Ring of Red

"A nice change of pace from previous PS2 games..."

Ring of Red is a very unique strategy game. It is the type of title for hardcore gamers only, as it actually makes you think and may seem boring to people that aren’t patient. Ring of Red is a real-time/turn-based strategy game, in the style of Front Mission 3 and Final Fantasy Tactics except different.

Ring of Red is based around the idea that Japan didn’t surrender after the atomic bombs were dropped back in World War II, and instead split into two parts: a communist led north and a democratic led south. During this time, Armored Fighting Walkers (AWFs) are in development and pretty soon every major country on the globe is in the business, constructing these AFWs to their specifications for their own country’s use.

It is now a years after the split and you are placed in the game as Masami Von Weizegger, a test pilot for the South Japanese Navy. You are testing out a new type of AFW, referred to as ‘Type 3’, by battling against it to determine how well it functions in combat. But something goes wrong and the AFW is stolen and taken by North Japan. This eventually snowballs into something much bigger, but I’ll let you figure out all the details on your own.

Now that the story is unveiled, I can delve into the play mechanics. When you begin each lengthy mission, you’ll arrive at an overhead view of a large grid. In this view each of the AFWs are represented by little animated icons placed throughout the squares. These icons help identify each type of AFW from another AFW.

There are four basic types of AFW’s: low armored short-range light, good-for-just-about-everything standard, damaging long-ranged 4-legged, and the close-combat anti-AFW. Each of these types work best at a certain range, which is basically the number of squares away from the enemy AFW, and it can make a big difference where an AFW is attacking from. An adjoining square signifies short range, a diagonally lying square means medium, and two or more squares from the enemy represents long range.

However, you can’t just move around whichever AFW you want to whenever as this part of the game is turn-based. Meaning if you want to move a certain AFW around, you must wait for its turn. Once it is your AFW’s turn, you can move it to other spaces, attack, or use recovery. Using recovery gives back a bit of health, but it also lengthens the time until that certain AFW’s next turn.

Once you attack an enemy is when the fun starts. You are brought to a screen that shows your three groups of soldiers, who in addition to your AFW also help you in battle but I’ll get to that later. The battles work in a unique way. There is a weapon gauge up in the corner with an arrow that slowly moves to the right. Once the arrow is there you are able to fire either at the enemy soldiers, the enemy AFW, a special shell, or a maximum attack. Making your selection brings up a scope with a number, representing accuracy that slowly moves up to 99.99% from whatever your starting accuracy is which is affected by many different things. Once at the desired accuracy: fire. I also forgot to mention above that while the time passes through your actions, it can and will turn night. During nighttime your accuracy is halved.

Inside a battle, you are able to move forwards and backwards. This means that you can change your attack range while in battle. So if an enemy attacked at long range while your AFW works well at short ranch, just move forward and stop at short range. It doesn’t happen as quick as it sounds.

Soldiers come in many different types from recon to shooter, and each of these types has its own advantages and disadvantages. Before a battle you can place each soldier group into one of three different positions. One of these positions is the crew. The crew sits on a small space, which is attached to the AFW’s back, loads your weapons, and also does other standard crew stuff. This group of soldiers also cannot be injured. The other remaining two groups do battle on the ground on either side of your AFW. Here they use their special skill and also attack the enemy soldiers and AFW. There are two positions for the soldiers: vanguard and rearguard, and you are able to move each group of soldiers at any time. While in the rearguard the soldiers are not able to be hurt and charge up their special skill. Moving to the vanguard position puts them on the offensive.

Each soldier group can have up to three different skills: one for the vanguard position, one for rearguard, and a ‘special shell’ that can only be used in the crew position. Limited amounts of special shells are available so you cannot use them every chance you are able to fire. There also attacks known as ‘maximum attacks’ for your AWF that are also limited in number and do assorted things, but I won’t go too in depth on those.

As you can see, Ring of Red has a pretty complex battle system. It works great, and no matter how many battles you fight through, each of them are always intense and challenging. Many different factors come into play and all contribute to whether you win a battle or lose it.

Although the length of the battles themselves are limited to 90 seconds, many of these all thrown together plus more can make an individual mission take up multiple hours of your time. Luckily you can save in the middle of a mission. Having long missions may be a bad thing for some but, like me, it may be good for others. Just take in consideration that this title requires a lot of patience when you rent or buy this game.

The graphics aren’t too bad but they’re certainly not up to par with games like Onimusha and Zone of the Enders. They look like they could use a little more anti-aliasing and the textures are kind of plain, though they’re acceptable. The particle effects are beautiful as the explosions and weapon fire are wonderfully done. Try using an ‘Electric Wire’ against a standard AWF and see for yourself. Although the battle mode is where the graphics look like they’re from a 128-bit system, the grid mode is really nice looking and the design makes it easy to tell what’s going on at a glance. Overall the graphics aren’t mind blowing but they get they’re pretty nice looking.

I have a few complaints about the sound. I guess it’s not because the sound is bad but because of lack of sound. There are no voiceovers, so a lot of the time you are required to read text and without the characters having voices, the characters don’t have much personality. Putting this aside, the gunfire sounds lifelike and the music is exactly right.

As you might expect, the controls are easy to use. This game is more of the slow paced type, so you don’t have to make any smooth quick moves. Surprisingly, the battle mode only makes use mostly of one button. It’s nice having a simple to use interface for a complex game.

This game takes a long while to beat. There are around twenty missions, which may not sound like much until you take in consideration that each mission last a few hours. This plus the number of times you’re going to have to replay a mission after a defeat makes for the longest lasting Playstation 2 game yet. Only time will tell if you’ll want to live the entire experience all over again though.

All together this game is great change of pace from other Playstation 2 games so far. This is one of my favorite Playstation 2 games right now and it is likely it will remain that way for quite some time. If this sounds like a game you might enjoy, you probably will.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 04/16/01, Updated 04/16/01