Boktai: The Sun Is in Your Hand

"Bright idea that shines, with only a few dul moments"

Honestly I never heard of this game, I wasn't anticipating it and knew nothing about it until I heard from a friend of mine who's a manager at my local EB (He usually gives good referrals on new tiles).
He explained it to be a game by Konami about vampire hunting, were the sun is your weapon, and you really had to use real life sunlight to play the game. I didn't find this reason enough to buy the game but I did find this concept interesting and figured it was made by Konami (metal gear and castlevania) so how bad can it be?
I admit I am a huge 8/16 bit Nintendo fan, I loved games like Crystalis, zelda, link, simon's quest, metal gear and snakes revenge. Honestly I found this to be the most wonderful meld of all of these types of titles.

Game Play:
I found the game play to be refreshing from (what I consider) average mediocre game play. I like the feel, it was very remnicent(sp) of some classic 8/16 bit titles. The view is done from a top down 3/4 perspective, similar to LOZ, but more like Crystalis. You have your solar gun that you can upgrade and interchange parts for different features and attributes. The only flaw of this game comes in the same form as it's selling point (the solar panel). Without the sun (or full moon) your solar gun is pretty much useless, and that could be a problem to those that want to play this game during those not so early times, or those time you may not have direct exposure to the sun.
8 of 10

Story:
Nothing spectacular from your average ''vampire takes over world'' story line, there were one or two really nice plot twists. Without spoilers the best I can say is good overall, not the greatest video game story ever written.
7.5 of 10

Graphics:
For The GBA I found the graphics to be pretty top notch (again huge fan of the 16 bit drawn animations). decent use of coloring ect. my only complaint was I found some areas (one or two of the under grounds and caves) to be really dark and under-detailed but aside from that no complaints in this department.
8 of 10

Audio:
The Use of Voice was excellent considering the limitations of the system, this IMO gave it some heavy marks in this category I found the music overall catchy, but on the flip side I found one or two of the songs are weren't important enough to pay enough attention to and didn't really care for.
9 of 10

Controls:
Overall I felt they were ok, I have a couple gripes about some times trying to face an enemy and shooting with certain weapons from distances or the angles bats, and those invisible guys with the spikes attack from, and found that a lot of the times you couldn't hit them/avoid them. This wasn't a major problem but did become a little annoying at times during game play. Also I know it's not necessarily a ''control'' thing but I guess this is the closest category to put it: sometimes you'd have to direct your solar sensor at an angle to get sunlight and the angle is awkward for you to get light for you to see, or were your unable to see the screen from that angle.
6 of 10



Fun factor
In a word................. yes!!!! (If you like the afore mentioned games)
9 of 10

Re-playability
Honestly I haven't re-played it yet, but I know it has multiple endings, a game plus mode, a hard mode, things to trade with others, a ton of hidden items and a ranking system. All of those things IMO add up to a slew of re-playability.
of 10

Overall
Overall I feel Botkai is a solid game, with a solid story with a whole lot to do. I personally felt that it was one of the better GBA games that I have played in a long while. If your an action adventure game fan from the 8 & 16 bit era like me I would say run to your local game store and buy this game, if not I would still highly recommend that when you get a chance you should check this game out.
8 of 10

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 10/14/03