Breath Of Fire 3
In most role-playing games, the player finds himself in the role of an adventurer who, sooner or later, must meet and defeat a fire-breathing dragon. But in a nice change of pace, Capcom's new RPG Breath of Fire III allows you to be adventurer and dragon all rolled into one.
You play Ryu (or whatever you want to call him - the game leaves it up to you), the last of a race of beings who once sought to rule the world. A dragon that appears in the form of a young boy most of the time, Ryu travels the globe in a quest to reunite with two friends. But as his journey unfolds, he uncovers the truth behind their disappearances, as well as a larger plot of unspeakable evil - one that only Ryu can stop.
RPG fans have heard this kind of story before, and in many respects, they've played this game before. Breath of Fire III has all the standard RPG trappings: the "you hit me, now I hit you" combat engine, control over a multiple-character party, and a number of smaller quests you have to accomplish along the way to finishing the overall one. This is not necessarily a criticism. Innovation is none too common in the world of RPGs, and even "cutting-edge" examples such as Final Fantasy VII stay pretty much within the narrow path beaten by their predecessors. But Breath of Fire III does bring a few fresh offerings to the table, such as its "examine" command, fishing minigame, masters' apprenticeship, and, most notably, its dragon gene system.
The examine command is an option you can choose for any or all of your characters during battle. It instructs them to watch their enemies as they perform specialized attacks - and if they're lucky, pick up the attack as their own, which often comes in handy in later battles. Whenever you decide to visit a fishing spot, a fishing minigame provides you with the chance to catch different status-enhancing fish (eating a rainbow trout restores magic points, blowfish cure poison, and so on). It's kind of fun and doesn't take up too much time, making it pretty much like any other minigame found in a RPG, but hey, it's fishing! Apprenticing to one of the world's masters entails different requirements for each master, such as providing a certain item, money, or nothing at all, and pays off in status bonuses that sometimes take away a few points from other areas as well. When it comes down to it, it's just another way to build up your characters, though the variety's nice.
The dragon gene system is one of the most notable features of the title. Instead of just turning into one dragon, Ryu can become every dragon by combining different dragon stones found throughout the game. The more powerful the form he takes on, the more magic points get sucked up each round of battle, and the more quickly he reverts back to boyhood. The key is to find the right balance of strength, breath attacks, and stamina. With 18 stones in all, you can spend a lot of time experimenting with different combinations and effects.
Graphically, Breath of Fire III straddles the line between 2D and 3D, with sprite-based graphics in an isometric 3D environment. The effect breathes some life, if not fire, into the traditional RPG look, sort of like Konami's Suikoden with a greater feeling of depth. It's an interesting attempt, but the style is a little too cartoonish for my liking. The soundtrack is above average, with a variety of tracks ranging from the expected epic style to what's best summed up as "RPG lounge."
Not everything is right in fantasyland though, since the game has a habit of forcing you through needless, time-wasting sequences. Random encounters happen far too frequently in Breath of Fire III, somewhere within the beat of every 30 seconds when in a hostile environment. While you can often flee, this severely inhibits your desire to explore your surroundings and gives the game a Beyond the Beyond-like quality. Also, having to build characters up inch by inch over hours of beating up weakling monsters so that your party is strong enough to survive a big fight can be extremely tedious and boring. While there are certainly plenty of things to do in the game and it's quite long in terms of the number of play hours, much of that time is less enjoyable than it should be. If the examine command were a little easier to pull off successfully and the frequency of random encounters turned down a notch or two, many of these problems would be solved.
Even with its handful of new features, Breath of Fire III breaks little new ground. Die-hard RPG fans may find it entertaining, but those looking for something new in this increasingly static genre will come away disappointed.
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Medievil 1
Sony's MediEvil takes place in a fictional Gallowmere, relaying the legend of a one Sir Daniel Fortesque. At one time, Sir Dan was Gallowmere's most esteemed knight, until he died fending off the evil sorcerer Zarok's battalion. As the fable goes, Sir Dan's demise wasn't of the heroic proportions of, say, William Wallace, but the king put on the big spin (for national security) and documented history as such. Well, Zarok didn't die back then, and now his magic brings Dan back accidentally, and incidentally, around the time that Zarok feels his new army of evil dead and plug-uglies is prepared to go at it once again. So, as Sir Dan, you're given a second chance to save the land, if you can live up to your own weighty reputation.
The game may appear like something of a 3D version of Ghosts 'n' Goblins (with touches of Tim Burton's film, The Nightmare Before Christmas); however, the gameplay is very different. There are similarities to Capcom's title, since you must wade through a horde of creatures using an arsenal of found or earned weapons (such as a magic sword, a bow that shoots flaming arrows, and a throwing ax), but there's more at work than just hacking and slashing. Each level has unique puzzles that differ from stage to stage, giving a nice degree of variety to the title. Also, once a certain number of enemies is dispatched, you can gather up a chalice that gives you access to the Hall of Heroes, a place where heroic ghosts dole out special weapons or items with each visit, usually accompanied by a verbal dressing down at your unworthy status as the champion of a Gallowmere.
