Magna Carta: Tears of Blood

"Everything about it is flawed."

Nothing is straight up _good_ about this game and the flaws add up making it a drag to play.

I haven't played much of it (before I quit and decided to never pick it up again unless I run out of games), so I won't comment on the story. It seems decent, but the story alone couldn't salvage this wreck because it's marred by rushed and cheesy dialogues. I'm not sure if the stilted dialog is a result of translation or not, but it sure detracts from the story. The FMVs are better, but incredibly awful voice acting robs them of any atmosphere.

Graphics:

The game is pretty, but not spectacular. The backgrounds are what's to be expected, nothing awed me. The characters look ok, except the main character, an adult guy who looks like a woman and the 2 female characters in the party whose breasts seem artificially attached (surely the appealing ZOMFG!BigBoobies thing could have been done better). The characters' facial expressions need some work. Ditto for their portraits which are odd and have only one expression no matter what is being said. This really blows. Even much older games had different portraits for when a character was happy/angry/scared/whatever.

Sound:

The BGM music is ok, the battle theme is quite good, but the horrid voice acting will assault your ears. I cannot fully express how bad the voice acting is... Everyone sucks, everyone.

Gameplay:

First of all you either walk around too slowly and detect mobs or you run like in other games, are ambushed by mobs, and have to stand there waiting for your turn to attack. Waiting is the keyword with this game's gameplay.
Moreover, you usually won't avoid fighting anyway as the areas are narrow and the mobs move around, so detecting them won't help you much, other than making the battle shorter by giving you first attack.
Speaking of detection, the camera is so bad that at times you will just give up and move forward blindly. For example when you turn a corner the camera will give you a nice shot of your oh so very pretty character instead of showing you what's ahead.

The battle system is not good either. You only control one character while the others do nothing. As the main character usually is the all around strongest one in the party, you will probably start by using him most of the time. There seems little need to use the others unless you are in a long fight (read: boss fight) and need healing and/or the chii the main character's attack use is drained. Adding the fact that you learn new abilities by using the old ones so the characters you use most will master their styles faster, making them stronger and more tempting to exclusively use, and you get to a point where most of your party members could very well be NPCs.

I've played (and liked) the Shadow Hearts games and Legend of Dragoon and there the combos also depended on hitting the right button at the right time. Here the penalty for missing once (no attack at all + going back to the weakest attack + losing all your Trinity Drive), coupled with having to wait for the bar to fill while the enemy hits you and never misses, makes the game frustrating. It's not that you are in danger of losing, it's that you get bored and annoyed. If only the other characters would DO something during this time, it would feel a lot better.

And did I mention the load screens? No? Well, you will see them a lot. More waiting.

Value:

Gameplay issues aside, there is not that much to draw you in. The characters are not boring per se, but the lame dialogues, "gah! skip the scene!" voice acting, and less than stellar facial expressions make it difficult to care. In fact, the one character I'm interested in is the Yason queen, who so far only appeared in a FMV.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 07/30/07