Tsugunai Hands-On

Tsugunai is a PlayStation 2 role-playing game developed by Cattle Call and published by Sony Computer Entertainment.

The game takes place in Walondia, and you play as Lace, a member of Rayvan--a group of soldiers of fortune. The story begins when the landlord of Walondia contracts Lace to steal the treasure pearl from a tower located on a remote island. As Lace you succeed in your mission but are punished by god, who separates your physical body from your spiritual body. After consulting with the monks, you find that you're not actually dead, and as reparation for your past crimes you must help different people by solving the problems in their lives.. With the help of Navi from the Dovoy race (a group of dwarflike male fairies), you are instructed on how to take over other people's body. In what seems like a video game version of Quantum Leap, you use this power to assume the roles of other people in the game to solve their issues for them.

The game's battle system is similar to orthodox RPGs like Final Fantasy, but this game has the addition of its own guard system. There are four types of guards: normal guard, strage guard, counter guard, and backstep guard. Each guard corresponds to a face button on the controller. Guards are not part of a command; however, rather like a music rhythm game, you can trigger a guard by pressing one of the face buttons at the right moment during an enemy attack. A normal guard minimizes damage significantly. The strage guard minimizes damage somewhat and adds points to the strage gauge. The counter guard, as the name suggests, blocks the enemy attack and then counterattacks. This guard is the most difficult to pull off, and requires a precise sense of timing. You can use the backstep guard if there are enough points on your strage gauge, which results in zero damage. The strage gauge is like a combo gauge. When full, you can use a strage attack, which is a special attack that induces more damage.

You can also use magic spells once you acquire runes. You will also find amulets during the game, which will be important for summoning monsters. Each amulet has a particular shape, which needs to be filled in by different pieces of runes. Each rune has different shapes, and completing each piece lets you summon monsters during battle. The summoned monsters will remain in battle until they run out of health, or until you choose to retrieve them.

The environment is all rendered in 3D polygons though the camera angle is relatively at a constant. Yasunori Mitsuda's music composition sets the mood for the game, which is presented in a simplistic tone, as opposed to the epic-saga type mostly found in RPGs these days. Though Tsugunai has an unusual theme, the game itself is more like the average RPG.