Sudeki

"Sudeki doesn't reinvent the wheel, it just does it better"

Let's face it, the XBOX is home to only one really good RPG up until now, Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic. With Sudeki, Climax has taken what is really great about Japanese RPGs and what's great about American RPGs and does a nice mix of them. Relative to what you have on the XBOX, Sudeki is worth a look no matter what type of game you like.

Visuals: 10/10. This game is really, really pretty. The game amazes me every time I go to an area, even if i've been there twenty times before. It's the little touches that add so much to this game. The art style is a softened down japanese rpg, not really anything new, just a really nice look. A few might find the graphics to be "kiddy", but I find the color schemes to be pretty norm as far as fantasy games go, nothing kiddy about it.

Audio: 10/10. The effort put into the voices and the overall amount of dialogue in this game is amazing. Each character has a voice( minus the standard characters who share voices), but each one will talk during interactions. The dialogue doesn't get old like some games(i.e. - Knights of the Old Republic), and the dialogue is very straight forward with obvious choices for responses. The background music I have found to be very well done. Ambient sounds and mellow instruments are the norm in the main worlds, while battles have upbeat and intense themes. The game gets you right where you should be.

Gameplay: 10/10. I'll be the first to admit that this game has a relatively high learning curve as far as the combat system. The game uses a combo system for swordsmen that uses perfect timing in order to pull off any worthwhile damage. This is a little more difficult because a single hit from the enemy while trying to perfectly time the combo will end it, and likely get you caught in the middle of 20 enemies taking cheap shots at you. For the archer and mage, they control in FPS mode, which i must say is pretty cool. It puts you into the action a lot better than just pulling back and summoning spells or launching attacks. Moving from place to place is also a breeze in this game because everything is relatively close. It seems like the boring effort of running in the middle of nothingness didn't appeal to Climax, so we have cutscenes that warp you to places, and also short distances to travel even when backtracking. As far as comparing the gameplay overall to any other RPG on XBOX, I'd say this is it as far as fun goes.

Replayability: 7/10. I'm not a huge fan of going back and playing RPGs over and over again to find all the secret items. I'd rather spend 60 hours beating a 40 hour game the first time finding everything than play through 3 more times. Sudeki has plenty of sidequests if you're looking for them, and plenty of little things to find like money and items. Regardless of whether you want 100% completion on the game, this is one of those games that I do enjoy going back and beating at least once more for the shear fun of the game.

Overall, Sudeki does what I have been waiting for a long time for, cut the turn-based battles out and keep the japanese style rpg in tact. I myself am more of an adventure/action game most the time, but when you hand me a good rpg along the lines of Shining Force, Tales, etc. I'll drop everything. So, it's a pretty obvious recommendation that I say to buy the game rather than renting it, simply because it's one of those rare good rpgs that mixes things up from the usual trends.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 07/25/04