System PS2
type RPG (shocker!)
Arc of the Lad :: A lifetime of eatting lead paint chips (serving size is approx 7 ounces) leads to a life of drooling insipid stupidity, and of course to make really really bad rpgs. Making a horrible RPG is really very simple, its to take the idea that the story line is the driving and motivating factor that people play the game.
Pretty much the moral of this story is lame, a cant we all just get along kinda thing that pisses me off. Lets face it, its an RPG, a game which consists of you going around wackin small furry woodland creatures and baby gnomes in attempt to gain power so you can get 'Free Stuff' Lets face it free stuff is the motivating factor in most games, I mean when killing the same damn thing 300x gets to be too much, why not just check and see whats inside this pot here and then moan about its only a +3 to all saves magic cock ring. But back to our story.
Now that they decided that the driving force for you to finish the game is a lackluster story line you know yer pretty damn screwed, because lets face it, if the story isnt damn impressive most of it will be skipped by the rapid button mashing that occurs when people drone on and on endlessly about the evils the dwezil empire, ferrets, their children, and how they cant really tell if thats i cant believe its not butter, conversations should be kept to 2 or 3 lines tops, and even then you should animate the character faces so you get the idea of what the hell is just happened so all those damn words dont get in your way. In fact I have come to the conclusion that a great RPG doesnt even need any dialague that makes sense, just enough to convey what quests you are trying to do, and leave the rest up to the player.
You start off playing some gimp who finally bests the village defense captain. And then suddenly there is a call to arms because the demons have attacked the magical mines of pathos or some such thing, the mines that produce magical fucknuts that power the human machines. This would be a more impressive story line if you main characters didnt i dont know, use frickin swords and armor. Hell if your using technology, wheres my frickin desert eagle to cap some monster ass. Bad guys get guns where are my guns, damn even that ghey arse bitz squall got a gunblade.
Anywho the premise of the game is you alternate chapters between playing the half breed human who hates monsters, and the halfbreed monster who hates humans, as they rise to power and then face each other before realizing they arent quite so damn differant as they think. Hoofookinray, I get yet another barney message out of a game. The story is also loosely based around some legend they tell you at the begining or something too, but it seemed pretty dumb. Your main characters both dark and lite have funky ghey ass lawn gnomes (the kind i want to give to friends for weddings) who appear intermittently to them and whisper dumb stuff like touch my monkey, or something equally impressive, to be honest i wasnt paying much attention.
Ok so the story sucks ass but whats new there? Right absolutely nothing, so lets move on to the graphics of the game, first humans look bulky and too large, their armor is static, and weapons well umm they all look the same too. I find the character models for the humans average to sub average at best, the faces are kinda depressing, I expect a little more effort to go into them. If i thought the humans were crap wait till i tell about the 'Deimos' Showing once again people who develop games should maybe put some thought into thinking of more then 1 name for evil races... but I get ahead of myself. The Deimos come in many shapes and sizes, some with wings, some with tails, but not any tails mind you but tails that grow out of their necks, how frickin ugly is that? It looks terrible, It pretty much looks like someone took a lump of clay rolled it into a tail looking thing and stuck it on the back of their necks. Its disgusting, and its not easy for me to say that, ive seen all of the police academy movies, and enjoy poor special defects slasher flix. Backgrounds are decent enough tho.
Gameplay:: Lord when you are talking about RPGs there is always an annoying thing which has to be limited or else you remove the fun from the game, and that is REAGENTS. This is pretty much cause people have magic and they need to limit it or the game is unbalanced, balance in the game helps add to difficulty or lack there of in most games. At some later date when i release my manifesto of RPGS why they suck ill address the issue further, but suffice to say they have changed mana pts to consumable magic stones you equip on your person somehow (i dont know how and frankly i dont care the idea is repugnant to me) and as you use magic the stones disappear and you have to 're equip' them. Its not too difficult but the fact there is no option to auto re equip yer magic stones after each battle pisses me off.
Furthermore reaching way back into my past they have the same travel system as SSI games from I dont know 1986? Unfortunely it did not bring flashbacks of better times, but a WTF gimp plagerized idea, this helped tip me off this game is not only cookie cutter, but a really really bad cookie cutter game.
Flying machines, why do every single RPG have to have a flying machine, I mean cmon we can live without one, is it really that damn necciarry? And why do my flying machines always have problems, These things are more shoddily put together then the original enterprise, everything is going out and need replacement parts, or being boarded or stalled, etc. Did checkoff reverse the polarity on everything causeing this shit to blow up at the most unfortuneate times? Damn plz no more flying machines home bases i got enough of that in FF.
Ok i didnt beat this game it annoyed the hell out of me, the characters the dialague when i read it, and the storyline and gameplay pissed me off
Battle movement is much like those old ssi games, where you are placed somewhere on the battlefield then your enemies, and you can move some many squares in any direction. Wow im so impressed each character has his or her own movement radius. when you finally get to the pt you want to be you can then perform the action/attack/magic that is the staple of such games, but unlike SSI games their is no way to really flank your opponents or set for ranged attacks at the evil casters on the back rows etc, instead it makes little differance, and in most cases its encouraged to charge into the middle of your enemies with your most powerful characters and hope your counter attacks go off to make the battle get down with as fast as possible.
Weapons are ghey you are trapped with the same one for what appears to be the entire game, but you can add differant mods to your weapons (3 possible) that give + attack defense elemental dmg kewl ripposte ability etc, each weapon has a given range, and a given strike field, so if you can get more then one opponent in your strikefield you can hit mutliple people.
Ok enough of the things they did wrong with this game (and there are many many many) what did they do right, very little however i did like was xp was awarded by the amount of dmg you do in combat as opposed to even division to all. The problem being one character can become far more powerful then others very quickly then you have to spend time getting everyone else up. Admittedly i saw some stuff later in the game that i might enjoy but i wasnt drawn into the game enough to bother trying to get
MMJ 'This game makes baby Jesus Cry'
MSBNHJ 'Yeah know i try to understand why someone would make a game like this, but
only came up with they are ghey, they dont like gamers, and wanted to see how little effort it takes to pawn an rpg.'
MAAJ '!@#@ #$%# %$^%ing @#$@!'
RJ 'Why God! WHY?!'
Story 1
Graphics 2
gameplay 1
sound 2
Fun 1
overall 1