Vandal Hearts

"Great to start on tactical games."

This game looks simplistic enough when the case it looked at. After playing it you may realize there is a reason for this. This game is short, easy and fun to play. A great starter for people wishing to try their hand at tactical games.

Gameplay (9/10):
As with most tactical games the entire game takes place in either story sequences or battle sequences. The rest of the game takes place in towns: shopping and upgrading. The shops are simple; buy better equipment and items; the bars are for information and occasional story advancement. The true shining point in town is the dojo. At first it may seem a simple place to learn the mechanics of combat but it is an integral part of the game. The dojo allows you to advance your combat abilities and allows for a wider array of techniques to use.

Outside town there is the battling. These battles follow the basic formula of your side takes actions; the enemies take action, then back to you, and so on. The control is simple and more or less intuitive. Once you get the handle of the more complex camera changes you can essentially view the entire map from any angle and plan your strategy. Movement is simple, attacking is simple, and abilities are simple. It is all so simple due to the fact that you can view the movement range, attack range and ability range for all your characters, and the movement for your enemies. This allows for careful planning on how to attack the enemy so as to minimize damage on your party.

The leveling system is classic in that you gain experience and levels and eventually "advance" at the dojo. The difference here is the fact that when leveling weaker characters their experience comes from the level of the character being acted upon. The higher the difference in levels the greater the experience. This makes your characters even and easy to keep strong for difficult battles. Though this does make it nearly impossible to have a "low-level" game.

At the heart of the gameplay is the tactical component, which is easy enough to grasp. You have classic mages and soldiers but also heavy armor and flyers. These all work together in a sort of rock-paper-scissors game that once mastered makes the game much more simple. Different from other games though is that in Vandal Hearts when you get a character in your party they don't leave during battle, you are all there to take part. Everyone helps fight the good fight and win the battle. Of course to offset this if one of the characters (besides the main character Ash) reviving them is not possible, so they gain no more experience from that battle and it costs you money after the battle to get them back. You have no choice they get paid for no matter what.

Of course that's the key isn't it: simplicity. Sometimes the game seems too easy. There are maybe 3 battles you will have trouble with if you keep and eye on enemy movement and your rock-paper-scissors. This would prove a problem except that the battles are usually fun and some have interesting twists to what your objective is. If the game was harder it may have been slow and the story would get lost as you struggled at a certain point.

Story (7/10):
The basic story is of a man and his friends taking on an empire. Used a lot in RPGs and the like. It is done well here but is a little too cliche sometimes. Ash, the main character, has a traitorous father and is struggling to overcome the stigma attached to that. The other characters have some interesting sub-plots that are never truly explored. You gain a glimpse of every character's past but that's all it ever amounts to. Some of the stories seem interesting but since the story is about Ash and his friends the friends stay on the sidelines, only adding to the story when it is convenient. There are a few plot twists that may surprise, while there are others you see coming a mile away. Overall the story is done well, except most players have seen this story, these characters and a few of these twists. That takes away from the overall experience.

Graphics/Sound (7/10):
For the Playstation this game looks all right. The higher level cut scenes look pretty good, no worse than other tactical games. The character faces are fairly good to look at and express emotion well during dialogue. The large blocky fields where battles take place work well for distinguishing placement away from objects and height. Sometimes this classic tactical look falters, as is the case for one battle in which the monster is submerged in the field and when it moves it alters the field heights. This is a good idea except since the field is all blocky the monster is blocky and just looks silly. Aside from that the graphical quality is no marvel but it isn't horrible.

The sound is on the same level as graphics. There are no voices and the music is average at best. There are no memorable themes or sounds. Some of the monsters sound kind of silly with their noises (think large dragon with a cat-like roar). This is no major detractor though since the main focus is on what you are doing not what you hear. Since the sounds aren't horrible they neither add nor take away from the game.

Playtime/Replay Value (7/10):
The game is short. A few acts composed of a few scenes each. Easy to get through and move on. This is not a problem though because if they dragged the cliche story out too much it would have been plain boring. Since the game ends after a short time you could play the game quite a few times over, you can change the method of advancement or take on a special quest not talked about at all in the main story that you may not realize you have completed part of. This provides a minor replay value but it's not much. If you wish to play it again it will probably be to take on a challenge you set for yourself or to just have fun seeing a two man tall spray of blood that leaves no trace all over again.

Overall this game is simple and fun. It gets a player ready for more challenging tactical games by showing how to move and read a battle map. Simple graphics don't distract from the tactical component; the music is simple and forgettable. The characters are underdeveloped but fun to use and the game is just fun to play and experiment with how to battle. I bought this game and you probably can't rent it anywhere so borrow it if you can otherwise you could buy it but you will probably sell it back because once its over there is no real reasons to go back except for ones stated above.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 11/14/05