User Rating: 7.5 | Warrior Blade: Rastan vs. Barbarian PS2
This review is basically a rebuttal to the official GameSpot review. Barbarian now lives in the bargain bins, and when I got home with it, I quickly went to check the GameSpot rating to see if I'd been burned. The rating was so low, that I considered returning it -- unopened -- for an exchange. But I didn't, and I'm glad. The reviewer complains that there are only three gameplay modes: Quest, Versus, and Training. Okay, so it's a budget title: There's no Bowling mode like in Tekken Tag. But Single player, Multi-player, and some instructions are all you really need! Then he complains about how the training works. I suppose if you found that you pulled off a move, but didn't really understand how you did it, you'd be irked that you couldn't go back and see the instructions again. But I found that the Practice mode was perfectly paced: I don't want to spend a lot of time there anyway, just get me through it and let me play the real game! Perhaps I'm just not familiar with the better games that the reviewer is subconsciously comparing Barbarian to. Multiplayer cooperative play is a big plus that few games offer, and multitap (ie party-game) support is also a valuable feature. The storyline may not be as compelling as, say, Final Fantasy X, but it's certainly more solid than Street Fighter 2 or any single game of the Tekken series. I see it as an extra, unusual, and worthwhile feature. The reviewer also complains that the character customization has no impact on gameplay. I disagree. This is the first fighting game I've played that uses Experience Points to allow you to customize your character, and I thought it was cool. I spent a lot of points on mana regeneration, allowing me to do quite a bit of damage in a battle from range. Then I got the Second Wind ability, so that even after I'm killed, I get up and you have to hit me one more time. Later, I invested in extra hit points and damage dealing, which don't affect gameplay, but just help you do better in the combat.
