Magna Carta: Tears of Blood

"When it comes down to it, it's actually pretty good overall"

The game is actually good but honestly, at times you'll have to put forth some effort to finish certain areas. When it comes down to the first twenty or thirty hours you've put into the game, you'll probably either get bored of it, hate it, or still actually enjoy it and continue playing. I loved it at first but forty hours in I was getting bored of the back tracking so I stopped playing, and I recently picked it up a year later enjoying it as much as I did before.

Gameplay - 8/10
The battle system, which is in real-time fashion, is probably the most unique thing about this game. There tend to be two or three enemies at most against three of your characters. In the top right corner you have your Leadership Meter and your enemies meter. Depending on your allies affection, your arrows that allow you to take action may be closer or farther away from. The closer it is the faster you can take action and vise versa. To attack, you don't simply press a button, but you have to press a timed combination of the X (Yin) and O (Yang) buttons to execute a move from the style you are using. Pressing the three button combination of X and O perfectly will add 5% to your Trinity Drive. Your Trinity Drive, which you trigger by pressing square, amplifies the damage you deal to the enemy, the max being 100%. You usually only need one character in battles, the others are just their to help boost your meter or to be a punching bag basically, sometimes you may need another character for some random purpose.

As you progress though the story you get more opportunities collect different styles, each having a certain amount of skills with different attack, or healing, animations. Each attack you do takes Chi, there are eight Chi gauges
in all. Each style you use tends to use one or two specific Chi elements. Also the amount of the Chi your using tends to affect the amount of damage you deal as well. Overall the battles take more time than regular RPG battles.

When you're not battling, you'll most likely be in a certain fields. while in the fields you can be in Dash Mode or Detect Mode, Dash Mode allows you to run around freely but if a monster sees you, you will be surprised and it'll be like "First Attack", but for them. Detect Mode does just like what it says, detects. You'll be able to see the enemy so you can get the upper hand on it by attacking it when it does not see you so you can initiate "First Attack" on it letting you get get hits on them first for a few times.

The items in this game are called Talismans. Different Talismans can heal, restore Chi, give an experience boost, or heal status affects. You can also combine different Talismans to create stronger ones at the Priests in the towns.

Also, the load times are also fairly long, not as long as some of Oblivions but pretty close.

Graphics- 9/10
The graphics a pretty good, it could be improved by a lot but it's nothing to major to complain about. The character designs are beautifully drawn by Hyung-Tae Kim, which was the main selling point of this game. But he does make the main character look really feminine The field designs are good too.

Sound- 6/10
Honestly, the English voices aren't anything to be excited about, the voices are a bit below sub par and don't connect with the character's lips. But the in-game music is nice but I personally never liked the opening theme song much. To me, during the last half of the game the voices sounded a lot better and they showed more emotion.

Story- 8/10
The story is actually pretty good and it has a few good plot twists here and their. But it's not executed very well because of the long backtracking which can make it tedious to get into. After I started playing it again I realised the story isn't as cliche as some might think, but it does have some cliche moments...some cliches better than other games... I personally thought the ending was good, but it could have added some more about the later events.

Replay Value- 5/10
Their are no extras, new game+ or anything like that. Only replay you might want to be doing is wanting to rewatch the ending or to just watch the animations for the character's styles. But I'd doubt anyone would want to replay a 70 hour game.

Rent or Buy?- Depends
Renting it is fine, but it is about 70 hours give or take so you'll probably have to re-rent it again if you are planning on beating it. If you find it for sale then I'd suggest buying it, mainly for the cool artbook/walkthrough that comes with the game. Also because it's a rare game. I'd say buy it so that you can stop playing when you wish and restart it whenever refreshed about those few aggravating moments in the game.

- Personally I'm not sure whether to give it a 7, or an 8. Even though I thought this was a good game, their are some negatives that can't be overseen. But if you can stick with the few backtracking parts and finish it then I'm sure you'll say this a good game in the end.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 01/03/07