Very short, very flawed, very generic, very average...

User Rating: 5.7 | Orphen: Scion of Sorcery PS2
Very, very few people have ever heard of this game and its not hard to see why. This is just another game in a saturated market of RPGs that nobody really cares for.

You play as a sorcerer that has just been shipwrecked and whichever person you choose to join you out of 3 will be the storyline you take. You have a big brute named Zues, some pink-haired girl (not sure who her name is), and a little boy named Mar. This offers up plenty of variety in locations, but it doesn't change the fact that you're playing just another RPG.

The graphics are sub-par. Textures are bland, flat, and blocky. The characters you meet aren't anything to brag about either as they look like they just fell off the PS1.5 graphics bus. The enemies are unimaginative and look the same after a while. Nothing about the graphics are really good and it really shows.

The voice acting in this game is on the level of dooditude as Resident Evil....1. The characters sound like robots and tend to be excited and high-pitched when in fact they should just shut up. The mouth movements accompanying this horrific voice acting is even worse as it will make you feel like you stumbled upon a 1950s Godzilla movie. Characters will tend to move their mouths 10 seconds after they finished a sentence or their mouths don't move at all. The movements your character makes in the cutscenes is like watching a 1st grade play. Characters will flap thier arms wildly for no reason, which makes you think their an epileptic. I was just waiting for them to foam at the mouth, drop on the floor, and get done with the game, but sadly this wish didn't become reality.

The gameplay in this stinking wad of RPG-ness isn't even good. The combat system doesn't tell you how much HP they have left unless you stop the entire battle and look at each one individually. The controller-character response if horrifically slow as you'll try to make a move, but then you'll be stuck on doing something else or even nothing at all until you die. The combat area is a whole 360 degree circle as enemies will move quickly, which can make targeting, as well as actually hitting them, a frustrating and draining task. There are segments where you don't battle, which is 90% of the game by the way, you go on foot and have to do battle with the worst enemy in the game, the camera. It sometimes will stand still and will be uncooperative in movement, or it will whip around wildly, blinding you of the danger in front of you. Sure you can control the camera manually, but it's too sensitive and it finally dawns on you that you're better off either leaving the camera alone, or going the better road and not playing the game at all.

You can get upgrades along the way, and who doesn't like upgrades? Well, I'm trying to be a little positive about this game here, give me a break. The cutscenes are anime-based, which is neither a good or bad thing, but I usually skip them becuase they only last 20 seconds at most and reveal very little about what you need to do next.

Overall, with the horrific voice acting, frustrating combat, bland graphics, and just sheer boringness, I'm forced to reccomend that you pass this game up. Trust me, you'll be glad you did.