Eternal Ring

"History repeats itself, and with this type of game, hopefully for the last time."

What comes to mind when playing this game, is none other than the Kings Field series for the first Playstation. It pioneered the first person rpg genre on the console, and murdered it with rotten controls. Another example of a good idea gone bad with poor mechanics, and yet its next generation counterpart was content to copy their predecessors.

Gameplay[4]

I have to give it credit, because there is no other game like it on the Playstation2. The addition of the gem fusion system- where you can combine different types of gems to produce 2 types of rings: attribute rings and spell rings, adds a good degree of depth to the game that Kings Field did not have. There are lots of combinations to make, and each attempt to create a different ring involves a certain amount of chance to get the one you want and that can be annoying the further you get into the game.
A whole lot of work went into the spell system, but none went into the weapon system! It's like they added them in as an afterthought. In total, there are about 10 weapons to collect in the entire game! All of them swords![even though i'm pretty sure it was 7] Magic may have been the main premise of the game, but for the action buffs that's bored seeing the same special effects all the time, it gets old really fast. No shields, bows, maces, axes, that littered Kings Field games are here. To add salt to this wound, you walk and move at the same snails pace that probably turned off many from liking Kings Field.
The A.I. was brilliantly conceived by brainless infants, that hasn't realized when objects move on a higher plain, running into the wall for all time, won't bring them back. For an early example of this, go to the forest, and make a lizard chase you onto the small plateau near the entrance, and look down. The lizard will keep running toward you, but he won't know how to use the ramp right beside him, or climb it correctly once he's on it. Somehow they thought this was ok. Its Playstation2! Not Nintendo! How do they keep repeating the same mistakes that gaming technology left behind years ago?! At that point, I took my meds and pressed on.

Sound[5]

The music was ok at best, but the sounds the spells made were horribly bland for a Playstation2 title. Eternal Ring does have voice acting, but not any of high quality. What I guessed was they got somebody already on their staff to do it and warped their voices- no proffessional stuff here.

Graphics[4]

The spell effects look great, but a bit held back during the beginning. It's a shame that players will have to get some of the more powerful rings to find out what I'm talking about, and of course those are only available near the end of the game. By that time, there could be a spell with the world ending in a heavenly array of explosions and you wouldn't care. For a game that banked its whole battle systems on spells, it left me with a feeling that there should've been a whole lot more to them than a small straight line of green for wind moving at a grandmother's pace, or a tiny missle of flashing brown for earth, to name but a few examples. The greatest joke is how the enemies react to the damage you deal them. It is unrealistic and corny making them flash red as they barely flinch to even the most powerful attacks, just like Kings Field. They don't even jerk the right way where you hit them, so I had to do it for them. I felt like my dad, when I was watching him trying to jump over a long cliff in Super Mario bros.

Story[10]

The only good part of the game is the engrossing story. A group of mages create a magical super being, that doesn't appreciate the value of life, to destroy their enemies, but it turns against them. Its not cliche and the small list of characters you encounter move it along nicely enough to keep you interested, when playing the game does not.

Overall[3]

It might make a good rental for some people who might take interest in a Doom/RPG hybrid. Buying it is absolutely out of the question, because though it has some merit here and there, it is unacceptably short with little interesting replay value. 6 hours is all it would take, but for those of us that are waiting for a good Doom/RPG hybrid of some sort on the Playstation2, wait for DeusEx.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 12/29/01, Updated 12/29/01