Riviera: The Promised Land

"An Overrated RPG Which Misses the Mark"

Riviera: The Promised Land is a game that really surprised me. Not so much in a good way though. I've been pretty excited to play Riviera for a long time now, since I've heard such great things about it, and have taken the time to read some of the stellar reviews this game has received. I even went as far as watching some youtube videos of Riviera, and after the videos I decided that Riviera was the kind of game I liked, end of story. I tend to like games that Atlus makes, so how could I go wrong with it?

Well once I actually played Riviera and experienced some of the un-balanced, restrictive gameplay features, my opinion of Riviera began to take a turn for the worse. With so many decent RPGs for GBA and other systems, this game's shortcomings really make it tough to stick with in the long run. I found myself wanting to play something else, shortly after I started it, but being the curious person that I am, I kept on playing Riviera.

Riviera may appear to be a standard turn based RPG at first, but the included options and unique movement system make it much more than that. I'd call it more of a combination of a turned based RPG and a point and click adventure. It's weird at first, and takes some getting used to, but once you figure it out, it's pretty simple to follow the game and, get right into things. Mainly because you are pushed in a very linear fashion to the story, and you really have little choice.

Gameplay 4/10

During Riviera, you will have 2 modes of doing things. “Look mode” and “Move mode”. While in look mode, you can do things like talk to people, inspect things in the environment, and open treasure chests. While in move mode, you can move to different screens, but in a point and click fashion. If you press right, you will go right a screen, if you press up, you will go up a screen, etc. So you don't really have control of your character at any time during Riviera. You just tell him where to go, and he goes there automatically. It's not bad after a while, but it takes some getting used to, and I really don't see what the harm in giving you control of your character would be. It's not like any gameplay elements hinge on it.

The only gamplay element that could possibly hinge on it would be the “Trigger system” In Riviera, you can't just do things when in a dungeon or in any area where there are enemies. You need to use Trigger Points to do things. Yes, something as simple as opening a treasure chest or inspecting grass has requirements. Trigger points can be earned by fighting battles. Battles are ranked via an S, A, B, or C ranking. The time it takes you to win the battle and a few other deciding factors, govern how many Trigger Points you get from battle. If you are not rewarded enough trigger points from battle, you may not be able to open a treasure chest you come across, or inspect something of interest to you.

Well then, you can just go fight more random battles and get more trigger points right? Wrong. You fight battles at scripted moments in the story, and there are no random battles in this game. So the trigger points you get from battle had better be well spent, or you will miss a lot of things in this game. Training is done via a practice mode. In practice mode, you fight random enemies that you have already faced, and you can build up the level of your weapons.

Leveling in Riviera is not traditional. You level up weapons, and you do not level your character. Once you have a certain mastery over a weapon, you can then us an Overskill, which is a very powerful move that dishes out damage to a pre-selected group on the battlefield. There is a meter at the top, and once it's full enough, you can use your Overskill. To balance things out, the enemies have a “Rage meter” at the bottom of the screen, which they can use against you in a similar fashion. The enemies will often send punishing attacks your way, leaving you in with little HP left for your entire party.

The battle system seems fun and innovative at first, but there are a few things that made the combat incredibly annoying. First off, you can not attack any enemy you wish to when in battle. The enemy you attack is determined based on what weapon you are using and your position in the battle. So instead of being able to finish off an enemy with 50 HP left, you may have to wait an entire round or more, just to have a character available that can attack him. It would make sense if it was just for melee characters, but even an archer, shooting from the back of your group can not select her target. It gets chosen for you. How a simple feature like this is not included is beyond me.

Next, we have the item breaking feature! When you use an item a certain number of times, it will break, leaving you with nothing. In all fairness, there is a number next to each item, so you know how many you have left. This also applies to weapons. Yes, there are a set number of times you can use a weapon, then it is destroyed. This is made even worse by the fact that you can only take 4 items into battle with you in any given battle.

Four items? You might ask. Yes, 4 items can be taken and used in battle, that's it. Keep in mind that this is including you weapons too. So if you have 3 characters in your party, 3 of those 4 items will be weapons for each of your characters. The last will usually end up being a healing item of some sort. This is by far one of the dumbest things I have ever seen in a game, period. Why on earth can I only take 4 items into battle? Talk about forced difficulty. So, this system pretty much makes the majority of your items completely useless, and not even worth getting in the first place.

Not that the items would have a long time to live in your inventory of 15 items. Since you can only carry 15 items, you will constantly be looking for the next thing you can throw out so that you can continue your quest.

I could go on and on about the gameplay faults of Riviera. I could take about the fact that you can't use items on others in your party, how walking around towns with the point and click interface is a huge pain, or how you have to perform button combinations to open some treasure chests, or how you can lose percentages of your max HP by missing a timed button pressing event, but I need to talk about other things here, so yeah, the gameplay of Riviera really hurts it.

Graphics 9/10

I must say, this is one fine looking GBA game. Quite possibly the best I have ever seen. All of the characters, enemies, and environments are all extremely colorful, and have a decent amount of detail. The art work is wonderful. Atlus did a fine job on this one, even going as far as giving every single enemy their own character portrait for launching their Rage attacks in battle. The backgrounds look simple, but they have a lot of small detail, which GBA players are not used to seeing.

The only issue I had with the graphics were the somewhat choppy animations that went with some of the spells. Some of the more advanced spells look great, yet some of the lower level spells seem choppy and not finished.

Story 7/10

The story is another strong point for Riviera. Riviera's story is not like other RPGs. It is thrown in your face from minute 1 of the game, and you will keep getting little pieces of information pretty much on every screen about what is going on, or some kind of back story. I don't see why the story can't be told more in a town though. The little story bits seem to break up the action too much, almost to the point of forgetting what you were looking for after the battle and story elements are over.

However, the content of the story is interesting, and always seems to have a ring of urgency as you cut through hordes of demons.


Replay value 4/10

The game will last you about 20-30 hours if you can endure the terrible battle system this game has to offer. There is not too much incentive to play the game over again, since the limiting factors on exploring and the annoying battles will more than likely deter you from playing again. Giving you 5 characters to choose from may give you some incentive to try again, but I didn't find that the characters made much of a difference.

Sounds and music 8/10

The music in this game is top notch. Right up there with the GBA Castlevania games as some of the best that the GBA has to offer. However, I found the sounds to be too soft, and it was hard to hear it completely. I'm not sure if it was the game or not, but I have never had sound issues with any other GBA game before, so I'm guessing it was the game.


I'm not really sure what niche market Atlus was trying to hit with this game, but it fails on many levels, and I have no idea why this game gets the review scores that it has received. It's an extremely overrated game which I would not recommend to anyone but people that like pretty GBA graphics.

My review score 6/10

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 11/26/07, Updated 10/16/08

Game Release: Riviera: The Promised Land (US, 06/28/05)