While an amazing display of unique hand-drawn 2D art be warned; this game takes you down a dark rabbit hole of repition!
About two thirds of the way through this game I actually got up off of the couch swearing to myself, took this disc out of the PS2 and snapped it in half to prevent myself from playing it any further. True story. I physically destroyed this game. I have no mental illnesses and am not prone to physically taking out my agressiion on inanimate objects.
But, this is still a good game, and it might be worth checking out for you. The problem is that this game kind of messed with my sanity in a very real way when I tried to complete it. Why? Read on...
Let's start at the beginning by explaining this game. This is an extreemly simple game on the surface. Upon first playing this I found myself asking- "What, is this it?". it is a side scrolling "run and jump" "hack and slash" of the original old school variety. There is one button for jump and one for attack. Yep that's just about the summing up of it, the game consists of mainly mashing on two buttons with repeating paralaxed backgrounds a'la 1988.
Along with the old school game play comes another unfortunate old school quality: some serious repition of the graphics and gameplay. No other game in recent memory is as heavily dependent on re-using character sprites and backgrounds dozens if not hundreds of times each. SO, that's part of what drove me nuts- the crazy amount of repition. It's been about three months since I shattered this disc and the lush foliage of the fairy forest is still vivid in my mind.
Yes, I said lush foliage (not often I get to say lush foliage). The backgrounds are lush, vivid, colourful, detailed and mesmerizing in their detail and art style. This too goes with all of the characters and graphics you see throughout the game. The art direction and graphical quality are amazing throughout. It is the main redeeming quality of this game, som much so, that it will make you suffer through fighting the same boss for the twelveth time with a background you've travelled through for the two hundred and fourtieth time! The graphics are hands-down some of the best 2-D hand drawn sprites I've ever seen, so much so that this game is easily worth checking out for next gen console owners. It's actually pretty amazing that they can do this on a PS2, as I think that this could have easily been relaesed on the PS3 and people probably wouldn't have blinked twice because of it's retro conventions.
The graphics are top notch alright and that made me slog through hours and hours and hours of hack and slash. It wasn't all bad though, I was taken back to the old days when simple mechanics had to be honed to a careful precision to get through a very difficult stage. Which brings me to another point: this game is hella hard. This game is really hard. After several hours on easy level it started to become something like a fun yet challenging experience. I even played about half the game on regular level, but some of the bosses were almost impossible even on easy. You'd better have some resolve to repeat the boss battles the necessary 35 times necessary to complete them sometimes. SO, the crushing difficulty level is another thing that contributed to my going unstable.
The game play isn't quite as simple as I make it out to be, it is mostly button pounding but there's some special powers and a pretty interesting item system that adds depth to the game. The item system is a little complex. It involves mixing different foods you find that pop out of the bushes etc. as well as taking them to this friggin' Pooka Village dozens of times to have a mutant rabit chef mix them into special "dishes" that you can only buy with special coins. This sound's a little complex and it is. So much so that it becomes a pain in the ass to do because it's so repetative. Unfortunately, the special powers are also repetative as they are used by each of the five usable characters. SO, the frustrating item system and the lack of new special powers are another thing.
Five useable characters? Yes. You know why? Because you have to play through the entire damn game five times with different characters! But that's not the end of the game, oh no. More repition awaits you young warrior! Because after overly repitious: graphics, music, locations, backgrounds, gameplay and items system that is interesting but discfunctional.
YOU MUST FIGHT MORE- AND DO THE SAME THING AGAIN!
AND AGAIN!
AND AGAIN!
Add to this a pagan inspired Japanese written storyline, which, like most Japanese game story lines- lacks any sense moderation and is ridiculous in its apocalyptic self importance. Add to this painfully long and dreadfully corny in game dialog. SO, the terrible story was also contributing to me snapping. The story line was very insestious with its characters, not so much because the creators wanted to strengthen the connections between characters, but tbecause there were so few character models to work with! Again with the repition!
So I'm on the journey of the fifth character going through the same stages that I battled through with the previous four and I check how ling I've been playing. 54 hours! That's not including the times that I've had to repeat battling bosses and dying. I went on Gamefaqs.com to see how much longer I had to go before finally completing the game and it turns out that after the five character journeys were done, I'd have to go through even more.
SO, yeah, again I snapped and so did the game disc- right into the garbage. BUT, I am still recommending the game with a 6/10 because the graphics really are that good. If you long for old school run and jump this is definately worth checking out. The game is very long too and will probably take about 60 hours to finish (the time it would take to thoroughly route a good square RPG).
Be warned though, this game will take you down a dark rabbit hole of weird paganism, convoluted story lines and repetition- repition- repition.