Shadow Madness

"An oddball title"

Shadow Madness was released to pretty negative reviews; touted as trying to cash in on the success and popularity of the fledgling RPG market on the PS1 (which had skyrocketed two years prior due to Final Fantasy 7), Shadow Madness offered a different combat system from most games, as well as a cast of down-right bizarre characters. Scenes in this game range from completely brain-stumping to the downright hilarious. Sometimes, it's presented neatly. Sometimes, it comes out sloppy and other times it presents itself so nicely that you can't help but be drawn in.

Lets start with the visuals and the sound; the graphics are pretty damn terrible, to be honest, but this is PS1 quality visuals. That said, they look like a poor-mans Final Fantasy 7 from the get-go, and the environments aren't much better. The World Map is slightly… comedic, as it's a parchment looking thing with giant sized characters running around. Think of it as a medium between the cartoonish look of Final Fantasy 7's world map, and as a real map. The characters look pretty bland (although distinct; mostly due to the fact that half of them aren't human or your typical human). The soundtrack is nice in some parts; in other parts, it's barely noticeable, and sounds quite irritating. That said, it was a pretty good soundtrack, and should get the release that it deserves. Unfortunately, there is no released OST for this game, so you may have to acquire it by other means.

And it helps to compliment the oddball feel the game has. The story goes like this; an affliction known as Shadow Madness has swept the land, turning people insane, and the protagonists home-town is the first place to go. He must venture forth from it to warn everyone, save the world, yada yada. Along the way, he meets a scantily clad woman, a crop-harvesting robot, and a floating head amongst others. The first thing you will realise is the dialogue in this game; characters will frequently stop to have conversations, and conversations they will have. This is some of the best RPG dialogue I have ever laid my eyes upon, and for it's time, it is simply stunning. It ranges from witty, to hilarious, to serious, to stirring. Most RPGs fall into the trap of having bad translations due to being made in foreign languages, or having underlooked dialogue, but in a twist of fate, it feels like the developers focused so hard on the dialogue in this game that it made the rest of it weak by comparison. The early-game sets the pace with an awesome sequence of events that sees the protagonist trying to play the hero to said scantily-clad woman while trying not to get killed by the frighteningly monotone to said crop-harvesting robot. It all plays out beautifully.

But sadly, all good things must come to an end. The item system can be infuriating at times. There are several inventories to navigate through, and 90% of items found in the game have absolutely no use except to sell to people. This would be cool, but about 50% of said items sell for 1G, which is absolutely infuriating when you are wading through millions of the things. Almost every third screen seems to have a bunch of these, and it never ends. Never. Accessing three menus to get to your items and magic is also relatively annoying. Thankfully, this is made easier in battle. And speaking of battle, it's not your typical affair; you have to move towards your opponent before you can hit them, and you have a variety of attacks and abilities, depending on who you are. The protagonist, Stinger, for example, can throw daggers at enemies. The scantily-clad woman, Windleaf, can cast magic and summon creatures, while the harvesting robot, Harv-5, can shoot things from a cannon (mostly seeds and other useless crap). Of interesting note is that for physical attacks, you select between a strong but inaccurate attack, a weak but accurate attack, or a balanced attack. It's a nice touch, and you do generally find yourself mixing these up depending on the opponent you're fighting. Also, there's a feature called double-tap, whereby Stinger and Harv-5 can do double damage just by you hitting X as soon as they hit an enemy. I have no idea what this is supposed to represent, but it's fun, and makes battles more interactive. Unfortunately, battles can become incredibly cumbersome; there is a lot of fiddling about, and it's like a half-arsed cross between tactical RPG (ala Final Fantasy Tactics) and typical turn-based JRPG. Only made by Americans. (Craveyard; they were known for making some pretty wacky games) The combat system sounds great, and it should be great, but it just isn't. I can't even really find anything wrong with it; but battles just become so long and drawn-out, and if you try and rush things, you will get devoured by everything. Once you reach the first major city, however, you start to steamroll through the game and every challenge is eliminated. It's an odd way to scale the games difficulty, to say the least. On a graph, it just steeply drops off the bottom in terms of difficulty.

And I'm not joking; by the time the floating heads roll about, you'll probably have so much gold you won't know what to do with it. The thing about Shadow Madness, is that it feels like it's in a permanent beta stage. If the developers spent more-time honing it, and more time crafting the game, it could have been a serious threat to Final Fantasy's status as PS1 RPG kings. Instead, it's the tacky game that people will praise for dialogue and atmosphere, but also dismiss for having weird combat, weird controls, and sometimes being unable to differentiate between joking and serious. That's another problem the game suffers from; sometimes, you can't tell when the developers are tacking the mick, and that can be a problem sometimes when you're trying to get the players to sympathise with characters that have all come from tragic stories. And the story? Who knows what happens to that. When you reach the first City, you just traverse down the other side of the continent. Goodness knows why. The story is very light; the sort of story you might find in an add-on for Neverwinter Nights. Don't expect anything overly involving.

Indeed, if you go into this game with low expectations, you may be pleasantly surprised. All things considered, you might enjoy this game for a week. You might not finish it; you will more than likely get bored before doing that, but there is plenty on offer here to see the golden age of PS1. Shadow Madness is a quirky title, and there's plenty of humour and entertainment on offer here (one of the spells summons bees!). If you can get it cheap; sure, why not buy it? You'll probably not regret it. The game is rare though, so good luck with that. It's just a shame that such a promising, bizarre title didn't get the thorough play-testing and developer-dedication that it needed to truly succeed. (not to mention no exposure at all)

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 04/27/09

Game Release: Shadow Madness (US, 04/30/99)