It’s an action/adventure/real-time-strategy/JRPG western with a side of aliens and melodrama... but where's the fun?
Cima are an alien race who have come to earth to feed off the hopes of humanity. By trapping their hapless prey in otherworldly dungeons the Cima are able to suck out humanities will to survive. As Ark J., a gate guardian, it is your duty to protect the train passengers accompanied by your rival Ivy and your mentor Jester. But when the entire train becomes trapped in the Cima world, and the trains passengers go missing, it begins to look like you’re going to have to earn your pay.
The Gameplay:
The gameplay in CIMA is a bit hard to describe because it takes inspiration from so many different styles, but if I had to describe it I would say that it’s like a mix between Zelda and Pikmin in the style of the early Lufia games. Ark J., the main character of the game, has several goals he must accomplish: firstly he needs to find the train’s missing passengers, earn their trust, and survive Cima’s dungeons.
Aside from Ark and Ivy, the game includes 14 different passengers whom you can move around (real-time-strategy style) to accomplish tasks and occasionally you’ll even be allowed to take direct control of a character. In order to get the most out of each character, however, you must first earn their trust. This is where the game becomes similar to an RPG. By defeating Cima you will gain majesties and the trust level of nearby passengers will increase. When a character trusts you it will be able to combine majesties to make things like potions, special weapons, etc., but since most items (except for the essential potions) are mostly wastes of space and most characters make the same exact items it’s mostly just unwarranted grinding.
The overwhelming bulk of the game takes place in Cima’s many mazes. To get through the maze you’ll have to use the train’s passengers to solve puzzles while protecting them from infinitely respawning monsters. As you make your way through, you’ll eventually make it to the maze’s boss where the maze’s creator will transform into a monster for you to hack up. Not that the bosses are pushovers, in fact, quite the opposite. This games bosses are hard, usually much stronger and MUCH faster (which is made worse by the fact that you can only run AFTER you charge up you main weapon) than you are. The only way to survive is to memorize their patterns of attack and bring as many potions as you can (5) into battle with you.
So as you can see the game is somewhat flawed, but wait, I haven’t even started yet. Firstly, the game is incredibly repetitive. Although the first few mazes appear different, after a while the kill monsters, have passenger step on switch, move passengers through gate, kill monsters, have passenger step on switch,… …., kill monsters, find lost passenger, have passenger step on switch, passengers get separated, passengers find each other again, fight boss, rinse repeat 13 more times gameplay gets old mighty quick.
Secondly there is the slow pacing. Because you can only have four passengers in one group at a time it means that, by the end of the game, you will be ordering around four different groups of passengers. But wait there’s more, you can only move one group at a time, so every time you do something, you must do it up to three more times more, and what’s more, the passengers are slow and prefer to walk everywhere.
The third and perhaps worst problem is the horrible A.I. The characters in this game are stupid. They have absolutely no path-finding ability, they always travel in straight lines (up to three) and if you’re off, even by a little, they will get hung up on corners. Now doing everything three times is bad, but when the passengers can’t even get to where you want them to be the first time, that’s just horrible. Plus, the passengers are totally defenseless, although many carry swords and guns they’ll usually let Cima walk right up to them and punch them a few times before doing anything. This is especially ironic with Ivy, who is supposedly Ark’s superior yet can’t even defend herself. So in other words not only do you have to do everything multiple times (in already repetitive level designs) but you’re going to have to constantly baby the passengers otherwise one of them might get killed and you will instantly get a Game Over.
The Graphics:
Pretty typical JRPG designs, in fact it reminds me a lot of the classic SNES Lufia series. Every level has its own theme (well, not every level… well, not even most of the levels) but ultimately these are just “skins”. One level’s lava is another levels pit is another levels bush is another levels wall.
The Sounds:
Again, reminds me of Lufia for some reason. In fact I think some of the music might even be lifted right out of Lufia. Not bad but nothing too special.
The Multiplay:
None
The Replay:
This game was so tedious the first time through. It’s probably a good thing the developers didn’t bother to give you a reason to replay it.
The Conclusion:
Let’s face it, the RPG genre is kind of dying in a way. We’re all tired of the same gameplay we’ve been playing since Ultima and Dragon Quest. So much so that we’ve covered up are desires for fresh, fun gameplay for… ugh… strong plot lines. Which is why we need games that take the genre in interesting new directions, games like CIMA: The Enemy, Shantae, and Sigma Star Saga, which is also why I hate to see a game like this fail so hard. I love the fact that Natsume tried something new and interesting with this game (as did the gaming press who gave it a few awards at E3) but I hate the fact that they did such an inexcusably sloppy job of it. If you’re looking for a good oddball GBA rpg check out Sigma Star Saga instead. It’s not perfect either, in fact it’s kind of sloppy as well, but at least it’s fun.