Growlanser: Heritage of War

"A charming game that will appeal to hardcore RPG fans (that don't care about graphics) but leaves casuals out in the cold."

Growlanser: Heritage of War is the 5th installment in Atlus' famous Growlanser series. The game features a charming cast of characters with a colourful world, and unique approach to the RPG genre.


Gameplay:

Growlanser: Heritage of War keeps a lot of old RPG traditions. You travel from town to town on various missions as the plot slowly unfolds throughout the game. What I liked in this game though is that many hours before you even touch the main game, there are 3 prologue scenarios which expand on the history on the game's world, it's countries, their politics, and the current troubles. The standard RPG has some NPC explain this to you, but this game actually lets you experience the history. When you start the main game you are thrown into a test scenario where you are presented with a number of problems. How you deal with these problems determines the growth pattern of the main character. If you just attack every monster non-stop, your will have high strength growth, but say low intelligence and MP growth as well. If you simply use magic attacks here, you'll get the opposite. You could also try a mixture of both and get a very balanced character.

The ability system is somewhat complicated. Your abilities are all an a board. Each ability is represented by plates. When you place a plate on the board, you begin to learn that skill. You can link plates together, for combos which will make your characters more efficient. You get these plates by simply using weapons and armour that you have. Every weapon and every armour in the game has its own set of plates that it put into your stock for your use on the board. When you have all the plates you want off of a piece of equipment, you can simply sell them and buy new weapons/armour which will give you different plates. This allows for a high degree of customization. On the downside the average casual gamer may find this confusing, and it may hurt the gameplay experience for them.

Heritage of War has a similar battle system that is often compared to the battle system of Final Fantasy XII. The difference is that it works on this game, and it was horrible in FF12. In Growlanser: Heritage of War there are no random battles. All enemies are present when you enter an area. As soon as you spot each other battle breaks out. You control the a single character, while your party members act on their own until you give them orders. The big difference between this game and FF12 is that your party members are actually competent in this game, and rarely need babysitting. I have yet to actually use the menu where you deeply program the A.I. because the A.I. in this game is already great. During battle you also have free control over your character. You can at any time stop what you are doing and move on to another part of the map to take care of things that require your immediate attention. Often in battles just surviving isn't enough to win. You have to protect important characters, or maybe stop an enemy from escaping. This actually makes the game challenging at times because complicated missions keep the game from degrading into a mindless hack n' slash fest.


Graphics:

There's no easy way to say this... the graphics are horrible. Slightly better than the graphics of Final Fantasy VIII. You can't even make out most NPCs faces because the camera is zoomed out most of the time. But then again, if graphics are all you care about, then why are you playing Japanese RPGs, lol? Go back to Bioshock or whatever other generic shooter is flavour of the month now.


Audio:

The voice acting is almost perfect. Aside from one or two characters (I'm looking at you, Rufus), the voice actors accurately bring out the personalities of each character. I can't imagine characters like Issac or Sherris being voiced any differently. The music is also very pleasant. It reminds me of the kind of tunes you'd hear in classic SNES RPGs. I really like it a lot.

Control:

The game controls fine. Your character moves very quickly and smoothly which makes battles more enjoyable. Alternatively, you can play it in traditional Growlanser style. You can move your character by picking "Move" from the menu, and selecting destination points for him/her.


Story:

In one word? Decent. It's not horrible, but not fantastic either. On an isolated continent, war is the only constant. Two men who are sick of the warring revive an ancient weapon of mass destruction called The Admonisher. After forming a small army called the Peace Maintenance Brigade, they use this to threaten to critically damage any nation that won't agree to peace. However, even though the wars were stopped, the problems that caused the wars never went away. Grangale had conquered Neylern during the war, and refused to return their territory after the PMB forced peace. The tensions between Cyriltia and Grangale were never resolved, and there's always a constant fear that fighting could break out at any moment between them. You play most of the game as a member of the PMB. You go on peace keeping missions, but also protect the public from near invincible monsters called Screapers, which will attack anything that moves (including sometimes other monsters).


Overall:

Growlanser: Heritage of War is a good RPG that will please fans of the series, or hardcore fans of the genre. If you were a casual gamer who's first game RPG was Final Fantasy X, then chances are you will be crying after you realized you spent $50-60 on this. The terrible graphics and slightly complicated gameplay concepts will undoubtedly turn some people off.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 10/02/07

Game Release: Growlanser: Heritage of War (US, 09/18/07)