Bahamut Lagoon

"Square's attempt at making a strategy game"

Gameplay: 70/100

Bahamut Lagoon has a strange way of doing things, and while some of it's good, there's a bit that isn't. The battle system is like that of Advance Wars, where you have a unit with a leader and a party under that leader. What's special about Bahamut Lagoon is the dragon system, where every unit's leader has a dragon that they can send to attack or defend. When not in battle, you can feed the dragons items to make their stats increase. This works pretty well, except for the way that you can't control them directly, but must find the dragon's master unit, and tell it to do something through the master unit. However, all you can do to command the dragon is give a couple of preset commands that gives the AI an idea of what you want done. Problem is, the AI's decision isn't always the best. When you give the ''Come'' command to the dragons, they sometimes don't come over to the master unit, and instead go back into battle, even if their HP is down to nothing.

One of the major downsides is that the game is very hard to understand and control, and 99% of the time, you won't be controlling the fighting (unless you refuse to use the dragons, in which case you'll lose the fight miserably). That, and that the game is approximately 99% battle, 1% world/area map. Another of the game's downsides is that many of the battles are simply ''kill the boss before he kills you'' battles.

Storyline: 60/100

Here's where the game shows it's shortcomings. The plot is a little weak, with it basically detailing a story between the main character and the princess of the empire. However, it consists of a bunch of cutscenes that happen during the very small world/area map portion, which you are in for all of 1% of the game.

Control: 50/100

The control exhibited over the main units is good, except for that equipping can be very hard to do. The dragon control, however, is where the whole game's control falls apart, simply because every action is AI controlled.

Graphics: 60/100

The graphics on this game simply aren't on par with most other Square games. In my opinion, it looks more like Breath Of Fire than something Square would produce. The characters really aren't animated and done as well on the non-battle parts. The battle part, however, has some great graphics, especially in the non-dragon fighting parts. Both parties look brilliant, unlike some Final Fantasies, which has some of the monsters look flat.

Sound: 50/100

Nothing really noteworthy in the sound category. The battle music is ok ,but you don't really notice it. Same goes for the world map/area map music.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 12/21/02, Updated 12/21/02