One of the earlier RPGs to hit the Genesis, makes it's way to the Wii and it's still so bland!

User Rating: 6.1 | Vermilion GEN
The Sega Genesis was one of the two main consoles during the early to mid 90s and as a result, it honed it's collections with many different games. Role playing games were not a brand new concept, but in 1989, this was one of the few RPGs you could get on the brand new system. Sword of Vermillion is a pretty basic game in many respects, possibly too basic for some. The story is less than inspired, putting you as the son of the King that was raised by another man so you would not die by the evil ruler of the land. Suffice to say, right from the get go, it seems really unoriginal even for 1989!

Because the story isn't that great, it's hard to feel part of the game. You will go from town to town buying better weapons and armor and then going back outside to fight harder monsters. There's nothing to pull you in other than your own desire to beat this game. Unfortunately, that is not enough for most people!

On the map, you will walk around as an avatar and then there is another screen showing you what it looks like as in a first person view. Randomly, monsters will appear on your screen and then you will have to fight. Once the battle loads, there will be between 1 to 8 enemies on the screen. You always start in the middle so there is little variation. What adds to the boredom is the lack of damage variety. If you have a certain armor, that enemy will always do two damage to you in a hit or four damage. It doesn't change unless you change your armor. There are no critical hits or spontaneous actions as all the enemies act the same. They make a B-line towards you and that's it. You can spice it up by adding some spells but they don't really do much and they fizzle quickly. The enemies get faster and make faster and straighter lines to you and the only thing your slow character can do is vapidly and sluggishly attempt to get away and whenever you get hit, it knocks you back and makes an annoying grunt sound! There's no shields or deflection spells, just dumb enemies that get harder and faster.

Boss battles are more unique as they are a 2D representation but then you can not use magic. Though this is a bit more entertaining because it is less monotonous, it isn't necessarily better.

The game displays that the music in the game can be okay but nothing about it is memorable and the fact that the game has so few different models makes the game seem like one big something of the same thing. There's no variation and there's no connection between the quests you do and the next person or town to go to. Step one: do this, Step two: do step one except it's barely different.

In the end, the game is an example of how games evolved and got better. If you're willing to see a basic game for what it's worth, this may keep you entertained for about 25 hours or so but there's no reason to go back and when you think about it, there's not a great reason to go the first time.