A very interesting game who's makers simply lacked creativity.
As mentioned above you are a member of a team of professionals, to be more precise you are a rookie, I know real creative. Your name is James Billington aka Kid and through the course of the game you learn the real reason behind moon base HAMLET and get to know your comrades more. The team is very standard; there’s Konrad Von Eibol aka Boss and he is the selfless leader, then there’s Maria Hansfield aka Stormy who is the lone female and possible love interest? Oreag Anderson aka Killer who is the older, muscled who is a master of killing. Mark Smiley aka Thief who is the younger, into anime and Japanese stuff, kind of person. Finally there is Rauzein **** aka Bighorn, the big Russian who is a gentle giant. These characters all are done by the text and you never get to care for them or really learn about them. Another reason for not getting to know these characters is because they sometimes refer to each other using the nicknames, and others with there actual names, making it even more difficult to remember them.
While purging the moon base of the alien invaders things begin to unravel and not make sense. Through the game you will find a couple of survivors who will become an important part of the story. The “aliens” are turning out to be some sort of zombies composed of the former residents of HAMLET. Apparently the people sent to HAMLET were all scientists and them there smart folk They were sent there by A-Max to devise a biological weapon. They weren’t allowed to return to Earth either which upset them. They saw themselves as being outcasts, almost slaves. So the head honcho of the scientists began developing a new bio-weapon, one that would react quite strangely to those in possession of Lunar Tears, a new fad on Earth made of stones mined from the moon. Now that’s all I say about the main details as to not spoil it for anyone wanting to play the game.
Atlus labeled this game an action adventure RPG but the game has very little RPG elements in it, the only RPG elements in the game are the leveling up (which doesn’t seem to make you stronger) and all the dialogue between the characters. Space Griffon plays from the first person perspective but isn’t really a FPS either, it moves too slowly and you can’t aim precisely enough for it to be considered a FPS. The game is actually more like a first person adventure in the vein of Metroid Prime.
Moving around is difficult because this game was made before the dual analog PS1 controllers. This means all movement and aiming is done with the d-pad. Moving around is hard to begin with and it never really becomes second nature, you’ll always bump in to corners. Your mech can transform just like the Transformers. The mech has three different modes; an upright walking mode that is the strongest and slowest, a halfway upright mode that is balanced, and the tank mode that is the fastest, the weakest, and can only shoot the rocket launcher. Aiming is even worse, and most of the enemies move too fast or are too small for you to kill them easily. The hardest part is aiming up and down in which you have to hold the triangle button. When you’re doing this you can’t move so you’ll get hit by the enemies fire. A lock on feature would’ve improved this game so much.
There are enough weapon types to keep the game diverse and find a combo that will suit you. There are rockets, machine guns, lasers, and even a shield. Your Space Griffon can hold three attachments, one on the left, right, and middle. Some of the attachments are position specific, such as the rocket launcher can only be held in the middle and the shield can’t be in the middle. The different combinations can be however you see fit, I mostly used a rocket launcher, machine gun, and a laser which evens out to be pretty balanced and efficient. I never used the shield and I only died once in the whole game, so it’s pretty useless. The weapons also have their own levels which increase their power and total ammunition.
Graphically this game doesn’t hold up that well. They were pretty good for it’s time, this game came out around the second year the PS1 was out so 3D was still a new thing. The biggest problem with the game’s graphics is you can only see a short distance in front of you, the rest is just black. I’m guessing this was due to the newness of working in 3D as mentioned above and the space station probably doesn’t have electricity flowing through the lights. Another small “glitch” is whenever you turn by a wall the graphics that are the wall warp. It doesn’t affect the game negatively, it’s just worth mentioning. Space Griffon’s cut scenes are pathetic. Every cut scene involves a single anime style picture consisting of the characters which never moves. The character windows pop up and around the picture and they talk about recent events. These character windows pop up through the whole game whenever someone talks. The only animation for these window is the lips and eyes moving. Occasionally someone will slap someone and the window changes to a different picture.
The character models are very generic and the mech designs are even worse, they are the worst looking mechs I’ve ever seen. They are modeled like a human and other than that show no creativity what so ever. The only cool part are the transformations.
One of the most suprising things about Space Griffon is the fact that the game is fully voiced and this is in 1995! Even though the game is voiced that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s good, the voices are neither great nor terrible and the characters lack emotion when they need it. There isn’t any music playing while you play the game, the only time music is actually playing is during the “cut scenes” and it is terrible! The quality is terrible and the most notable instruments are the keyboard, which sounds like something from a cheesy ‘70s or ‘80s movie, and the bass. The sound effects are, like the voice acting neither great nor terrible.
Overall Space Griffon is a passable game that introduced a unique kind of game and deserves more credit than it got. The graphics are impressive for its time and the fact that it is fully voice acted is astounding however this does not mean the game is that good, it moves too slow, aiming is imprecise, and the RPG elements seem tacked on. It is worth the price now but not when it was new.