"What you expected to be bad, well, your expectations failed!"

Well, even tough I can try to say the worse things that this game has, I cannot do it since there aren’t many bad things about it, Sega performed an extremely good job while making and designing this game, also, the translations of the Working Designs also did a very good job. I can remember that I once saw on a gaming magazine, I can’t remember which, but it was for the year 1998, the release date of the game was postponed a whole bunch of times and that was so the Working Designs could have more time adjusting the game setting and all that stuff until it would be ready for the release and see how the public reacted to this game, and in my opinion, everything that they did was not just wasting their time. This game is a normal RPG that even tough not everybody knows, I think it is quite good and would recommend to anyone looking for something to play, even if they don’t like RPGs maybe now they will, and start playing the best kind of games.

Basically, the gameplay of the game is quite good, and it is as follows. You view your characters and the enemies with an overhead view, you have two allies which follow you everywhere that you go, and you can switch between which one you want to control whenever it is necessary or whenever you want. The menu in this game is made up of icons, which makes the game easier for the little kids of around 6 or 7 years old, because they don’t have to read and think what is this for, instead they just look at the picture. Well, there is not much to say about the gameplay and the mechanics that you need to use to be able to play the game since it has been explained before, but what really matters, is that it was very well done, and that you will definitely love it.

The graphics of this game, or visuals as some of you know them by, are also quite good and are as follows. They are almost just like any other older RPGs, the designs of the characters are all sprites which not makes it excellent but is still great, the magical effects that it has are quite good, even tough there are only a few. The cutscenes of the anime were also quite good which it made the storytelling much easier to understand what the game is all about. But I think that one of the defects of the game is the system while performing the graphics, there are some points at which the game just can be played at full speed and I think that it is caused because there are a lot of things going on, this part was supposed to be fixed one way or the other, but I guess that it wasn’t, the Saturn is not the problem, but the game is the problem since it could have been designed for it not to stop running at full speed just because of a simple thing as being to many things happening around.

The music and/ or sound of the game is as follows. Well, the sound quality is not as worked out as it is with the gameplay and all, I am not going to say a whole bunch of things about how great it is since I have heard better music and sounds, not only with newer and better and more advanced systems, but also from other older systems. Even tough the sound is not as good it adapts very good to the background at which you are at. The sound effects are also wuite good, and especially while you are performing a spell ince the voice tracks just give life to the whole thing.

The originality of the game goes as follows. I cannot say much good things about it since the game is not original as I thought. The way to control a character was already used by other games, the story of the game is a classic that I have heard millions of times, and other stuff too. But there is still some originality about this game, and that is that each character keep a different diary of their own, since you can read them, you can get three different points of view every once in a while which help a lot than just having one.

The story of the game is very good, even thought it has something that has been repeated thousands of times, like earth kids saving worlds in which aliens live, but apart from that, the important stuff is that it was very well done, it is not as long, like about 15 through 20 hours the first time you play, and there are some points in the game where you would just stay stucked and run around looking for an answer, just like in any well dome RPG.

Well, the replay value is not as great a other games that I have seen, I have had a whole bunch of time to replay the game over an over again, but I really didn’t like starting from the very beginning, so I didn’t really replay it again, but I didn’t liked that idea, so my opinion is that is doesn’t have such good replay value.

My overall review of this game is a very good game seeing that the technology they had back there wasn’t this great as it is now. But I would really not like the Working Desings to re-release it on PSX, and/or PS2, since it is just not worth it. Well, the game is what any other RPG game would have, and very good story and gameplay, and it also has a very good challenge My overall score of this game is an 8 out of 10 which means it is about 80% perfect, for what it could have been.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 12/23/02, Updated 12/23/02