Time Stalkers

"Classic Sega charm-You won't find this anywhere else!"

Play Grandia II and Skies of Arcadia first, right? Not a bad idea at all, but for the one who thought they played all the decent Rpg's Sega had to offer, comes along... Time Stalkers!!

Gameplay-10
Gameplay is incredibly addictive. Maybe too addictive. Dungeon Crawls are random and the game (in and of itself) is very short, but there are plenty of ways you can occupy time, having a lot of fun while delaying the end. You can catch monsters and have them fight with you. Not ultra-original, but lets you mold the game to your liking. The characters you interact with have ingenious personalities, making this a happy game-Rather than the kind of Rpg in which you don't care to bother talking to the townspeople, because they basically have nothing to say. What about difficulty? It could be a real pain for some. You start all dungeons from level 1 in this game. Walking for a half an hour to the dungeon boss to get defeated because of lack of resources is not uncommon. Besides that, short length of this game is the only downfall here, if you ask me.

Story-7
Again, this is great. The characters you fight with all have a reason for being with you, and the explorable areas- which you open up as you continue on- are about as diverse as you'd ever see in an Rpg. The characters are so cool!
My major gripe which keeps this rating down is that the game is too open-ended (non-linear), and the background story of the game is poorly written, given that most of it's characters have such personality.

Audio/Video-5/8

The music for this game really didn't stand out to me at all. It's not sleep-inducing, but there simply were'nt any tracks that stood out to me as anything groundbreaking, or even anything beyond ''average'' status. I played my CD's instead and you might want to do the same. As for the Graphics- Those are something else. Some may consider the graphics subpar for the Dreamcast, and while they aren't technically superior to say, Grandia II, they sure aren't anywhere near bad. The visuals themselves are composed of lush,varied environments in place to place in the non-dungeon part of the game. They're really quite nice. As for the dungeon environments- It doesn't help that they're randomly generated, because they are really only one step up from the Saturn's capability.

Replayability- 6
I give it a 6 because most likely, you'll get a lot out of playing the game for more hours than necessary the first time through. But take warning- once you're bored with this game, you'll never want to play it again.

Buy or Rent?
This game wouldn't be such a bad buy. It's an Rpg that I haven't forgotten yet- and I don't think I ever will! If you're not sure, you could see for yourself with a rental, but the game's a really good buy... I'd say buy it.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 02/16/02, Updated 02/16/02