Summon Night: Swordcraft Story

"A well-crafted dungeon crawler"

Swordcraft Story was a spin-off of the Summon Night series, a quite popular franchise in Japan but otherwise unknown to the other side of the world; at least until Atlus decided to publish this game in 2006, or three years after its original release. All the Summon Night titles are RPG by nature and shared a similar atmosphere, character design, and some other elements, despite each sub-series having their own gameplay engine and battle system (sort of like Sega's Shining series)

This game is a dungeon-crawler RPG at heart, emphasizing on repeated process of dungeon exploration (called ‘Labyrinth' in the game) and take place mostly on a hub area (the port town Wystern) where you take a break from all the dungeon crawling to advance the story and fortify your character for the upcoming exploration. You're playing as a Craftknight (blacksmith who protect the town by using the weapon they forged themselves) who participated in the tournament to decide the next Craftlord, which is basically an upgraded and more prestigious Craftknight. Beside trying to win the tournament, you're gonna have to endure some other obstacles and prevent the sinister scheme that can cause a disaster.

Gameplay

Weapon forging is the primary element of Swordcraft Story's gameplay. Before you can forge any weapon, you need to acquire the recipe which detailed just what kind and how much amount of material ore that you're gonna need. That ore can be found in the Labyrinth, which (surprise!) is also loaded with monsters. After you've gathered the necessary material, it's time to head back to the workshop and craft a weapon of your choice; either a sword, an axe, a spear, a knuckles, or a drill. When your weapon's ready, you can then bring it to battles.

The battle system is an action-oriented affair that takes place in a horizontal 2D plane, most similar to the one found in Tales series. You can dash to the other side of the screen, jump, block, and summon a Guardian Beast to perform special moves. Three weapons can be brought into battle, and you can switch them on the go to adapt with the situation. Watch out though, each weapon has certain durability and using it too much in a single battle will break it. Break all equipped weapons, and you're left with your ol' trusty hammer-which is great for breaking crates and boulders for materials, but not so useful in battles. Winning battles will earn experience points and money, as usual, and for every level-up, you can distribute points as you see fit between three of your character's statistics: strength, defense, and speed.

The gameplay time set up is divided into days, in a scenario-like manner. The norm is for you to have a story event at first, then crawl through the dungeon until you hit a certain level, go back to craft your weapon, and have a boss battle (tournament fight) At the end of the day, you're also presented with the options to spend the evening with one of the supporting characters, which affected certain aspects in the storyline. After that, it's a whole new day (scenario) where you'll have to repeat the same stuff. Yes, it does become repetitive after a while.

However, even though I do wished for more variety in the game, the repetitiveness in Swordcraft Story doesn't mean it's boring and annoying. The battles are a lot of fun, thanks to the mostly responsive controls and smooth set-up, and the encounter rate in dungeon is set just right; not too much to make you want to tear your hair in frustration, but not too seldom to make you wander around just looking for the random battles to occur. Challenge is there in some of the boss fights, as well. Best of all, using the weapons you forged yourself really gives a strong sense of accomplishment and fulfillment. The balance between five types of weapon is perfectly set too; you're not going to just spam your strongest available weapon, since every weapon type has its certain advantages that can serve you in variety of situations.

Swordcraft Story's gameplay might only has one trick up its sleeve, but it's the master at it; much better that way, rather than being a jack-of-all-trades that doesn't excel in anything.

Storyline

The main character is a male/female Craftknight who aspire to follow in the footsteps of his late father, who used to be a great and respected Craftlord. In order to do so, he/she must win a tournament between young Craftknights, relying on his/her weapon-crafting skill and the same Guardian Beast (creatures from the other realm that assist Craftknight/lord in battles) that used to accompany the father of our hero. The cast of supporting characters includes a cheeky mother, a mentor who's in love with the hero's mother, a couple of ultra-competitive rivals, an enthusiastic tomboy, and many others. Okay, so the plot's hardly original, the characters are cliched, and the wacky Japanese sense of humor might leave you scratching your head in wonder; but I still think that the story is one of the strongest point in Swordcraft Story.

See, even though the characters were made from a stereotypical mould, the sheer qualitative amount of character interaction and development managed to overshadow it. Translation is superb (as is the norm with Atlus's published titles), while wandering around and speaking with the townspeople really get you into the feel of a community that is really obsessed with the art of weapon crafting. In the end, the likable (not always believable though) characters and atmospheric setting make up for the game's mediocre plot.

The best thing about the storyline presentation though, is the implementation of branching options. You get to choose which gender your main character is, which one of the four Guardian Beasts that gonna be your partner, and which conversational options you're going to use; picking different choices will result in a significantly different set of dialogues or even story events. You should really appreciate this kind of work, as most other games didn't really bother beyond giving the player a ‘yes/no' response option that hardly matters. The story does get more involving these way, and it extends the replay value a great deal.

Graphic & Sound

Swordcraft Story is one of the prettier titles for the Game Boy Advance, with the main highlight being the character art design. They're all drawn nicely (very anime-ish as well) and should appeal to everyone, except for the most rabid anime hater. There's a blandness factor in the dungeon design though, as every floor looks identical (this would become really apparent when you reach level twenty and beyond); and some monsters are palette-swapped version of each other, although the basic designs are very decent.

The atmosphere in the game is enhanced by the music, which did its job nicely without having to overexert the hardware capabilities. There should be more in terms of quantity, however, as the scores that you'll hear most of the time (the Wystern, dungeon, and battle themes) will get pretty stale after a long while. On the other hand, sound effects really shine in battles; I really get a kick from hearing sounds such as clashing weapons, crackling fire spell, or the crisp sound of the character's thunder gauntlet as it connects with the enemy.

Replay Value

Okay, so some people wouldn't like the idea of repeating the same process all over again, but Banpresto has did a fine job in peppering the game with some addictive elements. You could burn through the game in around 15-20 hours; a respectable length by itself, and can be further extended by doing additional challenges, like scaling the Labyrinth's until the deepest 100th level (not as tiresome as it sounds, believe me) and engage in a time trial gauntlet matches against your fellow Craftknight/lords (finish quick enough, and you'll earn elusive reward) You can also track down all the weapon recipes by doing some side-quests, while the balanced and genuinely fun weapon system will ensure that you're gonna have a fun long while in experimenting with the many diverse kinds of weapon.

All those branching dialogue and story events also give a credible source of motivation for multiple playthroughs. Playing through the game again with another combination of the protagonist and Guardian Beast, along with picking the different conversational option, will yield a fresh experience in terms of watching the story unfolds. If you want to see everything in the story, then you'll have to repeat playing the game several times.

Recap

The Good Points:

(+) The weapon crafting system is both rewarding and fun
(+) Smooth and dynamic battle system
(+) Branching dialogue and story options
(+) Great character art

The Bad Points:

(-) ‘Rinse, lather, and repeat' style of gameplay
(-) Dungeon crawling can be a bit tedious (mostly because of the bland dungeon design)

Conclusion

Some people criticized Swordcraft Story for its repetitiveness, but I feel that most others can overlook the fact in favor of the atmospheric story, addictive weapon system, and plenty of replay materials. It's a good international start for the Summon Night franchise, let's hope that more well-crafted games like this will be released in English.

Summon Night: Swordcraft Story should appeal to dungeon crawler fans, anime fans, or anyone who doesn't mind the trade-off of variety for some quality fun.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 08/31/09

Game Release: Summon Night: Swordcraft Story (US, 07/26/06)