Amazingly Deep
Graphics, since when you load the game im sure they will be off puting (they were for me). There is two areas to talk about here, the Battle Map and the Skirmish Screen. The Battle map is dished out in Mode 7 and this is where it is off putting. The maps look very washed out, and blurry. Everything is recognisable, trees buidins and mountains but it isnt Final Fantasy 6 scenery here. On the map all the Buildings look the same. One model of Towns that you can liberate, One model for Temples and One model for bases. Also your units on the map are rather lagre yellow black representaions of that units leader, which again can look a little ugly however is distinguishable.
The Skirmish Sceen is where the graphics make a huge improvement, The characters are all well modeled, the Board is nicely rendered with some good looking ground and Attacks are flashy.
The sound now is good, the music whilst can be repetitive is nice and catchy, it adds atmosphere to your game, and really sets a tone and feeling for it. One that you wont find in another game. Characters dying is nice, and the calls to battle and liberation though a bit fussy are nice touches.
Gameplay... This is what you are playing this game for. The gameplay is superb. Thes tory is you are the elader of the Rebellion and you are trying to over throw the Zeteginian Empire.
Basically each map you deploy units. And you command these units on where to travel to.
Each unit consists of up to 5 unit counts. A small character like a soldier is 1 unit count, so effectivly you have 5 man squads. And large charcters take 2 unit counts, so with 2 large units you only have room for 1 small unit left. Each unit is shown as an icon of its leader on the Battle map and you must command these units to capture towns and defeat the oncoming enemy. Simply destroying the enemy is not enough though. You have to be careful about how you destroy them because you have a reputation to look out for. Your reputation determines endings you can achieve and charcters who will join. Not only can your reputation be damaged but your chatcters alliance can be severly hurt if you play them wrong. Battling gains your units experience and depending on the enemy they fight it affects there stats, and one of the mos timportant stats is their Alliance. 100 = good and 0 =evil. Some characters cannot change class into more powerful units unless they are at the right alliance score, and the right score is not nessacarily always 100. Your werewolves and Liches are by no means heroic warriors of the light. I am trying to explain it but the depth of this game makes it very hard. You see every action you take affects your soldiers and reputation. If you liberate a city with a unit of unholy evil then the people in that town ar not going to look favourably on you and your reputation will go down. On the map when moving your units, grey units appear as enemies. When one of your units comes into range, battle is iniated between the,. Now you dont have direct controll over your characters, however you can play tartot cards (Magic cards aquired when liberating towns) and change tactics of the entire group. eg- Tactics to leader means everyone that can reach the leader will attack him. Terrain plays a role in fights, your savage octopus is death to the enemy in water, however on land its more like a big red pin cushion.
The gameplay is the gem in this game. I didnt explain it well, you must try it out. If you like startedy battle games, this is for you. Its really a unique gaming experience that i havent found anywhere else.