| Summoner I count myself as a fairly big fan of RPG's such as Final Fantasy, Grandia and Star Ocean, so I awaited Summoner with hope that it would be PS2's first decent RPG, to find that answer you have to read all these words though. To say I was impressed when I first viewed Summoner in motion would be an understatement. The scenery is so expansive, so beautiful and so errm...magic, see for yourself when huge buildings form right in front of your eyes as if by magic, yeah as with Ridge Racer 5 Summoner has the graphical problem of pop-up, where huge buildings form right in front of your eyes, it doesn't look good but hopefully that's just because the developers don't entirely understand their PS2 kits yet. Apart from that problem though Summoner is very pleasing to the adventurer's eye indeed, with everything from cobbled streets, buildings and all the town locals designed with incredible detail. . The Summoner of the story is Joseph, a boy who was born with the mark which allows him to summon demons, but a tragic thing happend nine years from the games setting where Joseph's village was attacked, in hope of aiding the village he used his power and summoned a demon to help but due to his young age, Joseph couldn't control his power and the demon turned on his village and destroyed it. After this event he left his village leaving behind people who swore vengeance. Now nineteen, Joseph must learn to control his gift to destroy an evil emporer. Joining him to do this will be Flece, a female thief, Rosiald, who resents Joseph and Jekhar who is filled with hatred for the hero. Battles are both turn based and real time at the same time and when you encounter your first enemy you may find the battles to be rather sluggish and a bit on the dull side. To attack an enemy you highlight him and Joseph (or any other character who is under your control) will then attack it until it is defeated, but things aren't quite as simple as that as you are required to chain attacks together with a press of any of the four directional buttons which all perform a different chain. Levelling up your characters with battles brings with it an rewarding feature which allows you to upgrade their stats to improve various things and make all the weak points of your characters into strong points until they become almost superhuman like. Summoner has some tough puzzles to contend with, which at times I myself found difficult but I wouldn't say I'm the puzzle type anyway. Some locations left me wandering for hours making me terribly frustrated. Later on in the game you will have access to Joseph's hidden power allowing you to summon demons and bring a fifth character into the battles with which you can switch to and order commands as you can do with any other characters. A unique feature allows you to switch between any of the five characters to solve the odd puzzle or to make sure that they are levelling up enough in battle. A problem I found is the camera which can sometimes cause trouble as you can't move it as low as you might want it to see further ahead of you. Summoner is one of those games that has many bad points but also many good points, a decent effort but when FFX arrives this will probably be forgotten.Simon Wigham 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 |