Magna Carta: Tears of Blood

"An excellent game with a superb story"

Magna Carta: Tears of Blood, also known as Magna Carta Crimson Stigmata. This game is something fresh, and fun. It also has a very nice, incredibly dramatic story.

Gameplay 9/10

You either love it, or hate it. The game takes some getting used to at first.
The battle system revolves around timed hits similar to Shadow Hearts. However, you can freely move around the battle field, and you can only use one character at a time, though you can switch your character anytime.(party maximum 3 people) The timed hit system is called the "trinity circle", with this you must hit the buttons that it shows, for example O, X, X. With this, some characters are able to have other modes, such as "combo" and "counter".

Combo mode lets a character perform a stronger attack, but with this there are more buttons to press on the trinity circle, so its a little harder.

Counter mode lets you interrupt your enemies attack, but theres a catch. The buttons on the trinity circle are listed as ?.

Also with the trinity circle, there is Chi. Chi basically works by which element is currently flowing in the area. All attacks require a certain Chi. There are items to restore chi if a certain element is not flowing through the area, as well as Chi lanterns, which let you modify whats in the area.

Music 9/10

The music is overall great. However, many, many areas use the same music, and it does get annoying sometimes, but nothing too bad. All the songs in the game are good, and you can expect to hear some nice piano songs. The opening song is alright, but nothing great. The original Korean song is better.

The voice acting on the other hand, is not very good. Not all characters sound bad however.

Graphics 10/10

The graphics really are nice, especially the character models. The characters look great, thanks to the amazing artistic abilities of Hyun-Tae-Kim. The areas look good, as well as the monsters. The only problem is the camera angles can be a bit annoying.

Story 10/10

Dramatic! This story has so much amazing twists. The story truly is the shining point of this game, truly one of the best dramas of war. Its quite a long story too. Lasted about 75 hours!

Calintz and his fellow comrades in his mercenary group called the "Tears of Blood" are all motivated by revenge for the Yason, an enemy race that took something precious from the lives of each of them.

This game lasted for about 75 hours, and is mostly easy once you are used to it.

9/10 Overall

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 12/12/05