Sudeki

"Sudeki is an interesting mixed bag"

Sudeki had been highly anticipated by X Box players who were longing for a Japanese style RPG. Sudeki delivers, and shines in certain areas but falls short of expectations in others.

The main characters are typical stereotypes that are voice acted so badly you have to laugh out loud or be totally annoyed. They all speak with weird foreign accents that are so out of place it's really silly. One character you meet has such a ridiculously strong southern accent, nothing he says can be taken seriously. The best voice overs are the robots you meet later in the game. They sound really cool.

A good RPG should make you feel for the characters, and this is an area where Sudeki tries, but fails because the scripting and voice overs are really horrible. The story begins with a lot of potential. There's a blooming romance between two of the main characters, Tal, the grunt in the local army and Ailish, the princess of the kingdom. There's also some tension between Tal and his father, the commander of the armed forces. Unfortunately, these relationships are not explored and are tied up neatly into a little box with no thought of how they could have been fleshed out or heightened. It seems the writers came up with good ideas early, then gave up writing just to finish the script on time.

Buki, the barely dressed demihuman warrior woman and Elco, the Eastern European accented techno geek scientist, represent the other two typical characters we've all seen before. They too, have their personal stories represented, but also fall way short in developing into characters you can really care about. Everyone remains pretty one dimensional throughout the game. Too bad, I expected more.

Graphically, the game is pleasing to look at and fairly easy on the eyes. It is colorful and has an interesting look and feel to it. Nothing really stands out though, and there was never any cut scene or graphic that really impressed me. There are some nice touches here and there, the water effects are nice and there are many little details you can find if you take the time to look around.
The overall design in Sudeki is understated and not over the top like some other RPGs like Final Fantasy where everything is hyper detailed and attempts to knock your socks off. The familiar architecture and environments in Sudeki lend it a believability, yet there is something a little different about each item and area that gives it an unusual and slightly other worldly look.

The sound and music are done well. The music is simply there, with no truly noticeable or memorable melodies. It does it's job well, adding the appropriate ambience, but there is nothing outstanding. The sound effects are fine, adding the right touches here and there, and pans nicely as you turn and walk, giving the areas a good aural dimensionality.

The core gameplay is typical of most RPG's, with a few differences. If you're expecting to collect a staggering amount of weapons and armor with a lot of up grading, you'll be disappointed. You only have a choice of a hand full of weapons to acquire during the game, which have varying numbers of rune slots to add or enhance only a few attributes. You can not buy new armor at all, you become automatically equipped with new armor at certain points of the game. The armor can also be equipped with different runes.

Your characters level up in the usual way. You are given experience points for killing enemies and each time you level up, you have the opportunity to raise indivdual stats such as Power or Health. Each character has their strengths and weaknesses in battle and Sudeki gives you the opportunity to either build well rounded characters or one's who specialize in an area. I found this leveling up simple and fun.

One of the things I really found enjoyable about Sudeki was allowing me to spend time with each of the playable characters. There are certain portions of the game, where you are only able to play with one of the characters at a time without the support from the others during battle. These little jaunts into the unknown can really throw you off if you are not prepared. You may find yourself using a character you never liked, or pretty much ignored all their abilities and special moves in battle. Suddenly, you have to use this ignored character in the middle of a room being swarmed by hordes of enemies or during a boss fight!

Beside the main story arc, there are also several little optional side events that are mostly fetch quests NPC's will send you on. None of them are overly difficult or take an enormous amount of time and the benefits of doing them are worthwhile. Finishing quests give you more experience points and items to boot!

There are a few puzzles which are also very typical. Key hunts and box pushing are the order of the day. The puzzles aren't daunting, are easy to solve, and are never so frustrating or obscure as to make you want to tear your hair out.

The battle system is where Sudeki will make or break you. I have never been a huge fan of real time battles, I enjoy the laziness of turn based fighting.

Sudeki's battle system is really a lot of fun, once you get the hang of it. There is a lot of frantic action going on all the time and if you are not careful, you will be dead before you figure out what to do. Buki and Tal, the two fighters in the group, each have a simple combo system based on timed presses of the X and A button. The R trigger blocks and you can dodge and roll when holding the R trigger and moving the left analog stick. It's simple and effective and you need to know how to fight well. Some combos clear out and stun groups of enemies, others are "juggling" moves where you can add up to 4 more hits.

Elco and Ailish are the two "ranged" fighters, using weapons that attack from a distance. When battling as one of them, the camera switches to first person view. The one thing I absolutely hated about the FPS fighting in Sudeki, was the lack of any type of lock on ability. I wanted to shoot one peson but they were moving and I was moving and it was hard to get a bead on them. On the other hand, it really makes you aim better! The camera gets a little wonky at times during battle and can be aggravating but, what game has the perfect camera anyway? I've come to expect crazy camera angles in any game so, this is not a big deal.

The AI of your fighters is really limited. You can only assign your computer controlled characters to attack, defend or run away. At first, I thought it really was a ridiculous waste, having played Tales Of Symphonia where your choices for computer AI decisions was vast and varied. After a while though, I realized the developers were smart for limiting your choices for the AI. I discovered setting them on attack was practically sending them to their doom against stronger foes, but totally wiping out lesser enemies without receiving a scratch. Eventually, I simply set them to Defend, they still attacked, but would defend themselves occasionally and didn't tend to get killed as quickly.

At first, I didn't like the fact the AI characters could not automatically cast skill stikes and spells. Once again, I grew to like the fact they DIDN'T use their skill strikes automatically because it put the responsibility of the majority of battle decisions to me, the player. I had control over all of their actions, could switch between characters by pressing the black of white button and make equipment changes on the fly, and decide what actions they would take. Very nice.

Each character has several "Skill Strikes" which they can use by spending Skill Points. Each skill strike is unique to them and can be devastating attacks, status boosters, healing effects or other benefical spells. During a Skill Strike, the action slows down and it's kind of cool. There is no way to skip the animations, so you may get tired of seeing them over and over again. Thankfully, they aren't too long and it does give you a little breather in the action.

Items can be assigned to the four directions of the D-Pad, making access to Healing Potions, Skill Point Replenishing and Revival Items during battle a snap. Skill Strikes, weapon changing and other items are quickly accessed by pressing the Y button. This also slows the action on screen down, giving you a few moments to cycle through all your choices before you get hammered by some attack.

All the battles have a certain "frantic desperation" to them and you go into them knowing you could get wiped out in a heartbeat. This tension adds a great deal of pressure during battles and the times I was killed was usually due to my own errors in decision making and button pressing, not necessarily because the enemies were too hard.

The battle system in Sudeki is it's strong point, the story and voice acting are it's weak point. Overall, my biggest complaint is the game is simply too short. You can probably blow through Sudeki in fifteen to twenty hours, which is really too short for an RPG. There could have, and should have been so much more to this game. It's good, but it's not great.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 10/01/04