Summon Night: Swordcraft Story

"More like... Tales of Summoning"

Summon Night: Swordcraft Story is a very entertaining, albeit somewhat brief, action RPG for the Gameboy Advance, or Slot-2 of the DS.

The story is decent, but it is not the reason you will keep coming back. The game play is where this game really shines. It seems like a page was taken from Namco's 'Tales of' series. In each battle, you use only your main character. That's it. No other members join along the way, nothing...except for your guardian summon. The battles are fought on a 2d plane, and are completely real time, ala Tales of Phantasia. The battles are very fast paced, and always enjoyable. Your weapons are a major focus of the game, and of the battles. You learn weapon creating techniques from your master, and from many other events throughout the game. Items and old weapons can be turned into materials, and then crafted into a new weapon. There is also REAL TIME WEAPON CHANGE, and you can use different weapons to suit your current needs. Tournament fights and battles against other humans can be won in two ways; by damaging the enemy until it runs out of health, or by breaking their weapon. If you manage to break your foe's weapon, you gain the technique to create this weapon as well.

Visually, Summon Night is stunning for a GBA game. The sprites are excellent, and the backgrounds are beautiful. Each weapon also has a separate design, and there is much variety in the monsters that you fight. A nice feature of this game is its save anywhere option. To save normally, you must find a save point, and it will permanently save your data. If you are in a rush, or cannot get to a save point, you can just hit pause and execute the quick save option. The data is not permanent, but this allows you to continue your quest at the exact same point that you left off.

Summon Night is a rather short game, if you exclude weapon creating and the optional 50 level dungeon. You can easily beat the game in about 15 hours, and under 10 hours if you really try. Even though it is short, there is still much to do in terms of replayability. There are two different main characters to choose from in the beginning, a male and female. Also, there are four different guardian summons that can be chosen, for a total of eight different combinations. Gaining all of the weapon techniques is also no easy task, and will take many hours. This, combined with a 50 level labyrinth will keep you enthralled and make the game well worth the money.

Overall, Summon Night is a great game with few flaws. I can't wait for the sequel, and I hope that more of this series is brought to North America. I recommend that anyone who is a fan of the “Tales of” series...or anyone who enjoys action RPGs…pick this title up immediately, before it becomes rare, like most Atlus-published titles.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 07/31/06