cigarcat's Review of Other Life: Azure Dreams GB

Of the dozens of monster tamer style RPGs on handheld systems, Azure Dreams ranks right below average.

User Rating: 5 | Other Life: Azure Dreams GB GBC

By cigarcat | Review Date: May 23, 2013

Having never played Azure Dreams on the Playstation I cannot comment on it though I have heard that it was a moderately popular Japanese role playing game during the year of its release. What I can say is that the Gameboy color version that I have been playing is a seemingly derivative game that is the product of oversaturation of the monster training craze of the late 90s and early 2000s. Of all the handheld role-playing games I have been playing and enjoying recently (Dragon Warrior Monsters and Quest RPG), this game seems average by comparison. In the game you play as a young boy named Kou who at the beginning of the game has just turned fifteen years old and thus is now worthy of challenging a forbidden tower in the dessert that attracts the likes of treasure hunters and such. To make the tower even more enticing to you, it is explained early on that you father, a legendary monster tamer, has gone missing within the tower many years ago and has not been seen since. His monster friend (called a familiar) visits you and explains the ropes of a rather complex game interface and all you need to know about combat.

The gameplay is very basic fare however despite all the variations of items and monsters. You walk around with a couple of monster friends and set their battle modes to aggressive or conservative or somewhere in-between. Then you kill other monsters to level up allowing you to reach higher levels of the tower. Meanwhile you find items and go back and forth to town selling your goods for money and better equipment. The game is long and tedious and repetitive however and after too long a seasoned RPG player might lose interest. The game peppers you with brief story driven dialogue as you descend and ascend through the floors of the tower. Occasionally you get a chance to fight a rival treasure hunter though these battles are only as interesting as fighting regular foes.

The graphics and sound are slightly worse than average for a game of this type. As usual there are no animations during battle but some of the character artwork during dialogue stood out as an impressive aspect of the games overall visuals. The music was decently varied throughout the levels but they are rather short loops to be expected from the platform.

To conclude I will say that this is a highly generic RPG about taming monsters. There are other games that do this particular niche better than this game. I would recommend Dragon Warrior Monsters over this game if you are looking for a starting point to the genre as it is a great title.

Azure Dreams

Of the dozens of monster tamer style RPGs on handheld systems, Azure Dreams ranks right below average.

Repetitive, but nonetheless a good time killer.