Ehrgeiz

"This game will take you away from your 2D roots."

Tekken, guilty gear great titles but this game takes it up a dimension. Ehrgeiz is sweet, plain sweet. The story of Ehrgeiz is that the “Ehrgeiz” is a sword that every year there is a competition for the possesion of. No one knows exactly what is so good about this fancy little weapon but it has some sort of magical power. The guy you use in the RPG mode is planning to use the stone from the Ehrgeiz to open a dungeon which will lead him to eternal life or something of the sort. Let us start with the arcade mode:

Arcade mode:
This is the regular fighter part of the game. But it does the regular fighter game in a spectacular way. Great moves and lots of them. And each character gets a special move, or weapon. Usually the special move is the weapon. Now too look at the moves. Lots of them, kicks punches, spin kicks, flying kicks, flying punches, flying everything. And not only are the levels 3 dimensional, most of them are multi layered. Yes, you can jump onto a ledge and jump that punk! The controls are pretty good. You feel like you have a pretty good control of your character, sort of like a manual transmission on a car. Each move is crisp and useful, so are the weapons. There are a bunch of extras in this game which you will find at the ending, and in the settings menu. You have a bunch of adjustable settings in which you can actually add a big stupid box which if broken contains goodies which you can use in the fight. Also there are unlockable characters. Some are hard to unlock. Then there is the ending, in the end while the credits are rolling you can fight a big dragon, and you can beat him, but I have yet to find out the purpose of this. The unlockable characters are fun, and you get a visit from Final Fantasy seven characters. Alternate costumes can also be found in here.

Here is a list of stuff you will want to know: There are tons of unlockable characters, so you will want to keep playing this. There are weird things you can unlock just by going to the setting menu. And there is an ending battle which is confusing but means something.

The mini-games:
Aren’t that great. Mini-mario party: yes! There is a racing game in which you sprint, a puzzle game, and some other crap I won’t even mention. If you get tired of the arcade fighter (which you will not!) then resort to this. But it’s quite boring. Doesn’t ruin the good parts but is a waste of disk space. Who really cares?

And the final; Role Playing Game Mode:
God, several things to say. This is your basic hack and slash, upgrade weapons, use items, kill everything role playing game. But I love it, I don’t know why but I couldn’t stop playing until I fell over and passed out. Basically you take the role of a dude who has to go into a dungeon for some reason, yeah yeah some stupid story but the game play rocks. You can also play some girl but I don’t like her, she’s weak. Anyway you start out weak and puny with a crappy weapon and shield, you go through the dungeon and gain experience, find items, get cash. You can buy new weapons, shields, body armor, and helmets. It’s all good. You will find that you can pray to gods at altars. This is complicated and I haven’t figured it out but from experimenting it looks useful.

You can use swords, spears, knuckles; battle axe’s all sorts of weapons. You can also use materia, sometimes you have to since there will be enemies immune to physical attacks. Weapons can have attributes, they also have strengths, dexterity meters and basically you can monitor everything. There are extremely powerful weapons that shatter after a few hits, and there are not as powerful weapons that will last through many a monsters.

The items in this game will pretty much save you. Especially the one which lets you teleport back to town and get your butt away from those monsters. There are potions that heal you, and pieces of crap you can throw at giant lizards. Basically this is a pretty good hack and slasher for being a side game.

Buy, rent?
So let us see, this has crappy mini games, a sweet 3D fighter, and a pretty decent role playing game mode. This looks like a pretty good buy doesn’t it? I’d say buy it. This is an 8/10, I would have given it a higher score if I hadn’t of gotten so skinny from not eating while playing the RPG. Which again rules. This game is sweet, 8/10.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 11/12/03