Metal Dungeon

"Like you have any other choice."

Back in the USSR (not the song, the former Soviet Socialist Republic), because of various government restrictions, citizens would have no alternative but to sit outside in the cold weather and wait for hours in mile-long lines just for the incredibly scarce loaves of bread, bars of soap, and cans of shaving cream that rarely came in. And that was just for the women. Flash forward to today, modern, democratic times, and we've come upon a new version of the Communist bread shortages: XBox Japanese RPGs. Like loaves of stale bread and water, Metal Dungeon, the only XBox JRPG in existence, may seem like a seven course meal at Bolo when you have no other alternatives, but bread & water is still bread & water in the end.

Graphics? Well, yeah, there ARE graphics, yup. Oh, you want to know about their quality? Ahem, well, ''lacking'' would be a polite term to describe them. ''Severely low quality'' would be another one. No cel-shading, no high-end CG cinemas. The same old character animations, completely underwhelming spell effects, and a bland static screenshot for a homebase all add up to baaad visual news in Metal Dungeon. Graphics are by far the least important part of an RPG, but I expected more from Mr. Gates' big green machine.

Sounds? Now wait a second, the gunblasts sound like gunblasts! The eerie dungeon noises sound like eerie dungeon noises! The nearly non-existent BGM actually sounds like... well, it doesn't. It's nearly non-existent after all. Oh well, two outta three ain't bad, as a fat man once said. Like much of this game, the sound and music do an okay job, but falter in many crucial areas, most notably the soundtrack itself.

Now onto gameplay, the meat of any game. And if Metal Dungeon was a meat, it'd be the circus grade filler that McNuggets are made out of. I.E. edible, and sometimes even pleasant, but hardly nourishing or of high quality. You get to create your own party, yay! But it's limited to a few scant body- and career-types, boo. You get to slaughter hoards of evil-looking beasts and demons, yay! But there's no discernable storyline AT ALL (even for a dungeon crawling RPG this is pathetic), and eventually the repetitious battles will numb your mind into a pasty pink goolike substance. mega-boo. Oh, did I mention the battles are like Final Fantasy's ATB system on veinfuls of scag, lacking the ability to do amazing and futuristic things like stopping and planning your next move? Metal Dungeon is nutty like that.

Yet for all its faults, MD is still an RPG, it's still the only one available for the XBox, and it has a certain inexplicable charm. Accidentally finding gobs of weapons and cyborg chips seems to almost outweigh the lack of ANY dialogue or story. Being able to create a female sniper and name her after professional wrestling sensation G.I. Ho' almost seems to take precedence over the fact that your fighters will attack with the same exact character animation several thousand times an hour. I mean, when you're a hungry man, bread and water tastes mighty fine...

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 12/30/02, Updated 12/30/02