Boktai: The Sun Is in Your Hand

"Classic gaming goodness with strings attached."

Boktai review

Boktai, the overhead isometric action/adventure game by the creator of such other classics as Metal Gear Solid and Snatcher, is an interesting game with a ton of potential. Rarely have I been so torn by a game before (I'm usually very hot or cold). I loved Boktai, but I hated it too. I was really looking forward to this game from the time I saw it at E3, although it was far from over hyped. In many ways it came through for me. It has that nostalgic, classic 16-bit gaming feel to it, reminding me of many other great games from the early 90's like Landstalker (Genesis) and Equinox (SNES). But in many ways it is lacking, which makes me wonder if the oft labeled 'genius' Kojima really knows anything about what makes a game good or fun and what makes it annoying (Metal Gear Solid 2 didn't help).

Story - You play Solar Boy, a mysterious child (and descendant of the historic Vampire Hunter), who is the last remaining hope against a world that has been overrun with the undead. At the beginning of the game you meet your companion, Otenko, who is a sun spirit, or messenger of the sun. He aids you throughout most of the game with dialog, hints, instructions, and other acts. Thats about all you start with, story wise, other than that you hear some mention of a maiden named Moon Beauty, who needs rescue from the evil Immortals. Other characters include your nemesis, Sabata, who is very important to the story, and the Earthly Maiden, keeper of the solar tree, who is never given much back story. As you go through the game the story develops decently, with some twists and turns about who you really are and what your relationship to the situation is. Its nothing amazing, but it is interesting.

Gameplay - Boktai is split into an overworld, undead stages, and the main castle stages, with a few variations thrown in between.
The overworld is enemy free, and separated into very short areas that vary surprisingly in environments, from desert to snowy tundra to rivers and forests. I guess the idea is that you are really traveling much further than is actually represented, but it is kind of strange to walk from a desert area right into a snowy area. The overworld's main purpose is to link together the game world, so mostly you will be just walking through it. A warp system opens up as you progress through the game to get you from one overworld area to the next with great speed, but it left me confused. It seemed to only take me to places I didn't want to go, and I could never figure out how to control it or why it did what it did, so I ended up walking everywhere most of the time.
The undead stages are like mini stages that interrupt your progress through the overworld. These stages are large puzzles inhabited with enemies, obstacles, and traps. They have varying environments too, like a lava filled mountain or an icy cavern. In most of them you have to just explore until you find the correct way through to reach the end, which contains a final trap. This is a room that locks you inside, and gives you a goal, like defeat all the enemies or get through without being caught, etc, and once you defeat it, you have unlocked that stage. From then on you can warp through the stage to get to the other side without having to fight your way past again.
The castles are the meat of the game. This is where the main bosses reside. These stages are quite original in their flow, and can be broken down into four main parts. The first is similar to a grand undead stage, where enemies, traps, and obstacles block your progress through to the boss's chamber. The second is a usually exciting boss fight with the undead master in whatever form they are. After you defeat the boss, you reach the third and coolest part. The defeated boss retreats to his/her coffin, and now you have to drag the boss character back through the stage to the entrance area, where Otenko summoned the Piledriver. The Piledriver is a large sun focusing mechanism in the ground that holds the coffin in place and destroys it with sunlight. The fourth and last, part had you battling the boss in a new form, where it is attacking you, fighting off the light from the Piledriver. Your goal is to keep the Piledriver running in optimal form long enough to destroy the boss. Whew. Yeah, these stages are quite long and rewarding to defeat, and definitely the highlight of the game. Each castle is based on a particular theme, usually something elemental. There is even some non-linear variation thrown in later, like deciding what location to summon the Piledriver in, which can alter your tasks in getting the boss's coffin to it's final destination.
A few extra locations not falling into the above categories are in the game as well, like the Sol City, a city in the clouds, and some bonus locations like the Azure Sky Tower, which is a long and challenging bonus stage that can extend the length of the game considerably and reward the player with stronger items for upgraded abilities.
Gun del Sol in Spanish means the Gun of the Sun (not to be confused with a son of a gun... it definitely sounds better in Spanish), and it is your primary weapon throughout the game. You can find parts to upgrade this gun with different forms of energy, different attack styles, different grenades (it has a grenade launcher), and other things as well. There are quite a variation of ways to use this gun, and experimentation is rewarded. Many items are in the game that do all kinds of things from healing to warping to shrinking. Most of these items you will never use unless you go out of your way to.
The sun gauge sensor is the big gimmick behind the game. It is a great idea, but Konami, next time, make your gimmicks work. I'll try and explain. Boktai has a real time 24 hour clock and a sun sensor that can (supposedly) detect UV rays. The game changes depending on the conditions you are playing in. The 24 hour clock affects the setting of the game, whether you are playing in daylight, evening, or nighttime conditions. At night the enemies are more difficult and some of the stages properties physically change. The graphics change accordingly to make it look like the appropriate time as well. The sun gauge affects whether or not you have access to the energy of the sun for your gun. You charge the Gun del Sol by holding it up in the sunlight, and if you use up its energy on an indoor stage and cant find a way to get outside or a window that is letting sun in, you will be very defenseless. Too much sun can be a problem too, but this never happened to me. Now, I live in Southern California, on the beach. I would go in my yard at high noon, without a cloud in the sky, and try to play this game. The sun was baring down on me, burning my skin, blinding my eyes from the reflection in the screen, and the most I could ever get it to register was 5 out of 8 blocks of sun. And that was when I was contorting my neck and hands to hold the GBA in just the right position. More typically, it would be 4 or less blocks. Trying to play in the afternoon when the Sun was still very much present would drive me nuts, because I would often lose my sun meter altogether. SoCal! If I had trouble here, imagine some poor soul up in Washington State or the North East during winter trying to get any sun at all. The game offered some other less exciting options for sunlight, like items that would charge up your gun, and machines and banks that would store or lend you energy when you needed it, but these just detracted from what they originally were attempting, almost like they were admitting it didn't work. And the sun gauge is the only option for using the Piledriver... you had to have sunlight to beat that stage of the boss fights. I mean, it is a cool idea, and it was fun when it was kind of working, to drag this vampire out into the sun and watch him fry, but it was very frustrating throughout due to the poor implementation of the sun sensor, and likely will cause many players to quit playing the game in disgust. Its a good thing that you can save anywhere at any time, so if you get frustrated you can put the game down without losing progress.
The game is not too hard on normal, but it can be challengine in spots. It also has multiple skill levels you can play. I didn't try the harder ones.

