Aidyn Chronicles: The First Mage

"Interactive Turn Based Battle-System"

Aidyn Chronicles the First Mage is probably the hardest game I've ever played. The story is very rewarding and put it this way some skills people may think are useless are very useful for putting the story together. Infact with a high enough rating in one skill (Loremaster) you can pretty much reveal the whole history of Aidyn. Actually there's a sidequest original to a certain character(there maybe more but I've never tried every possible party combination) The one downside is when you want a new character to join you don't get to pick who will leave. I actually think it'd be pretty cool if they allowed you to take a total of 8 characters with you say have the 4 characters and 4 reserves say that other characters beat the dust but the way the game is it's fun.

Graphics: 8
These aren't the greatest graphics but if you consider it was made on the N64 these graphics are nice and just remember 3-d Scaled Characters o look Human-like probably was not the idea behind the N-64 originally. I really believe that Keelin looks great, Abrecan has this awesome feel to him and Rheda looks mysterious. All and All the graphics are nice for the N-64 oh yea just don't play in the Hi-Res mode if you own one of the original releases of the game as it runs real buggy and crashes quite often.

Storyline: 10
Wow an original story in an RPG when was the alst time we saw one of those I'd say a very long time ago. Infact the story doesn't center around stopping an evil force from world domination but instead to save the main Character Alaron whom lacks a ''True Name''

Length: This game is quite long around 60 hours if you feel the need to levelup often. Otherwise I'd say between 30-40.

Gameplay: This has in my opinion one of the greatest battle engines ever created. Something refreshing from your Final Fantasy games where you wait on the little timebar to fill up. Instead you have full control over character movement This is how an epic game should play.

X-perience System: The XP system works very well and allows full customizability over every single character. Gaining levels takes along time but becoming stronger doesn't well it still does if you're careless you could be at a low level and slaughtered by a lowly Ogre if you build your stats you can become a great warrior but still have trouble with the Chaos Monsters. Then again there are only a few places with respawning mosnters so don't think you can just enter an area then go back out and fight there's only a few places where this occurs but it was by design and not a flaw by the programmers. And these respawning fights can be very difficult you may not want to fight them.

Replay: This game has infinite replay value to an extent you really get to decide which type of character Alaron will become will you want him to be a Mage, a Warrior, an Archer, a Magi-Warrior, or a Magi-Archer. Some of the other characters also have potential for being different things, such as Keelin will you her as a Thief will you turn her into a Quasi-Mage, Will you use her as a Quasi-Warrior-Mage. Also there's alot of characters some have a so called set job which they really don't you could have a party with all warriors if you wish to. Or maybe all Mages *although some characters don't have a magic alignment so this is a selective party with all mages*

Sound: The music is good when there is music but it's a refresher that the game doesn't rely heavily on music. The battle music is very moving. This shows you a good game can be made with great sound effects and very little music.

I really don't know what else to say about the game except for it's great. And every Nintendo 64 Owner should own it.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 01/22/03, Updated 01/22/03