If you simply must play it, give it a rent, but don’t expect much, because you’ll get a whole lot less.
At first, the story is a mess. The opening looks like a mish-mash of things that I simply couldn’t understand. Some weird, yet cool and artistic architecture, a red head, a villainous looking fellow sporting long white hair, and a dead blonde. But then it finally comes into view. Seig, the main character of the game, seems to have killed Seila, Victors’ (the villainous white haired fellow) love interest. So accordingly, Victor is upset, and well… beats Seig to a bloody pulp. However, many years later, Seig, who is a “Knight of the Dark glyphs”, is sent out to find and take Victor out. However, our hero (and us) soon discover it’s no easy task. Thankfully, the story finally comes into understanding view, but it’s not until over half-way through the damned game. Seig will run into Arcia, a Maiden of The Silver, armed with duel handguns, and spy sent to keep tabs on Victor. Victor, armed with long white hair and a rather badass gothic exterior, is your usual paper thin nemesis to the main character. Actually, about all of the characters are of that caliber; paper thin.
And still, throughout much of the adventure I was always asking myself where all these monsters came from, and why the hell am I tediously fighting them? The story at its core is surprisingly good, but it isn’t present well at all, and the way it’s told isn’t enough to push the player forward. The level of coherency here is at a negative. The first graphical quality you’ll notice about this game is the CG opening. All of the CG in the game is quite impressive; fluent, smooth, and full of great animation and excellent looking characters. However, many of the effects in the CG all look rather dull and uninspired. Then comes the gameplay visuals. There aren’t too many enemies in the game, but because of this, you’d think they’d look better, and move less robotic. Seig, while in gameplay, is a fine piece of pixels to look at, as is Arcia. But their faces are stiff, lifeless, and pretty much just there to be there. I really wish more detail would’ve gone into things such as this. Seigs’ flailing coat tail a done very well however.
What about the areas you play in? Well… put simply their cardboard. Pretty much every level looks the same. While some may be darker, brighter, or a more bit diverse in the landscape than others, every level is pretty much made of thing: Rock. And this rock is by no means interesting. It’s bland, flat, and I don’t think Seig could have any less interaction with it or it’s weak, straight-forward design. However, the game maintains a very smooth frame-rate. I’ve not once seen it chug.
Remember that “story”? Well, while it isn’t bad, it doesn’t help that it’s being told the most mediocre way imaginable. The game’s voice acting is pure neutrality. The characters, while never overdramatic, seem to often lack a serious amount of emotion. The script the characters are based off of certainly isn’t as tragic as that of Zone of the Enders 2’s, but it could’ve felt much livelier and the story would’ve been told much better. The sound effects are quite good though. The screeching of monsters is rather impressive, if not a bit repetitive. Gun fire and the slashing of swords all sound nice, but the sound effects don’t go much deeper than that though. And the music is a very mixed bag. Some of the music is epic, and beautiful, and the battling themes are all great, but they are so tedious and reused. The collection of tracks is great, but more variety would’ve really helped. Despite the lack of variety in the soundtrack, it was still very great to be there.
Now to the meat and bones of the game. You’ll begin the game thinking “hey! Killing all these creatures is pretty cool!” But by the time you reach the third or fourth stage, it becomes a chore; and not a fun chore at that. You mainly hack, slash, and hack some more, jump every now and then and shoot for one level. Oddly enough, Seig plays like Dante of Devil May Cry with his sword, and Arcia plays like Dante with his guns. Coincidence? I think not. Unfortunately, Seig and Arcia aren’t backed up with what Dante has; style, grace, finesse and a wide assortment of attacks and combos. The big part of the gameplay is the legions. A group of kick ass creatures that you can summon at your will to aid you battle. You can summon them to wreak havoc upon your enemies in a flurry of attacks, or use an attack while the legions are hidden, that let’s Seig do a super-powerful hit. This legion feature would be cool if the game’s AI wasn’t so incredibly stupid. Enemies know one thing; kill, and that’s all they do. They mindlessly attack no matter how horribly you clean the floor with them. Some don’t even move. They just stay there launching their long range lasers at you. Sadly, that’s the same with the legions. You do have mild control over who they attack thanks to auto-lock, but this doesn’t end the problems. The game consists of two types of enemies; organic and steel plated monsters. Some legions are better suited for attacking organic rather than steel, and vice-versa. You can only quip two legions per level out of the possible seven. Not only does this cause a world of trial and error for many levels, some legions will attack enemies that they aren’t effective against. This becomes a real problem in big brawls. However, the game does have a rehashed experience system that you’ve seen a million times before. Every time you and your legions inflict damage, you get a bit of exp. to upgrade your legions, raise stats, and purchase new attacks. Now if only I could raise my legions’ intelligence...
The addition of a terrible camera doesn’t help the already mediocre gameplay. You can control the camera with the right analog stick, but you’re very limited to enemies off-screen. However, you do have a radar screen in the corner that shows where the enemies are around you. But what good is it since you’ll be focusing on the real action instead of screen clutter? And while the game is very difficult, it also leads to much frustration. Dying near the end of a level from an off-screen cheap shot projectile from an enemy you didn’t even know existed (and was not even on your radar) is not fun. The game forces you to restart the entire level over. You can however return with half of the exp. you earned, so it isn’t too wasted, but it is frustrating none-the-less. Except for the boss battles; the lack of mid-level check points is very displeasing. It’s got enough depth for an action game, which is good, but that depth isn’t used very well... which is bad. Old school gamers may appeal to this however, as it is very similar to many uber-hard games of the days of yore.
The game is very challenging, and the boss fights are rather cool. One in particular has you quickly avoiding Seig out of the way as lasers that instantly generate and will fry you on contact. Some are lame though. One has you facing off against a giant spider like creature, but it has one very narrow passage way, so you can’t turn camera hardly at all until you reach the end of the hall where it’s a bit wider open. A very hard game, with some very cool, and some very un-cool bosses, with the right amount depth used all the wrong way. How did this happen?
There isn’t a whole lot of replay. Play it once, and that’s about it. It’s not too short though, and it is pretty difficult. You can however max out all of your legions stats for more replay. But if the game isn’t any fun, who would want to?
A huge disappointment that puts a hefty amount of great potential to waste. The games’ only saving grace is its’ cool main menu and great music. With average graphics, bad gameplay, horrible story presentation, emotion lacking voiceovers, paper thin characters, lame stage and enemy designs, what’s to love here?
If you simply must play it, give it a rent, but don’t expect much, because you’ll get a whole lot less.