Enemy AI - In the style of Metal Gear, all enemies go through various states, from wandering, to alerted, to attacking, to unconscious or stunned. The enemies in general have very annoying attack patterns. Zombies for example, instead of attacking you like you would imagine a zombie attacking, release a substance called klorofolun that just floats around and runs into you, sticking to you. Later on they throw things at you. Many of the other enemies have attacks that are equally illogical and annoying. It seemed to me like a quick hack, a simplification the designers took to get around programming decent AI. However there are impressive things as well. The enemies often fight with each other if you can lure them into doing it, which I loved doing. You also can play games with their heads. You have the ability to sneak around, hugging walls and rapping on them to lure unsuspecting enemies into a trap or into helping you get past a trap. This was really fun. The bosses are generally very creative, distinct, and enjoyable to fight. They all have certain weaknesses which can be used, if found, to make the battle easier, and they vary greatly in fighting styles and circumstances.

The controls are fine. The only thing worth mentioning about them is the use of the digital pad. You have a 8 direction range of movement, left, right, up and down, and the diagonals in between. Unfortunately, some areas of the game are very sensitive to this. On the ice, for example, the direction you start in is the the one you go until you run into an obstacle. You try to go diagonal, but the pad senses you pressing straight left for a fraction of a second before diagonal left, and you screw everything up. On thin platforms this is a problem too, and leads to much frustration falling due to the pad not sensing your true wishes and making you walk for a split second in the wrong direction right into the void. Fortunately these deaths, like all deaths actually, allow you to continue endlessly from a reasonably recent location.

The graphics in Boktai are wonderful. They have a very unique look to them, both stylistically and color wise. This cartridge is loaded with beautiful artwork, from characters to environments. Animations are fluid and detailed. There are slight sorting glitches here and there do to the diagonal top down view point, but most won't notice them.

The audio is fantastic as well. The music is perfectly scored and really compliments the undead atmosphere, although it relies on FM synth (that classic GameBoy music sound) a little too much instead of using more digital sampling, like the better sounding soundtrack to Golden Sun used. The sound effects are clear, crisp, and tasteful. The game has a lot of voice in it, which is some of the best I've heard in a Gameboy Advanced game yet.

Some various other gripes. Later on in the game some of the puzzles get pretty difficult. One in particular is a real doozy, and the room comes with a switch in it called the 'loser switch'. It asks you if you want to pull it. I did to see what it would do, and it called me a loser and solved the puzzle for me. This really pissed me off, as the instructions don't mention this at all, and I really wanted to solve the puzzle myself, so I had to reload after not saving for a while. Symbols have some big part in the game, but I could never figure out exactly how they worked. From the transporter system mentioned above to the secret tower and the boss fights, you seemed to unlock these symbols, but good luck figuring out the significance. This is the same case with the Solar Tree, an idea that they just seemed to let die. The Solar Tree is a tree who's significance is never really explained, although you imagine it being some important source of light to the world, or some tool to fend off the undead. At the beginning of the game, it is dieing, and one of you jobs is to help revitalize it. But in the end, you never really see what this tree does for you, other than offer you a way to combine items you will never use into more powerful items that you will never use.

So, there, if you think you have a tolerance for the problems I've described, and you like these isometric adventure games, then I recommend Boktai. I'm glad I played it and know I will remember it more fondly as time goes on. It took me about 15 hours to finish, and offers some nice new play modes after you beat it if you want to get more out of it (not to mention I didn't finish the long bonus tower). I hear they are doing a sequel now, and I'm not sure if I'm looking forward to it. If they fix some of these problems, namely the solar sensor, then hell yes. If not, then... I don't know, maybe. Like many classic games, the longer its been since I played it, the less it pisses me off and the more nostaligic I get for it. Give me 10 years, and maybe my review for Boktai will jump up 2 or 3 points.

On a 1 to 10 scale:
Graphics = 8.5
Sound = 9
Music = 7.5
Gameplay = 5
Controls = 6
Overall = 6.5

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 02/22/04