While MediEvil may have an original look, its visuals aren't perfect. Pop-up occurs from time to time, there's a rare bit of bad collision detection, and the camera can be a bit wonky also. You can shift the perspective left and right by using the L2 and R2 buttons, but when you start moving again, the intelligent camera can sometimes get ideas of its own and shift back the way it was. Luckily, this only occurs in the levels that contain wider open areas, and not in the later levels that see the character walking across thin bridges, where tight camera control is an absolute necessity. Still, a single button control enabling a follow-cam (as seen in Rare's Banjo-Kazooie) would be welcome.
The real stars of MediEvil though are its variety, story, and difficulty level. As mentioned before, the diversity found from level to level adds a lot to the game, as does the wide and varied arsenal of weapons. The storyline is also strangely engrossing - as Sir Dan gets farther and farther in, he slowly begins to gain the respect of the other characters in the game, which you, as the player, surprisingly start to take actual pride in. And while the title starts off pretty simple, it soon attains a level of difficulty that is "just hard enough." That is, it's "just hard enough" to be challenging but not difficult to the point of frustration. It also really does a good job of making you comprehend play mechanics without being too overt (like spelling them out in the form of signs and whatnot). For example, you'll be put in a situation where you have to figure out something new before you can leave the area you're in. Then, once freed, you realize you can apply it everywhere you've been earlier in the level to get items that were previously out of reach.
MediEvil may not be as graphically appealing or as accurate in camera controls as a Spyro the Dragon, but to keep that analogy going, it provides the level of diversity, challenge, and fun that that title may have somewhat lacked. All in all, it's a welcome surprise.
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Medievil 2
The first game with the MediEvil name arrived for the PlayStation back in '98 with little fanfare and the unfortunate baggage of being marked by the press as a 3D take on Capcom's Ghosts 'N Goblins series. That labelwasn't accurate for a number of reasons - the main one being that it wasn't an extremely hard hack-and-slash platform game. Instead, MediEvil focused on 3D puzzle-solving, albeit with hack-and-slashy parts in between, but little or no platform-jumping. The puzzles were original, fun to solve, and just difficult enough to be challenging without being frustrating, making the game a welcome surprise. A year and a half later, a sequel has made its way to store shelves, and though it's not by any means a sophomore slump, it's not as strong as the original either.
The basics of MediEvil II are similar to the basics of the first MediEvil. You control the jawless undead knight, Sir Daniel Fortesque, from a behind-the-back perspective as he makes his way around in the olden days of the world's spookiest city, London. Your arsenal ranges from clubs and swords to crossbows and muskets, and if you defeat enough enemies on each level to unlock its Chalice of Souls, you'll be rewarded with special items.
Set several hundred years after MediEvil, MII finds Dan awakening in the Victorian era where Lord Palethorn - arch criminal, evil magician, and high-society wannabe - has begun to raise an army of the dead to take over the world. Dan takes it upon himself to stop him and finds allies in the form of a mad professor, a friendly ghost, and a female Egyptian mummy/love interest, all of whom provide him with help between and during levels.
Beyond that, things are much as they were in the first game, save for a few changes. For one, the game's structure is far less cookie-cutter than before. Without ruining any surprises - just when you come to think you know how the levels progress, chaos intercedes and the plot and gameplay get very interesting. Another nice touch is that you no longer play just as Sir Dan; you also take control of Sir Dan's head (made mobile by those disembodied Addams' Family hands that scurry throughout the levels) and beheaded body, which at times is called on to retrieve its head from pesky birds. Playing as the head gives you access to smaller passageways, where you'll invariably find a switch that must be hit in order for big Dan to continue. Beyond these two forms, there's even a minigame where Dan's head is placed on a Frankenstein-like body, and he competes against a huge Victorian robot in a boxing arena. When the robot hits Dan too hard, his limbs fly out of the ring, and he must fight imps between rounds in order to retrieve them.
And though the traditional puzzles found in the first game aren't gone, the gameplay has changed so that instead of fighting your way through a horde of monsters to get to a puzzle, the way in which you must defeat your enemies is the puzzle. For example, a phantom will raise a group of zombies to fight you. You can't hit him except during the scant few seconds that he's casting his spell to bring them back to life, which isn't obvious until you've hacked through the undead a few times. More complex battles soon follow.
Not all the changes are positive however. The game camera may work well through most of the game when you're playing as Sir Dan, but when you're Dan's head on a hand, it's more limited, often causing you to fall off platforms and die. The final few levels also require a lot of platform-jumping in areas where the camera works against you, changing the game from one that is difficult, challenging, and fun to being too difficult, and distinctly unfun. The developers seemed to be aware that the game camera wasn't ideal for platform jumping since it was, for the most part, avoided in the original, but for some reason it appears pretty heavily near the end of the sequel.
In the end, MediEvil II feels as though it contains all the features that Sony Cambridge wanted to fit into the original game but didn't have time to include. They're wonderfully original and fun, but unfortunately the perspective problems make certain points far more difficult than they should be and keep this very good game from being great. Fans of the first game shouldn't be disappointed, but they should at least go into it forewarned.
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[color=#FF0000:683de][size=95:683de]• Linkovi Provjereni By Croshadow123 19.6.2008 - [i:683de]*Linkovi Dead*[/i:683de][/size:683de][/color:683de]
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