Sudeki

"The ditzy blonde of RPG's"

If Sudeki was a person, it would most definitely be a very good looking blond girl. She lures you in with her smooth graphics. Gives you peaks at flashy combat. Makes sure you notice the well endowed cast of scantily clad women. And at first you are impressed. Then once you sit down with her for a few hours, you notice she is hollow inside. Just a pretty face.

Analogies aside, Sudeki looks good, but all the good ends there.

The camera is a constant bother. So close out of combat it makes you dizzy, and so bad in combat you wont know where to move, or your view will be obstructed.

The story is ok. Nothing great, but nothing special. It has a kooky scientist, a brave warrior, a spoiled princess, and a prideful fighter. Evil creatures are invading the land. Toss in some ancient tales of gods good and evil and the good side needing your help and you pretty much got it.

While all of the people are voice acted, ala Knights of the old republic, 99% of the voices are terrible. They all speak in weird and annoying accents and make the characters seem stupid.

The music is nothing special. You don't really notice it, which means it's not terrible. But that also means it's not good enough to catch your attention.

My biggest complaint is with the combat. 3rd person melee combos for your 2 fighters, and 1st person shooting with your mages. This is a really fun idea, they just screwed it up. Because the camera is weird it is hard to perform a dodge as a fighter, which many times has you dodging in the wrong direction. Also the controls for blocking and dodging are very unresponsive. Some times you block right when you press the button, sometimes it takes a second. Some times your character wont dodge for a second either, which is very frustrating. But the good/bad news is once you get the first mage in your party you don't have to worry about controlling your warrior anymore. This is not because it is so much more fun to be the mage, it's because the AI for her is terrible. As a mage you must simply mover around while shooting at the enemies. Keep strafing and you will never get hit. To bad the AI only likes to sit in one spot and get pounded on. The AI for the fighters is pretty good though, so being the mage is your best bet. You can switch between characters in battle, but that is only useful to cast spells and what not. The spells and summons do look very flashy and cool, keeping with the theme of pretty is more important than playability.

In the end if you are curious like I was, just rent this one. After you see some pretty spells and how nice the graphics are, you will probably be tired of the awful voices and clunky combat.

The good: Looks very nice
The bad: most everything else
Take voice acting lessons from: Tales of Symphonia

5/10

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 08/10/04