it becomes something of a guessing game, choosing a pattern of attack or defense and hoping it matches what the boss is going to do next, because it takes a while to charge up and there's no way to switch quickly.

Yet somehow, in spite of these myriad problems, Orphen is still a breeze to get through. Anyone with a little action game experience can tackle the platform challenges with no trouble, and as mentioned above, the puzzle and RPG elements won't stump anyone with the intelligence of a rutabaga. Go figure.

The Bottom Line: Those who enjoy lackluster game values, cliched dialog and a motley collection of sophomoric characters will find this a competently produced title that won't be hard to get through. Everyone else, steer clear.