Ring of Red

"Strategy; or lack thereof"

I had high hopes for this game, and it succeeds at first. However, this game is really a mixed bag, and in the end, very disappointing.

Gameplay: The game has a fairly neat premise of alternate history centered around 1960’s Japan. To sum it up, Japan doesn’t surrender after the droppings of the atomic bombs, and as the war drags on, the Soviet Union invades, and Japan eventually becomes divided into a communist North, and democratic South. AFW technology (mechs is taken from post-war Germany and used to build armies of massive robots that now serve as the main units of combat for both North and South Japan. The game is set up like a typical turn-based strategy. Take your troops into combat, and move them strategically to attack and destroy the enemy. However, when you initiate combat (or are attacked), the game changes from the overheard turn-based map to a 3-d linear battlefield where you battle your enemy.
While in the linear battlefield, you have a few options to explore to damage your enemy. Shooting your main gun is the most popular option, and when you do, you move into a first person mode where a targeting reticule appears and you have to target your opponent. You really don’t have control of the shot, though. You only have to wait until the accuracy% rises to an acceptable level, and then you press a button to fire. It’s a neat concept of being able to target your opponent (and looks cool, too!), but it’s really a lot of flash that takes too much time.
Also on the battlefield with your AFW are two units of support infantry that serve different purposes (there are 6 kinds of different infantry, and alter your combat ratings). You can move them from the back row, to the front row and vice versa with a command, and depending on which row they are in, their offense and defense will be raised and they can perform special maneuvers to help you out. A lot of the time, it ends up with your infantry in the rear until their special move is ready, then sending them to the front to execute it. Then they usually get their butt kicked, so you have to move them back.
It turns out that most of the game will take place in this linear battlefield (each combat usually takes about 2 minutes, despite the 90 second battle clock). This can get very tiresome (boring) after awhile. When the combat novelty wares off, there isn’t much left to carry the game. Because you don’t get an advantage for initiating combat, and combat takes so long, there is dreadfully little strategy in the turn-based section of the game; the game just turns into a rush to attack, with a few breathers to repair your units.
A lot of this could have been made up for had Konami added a few key things, like some micro management. It would have been real nice to see equip able items, and the ability for infantry to go up levels and gain new skills (more skills would have helped as well). The only thing that increases in level is your mechs, but because you only fight a fixed number of units, it's nearly impossible to condition units (force levels up), and build your strength.
The story is ok, but it’s delivered horrible by a bad translation, and even worse between mission screens. Instead of showing character models and scenery like an RPG when characters interact, the game simply uses character facial portraits and a dialogue box for everything. If the setting changes, it says so in boring text. It just comes off as really cheap, and leaves you very disconnected from the game.
In the end, we’re left with a game that has some very unique and novel ideas. But it’s also left without a singular purpose to play the game. There is a lack of general care for the characters, both emotionally and statistically, and that is the root of all the problems for this game. I’d like to see Konami do a sequel for this game, because I think it has great potential to be something special, if they can fix the aforementioned issues.

Final: 7.0

Graphics: Mixed bag, again. The battle graphics are fairly good, with nice looking explosions and mechs (however the graphics get real repetitive). Support troops don’t look necessarily good, but animate very well. There are some good backgrounds settings for combat; it really helps to heighten the realism. A real big problem is that you can’t skip the animation for anything in the game, and as a result, you spend WAY too long in the combat mode, and far too little in the strategic, turn-based mode.
The turn-based section however, is very dull looking. Even if this game were on maybe the Saturn or PSX, it wouldn’t look up to par. It is way too dark, sometimes to the point where you can’t notice its night. Its clear that Konami probably left some of the graphics a little drab to minimize load times (which are very good btw), but it makes it very difficult to get into this game while staring at small little mechs with almost no detail or uniqueness. Most turn based strategy games solve this by making characters have unique looks (i.e. Shining Force), but Konami chose to have only 5 or 6 different combat classes, and thus (much like the translation), leaves you detached from the characters.

Final: 7.0

Sound: Probably the best part of the game, the musical track is quite good. There are some good sound effects in combat itself; nice explosion sounds and background noises give a great impression of war. However, the turn-based map (again) is plain dull. I don’t really expect a lot from any turn-based map sound wise, but Konami could have done a much better job. It’s probably a good thing that this game didn’t have voice-overs, because that would have only hurt the sound department more, based on the translation.

Final: 8.2

Worth Mentioning: Translation sucks, the translation sucks, the translation sucks. Somewhere deep down inside, this game could have been something special. No real goal of increasing the strength of your characters + no real emotional attachment to story = bad game formula.

Worth buying: I suggest a rental first. If you like turn-based strategy, like Front Mission 3 or Shining Force, you may/may not like this game because of the lack of strategy involved in moving your units. That’s the largest problem with this game: its supposed to be catered to a ‘niche’ group of strategy buffs like myself, but there is an overwhelming lack of strategy in the game. There is a notable lack of strategy games of any kind on the market right now, so if that’s what your looking for you could give it a shot…maybe…

Reviewers Tilt: None

Final: 7.54

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 04/19/01, Updated 04/19/01