"Many Flaws But The Fun Fighting Makes This Game Worth It"

When the Dreamcast first launched just a few short years ago, it was the best console out at the time. It had all kinds of new features to give to consumer: online play, new kinds of genres altogether (Shenmue with FREE), and even all cel-shaded games (Jet Grind Radio). This system appeared to have it all. Or did it?

The one thing that was lacking for quite a while after the Dreamcast launch and the same thing that most people were crying out to Sega for were RPG's. There was not a single one that was launched with the system and the genre appeared to be disregarded altogether. That is, until, Infogrames delivered with an RPG known as Silver to attempt to quench the thirst of RPG lovers everywhere. But does the fire still remain?

Silver starts out by introducing you into a world called Jarrah that is ruled by an evil sorcerer known as Silver. The story goes on to tell you that Silver has decided to abduct all the village women and take them to his castle to appease the god, Apocalypse. You assume the role of David to try to take back the village women and among them, his own wife. The story advances a bit here and there through the game and ends up introducing you to your main objective, which is to collect all the elemental orbs to defeat Silver once and for all. This is clearly a run of the mill, collect all orbs to destroy the ultimate power, type of game. The story does very little to keep you entertained and lacks any deep character development or plot twists and turns to keep you engrossed as soon as you begin your adventure. The presence of a major story in an RPG is nearly a must in all RPG's today and Silver fails to deliver right from the beginning. This may have been what caused it to go unnoticed by the public, so if you're looking, so if you're looking for an epic, you better keep looking.

The gameplay demonstrated in Silver definitely has its highs, but it also has a few lows. To begin with, the game is set up as a real time RPG. This means that everything happens in, just that, real time. You begin the game with a quick tutorial at the beginning just to show you how everything is performed. You are introduced to the use of weapons, shielding, and also encounter your first bit of food. There are a variety of weapons that you can use in the game that go from short range attacks and long range attacks to magic and special moves. All of these weapons are found individually as you progress through the game. The short range weapons consist of a variety of weapons including maces, axes, and basic swords. The weapons have beneficial attacks associated with them, such as, lunging with the sword and a sweeping motion with the axe. This was implemented to add a bit of strategy to the game, but the damage done by the beneficial ways of using a weapon was never high enough to make me want to use it and most battles just turned into button mashing sessions. The long range weapons include slingshots, bows, and even a magical item or two. Putting long range weapons in the game was a complete waste of time that could have been better spent because the weapons do not do much damage to begin with and you are very rarely presented with situations that would have you benefit from using such weapons. The magic attacks, I also found, were very rarely used except in certain boss situations. Plus, the lack of variety in the spells makes them very unappealing. The spells either consisted of shooting a ball, shooting a bigger ball, or shooting an even bigger ball for the majority of the spells. The special moves, to keep it short, are identical to magic attacks, only useful in boss situations. The shielding is also pitiful because the enemy constantly attacks until your shield breaks, and you never get a chance to counter because of your shielding. This characteristic of the game should have been left out altogether.

The game also gives you a party you can have with you. You receive your first party member a few hours into the game and are continuously meeting new people that will join you if you wish, for up to two other members. The party members are usually more trouble than they're worth, though. To begin with, they don't attack when you enter a room but simply stand there until they've actually been hit about three times. After this is over, they'll stand there again, avoiding the attack. This leaves you getting slashed to ribbons and your party members alike because they're too stupid to do anything. To offset this effect, the game lets you control the other members of your party by simply switching to them on the D-Pad. This is usually more of a pain than just fighting all the monsters as the main character. You can control the other party members, but as soon as you switch, the character you were immediately assumes the position of an idiotic party member. This creates a never ending cycle of switching to party members, hitting someone one, switching, hitting one, and so on. I typically just left the characters to fend for themselves and healed them up as necessary at the end of a fight.

The healing system in the game is used by consuming food. You acquire certain items, like apples and carrots, as you progress through the game. Thankfully, there is always an abundant source of food which is necessary to keep your party members healed up. Although, you may find yourself wishing to just leave them for dead. I know I did.

The fighting in this game occurs by entering a different screen. As soon as you do, enemies pour into the room and you can't leave the room until they're all dead. I never found myself wishing that the battles would end, though, and actually quite enjoyed them, eagerly anticipating the next foot soldier or town barbarian I could slash to bits. The enemies in the game consist of either animals or soldiers, in general. Each type does the exact same thing as you meet them, causing you to form a minor strategy in order to deal with them most efficiently. The bosses are also very fun in dealing with and require you to adapt to their particular attacks and figure out a way to defeat them. The fighting in the game is definitely the best part of Silver and will be enjoyed by all since it is always fun and, therefore, never gets tedious or repetitive.

The graphics do leave a little to be desired. The layouts of the levels are set backdrops that change as you access another area. The layouts are actually full of life and contain plenty of vivid and luscious colors to keep your eyes occupied. The layouts are different in every main area in the game keeping variety in and repetitiveness out. The textures are also good by displaying everything as realistically as possible. The cobblestone roads of a city you encounter look believable as do the textures of the houses that are adjacent to the streets. The one problem with the graphics is definitely the characters. Apparently, Infogrames didn't spend a whole lot of time on the character models and they cover this up by placing your characters very far from the screen. The characters rarely ever come into view to notice any specific details or attractiveness to them and if they do, they are very blocky appearing and not colorful whatsoever.

The audio of this game also appears to be a trouble spot. There are musical tunes for each area that you visit, but they seem very boring and bring no life to the area that you are currently in. The only thing the music accomplishes is to give you a feeling of depression about most of the spots in the game which I don't believe was the game's intention, but, if it was, they succeeded in flying colors. The voice acting in this game is decent. The majority of the characters' voices didn't really seem to bring life to them, but appeared to just be read to give the game some additional sound. The voice acting was never bad enough to the point where I wanted to turn the game off, but it is something that could certainly have been improved upon. I did, however, enjoy the sound effects in the game. Every sound was very believable and was great just listening to. I loved hearing the swish of the sword or the chomp of the food being eaten. The sounds never appeared to become repetitive and were well taken the entire game.

The control of this game is hardly a problem area. They are very responsive and you should have no trouble getting your character to perform the actions that you want him to. The control is very simple to get used to and will not take you very long in figuring out how to perform everything.

Silver is a game that RPG fans will want to take a look at, especially if they want one that's cheap, since this game can be found for probably less than $10. This game, however, will not take you long to beat, about 10 hours and you may want to think about getting something bigger. Silver, though, is an enjoyable little game and, despite its flaws, I never regretted making my purchase, due to the fighting portions of the game. I suggest you pick it up, especially if you find it at that price.

Silver helped to put out the fiery thirst for RPG's shortly after the Dreamcast launch, but it certainly didn't extinguish it.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 02/12/02, Updated 02/27/03