Boktai: The Sun Is in Your Hand

"Boktai, an interesting game..."

This is my first review, so bear with me…

Introduction:
When I first heard of Boktai: The Sun is in Your Hand, it intrigued me to buy it because of the nice looking graphics and interesting idea of a sun sensor. So I picked it up, and I wasn’t disappointed.

Story 6/10
The story was slightly disappointing. It didn’t really give enough info at the beginning of the game what was happening and what had happened, but you pick it up as you play the game. The world was being eaten away by the Immortals, and your father was the last vampire slayer on earth, that’s about all you get at the beginning of the game.

Gameplay 9/10
To sum it up: This game was extremely fun to play.
Most of the boss fights were relatively easy, but it really matters what level of play you are playing at. The “dungeons” were long, and if you set it on certain levels of play such as easy, normal1, normal2, hard, vary from stupidly easy to mind bendingly hard because of the many tricky puzzles. Walking around in the game is easy, nice easy controls for everything. You can also inch your way along walls, and then knock on the wall, to grab the attention of ghouls, mummies and golems in the area. The solar gun, your only weapon has many modes. You can change the frame, the part that controls what type of shot your solar gun fires, the lens, the part that says WHAT it fires (Solar, Lunar, Earth, Fire, ect...), Grenade, lobs a type of projectile into the air, and battery, the part that shows how much power your gun can hold. Sounds complicated, but it isn’t really. Also your solar gun has to recharge every once in a while, how you do that depends on the sunlight hitting the Solar Sensor. This brings me to the next section, the Solar Sensor. The Solar Sensor in a nutshell is a tiny black square in a protruding part of the game cartridge that takes in sunlight and transfers it to the game. The more sunlight that hits the Solar Sensor, the faster your solar gun recharges, puddles dry up and sometimes how aggressive the enemies are. So if you live in a dark cloudy area or can only play at night, I wouldn’t buy this game, because it would be hard to recharge your solar gun often. The game also has multiplayer options, but I haven’t been able to do them.

Graphics 8/10
The graphics for this game are well done. You can tell enemies from bushes, and treasure chests from rocks, though once or twice I couldn’t find a ramp or staircase because it blended into the ground. The character sprites look nice and the bosses look creepy. One of my only complaints is, when that the solar gun fires spread shots, the pixels stand out. That might have been done on purpose but I don’t know. I also really like the dungeon intro screens; there is a lot of detail in them.

Music/Sound Effects 10/10
The music in this game fits incredibly well. In the Volcanic area, there is fiery music, in the ice area there is icy music. Every type of music has a large dose of creepiness in it at the very roots. The sound effects are nice, splashing in puddles sounds like splashing in puddles, and knocking on the walls sounds like knocking on the walls to name a few.
Replay Value 10/10
I don’t usually replay games very much, but I had to replay this. There are loans of hidden items, solar gun frames, and mini-dungeons. Plus you can try to beat the game in every mode.

Total Score: 9
This game is overall worth buying, a nice blend of many types of gaming.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 10/14/03