"A must have title for anybody that likes RPG's."

Intro
Yeah, welcome to the review. As you know this is for Riviera: The Promised Land. Basically I'll be scoring the game based on these categories: story, audio, graphics, game play and re-playability.

Story - 9/10
Basically this story is typical RPG fanfare. It's a big epic story that takes you across the world. The main character, Ein, is one of the Grim Angles. Now, the Grim Angles are just a group of people who do what the gods tell them. Then there is the big turning point and his objectives change. This leads him to meet a bunch of new people. There are also 5 different endings that you get depending on how you form your relationship with your party. I can't go into much more depth with out spoiling the story so I'll just move on.

Audio - 7.5/10
While the sounds and music in this game were good they were nothing that amazed me. There is a fairly good musical score. The music gives you a good epic sense. But the sound effects were a little lacking as there was only one sound for a hit, one for a miss and one for a guard. The real thing is that this is one of the few GBA games with voice acting, while there isn't much of it is is done fairly well and you can hear it clearly.

Graphics - 8/10
This game looks good if a little cartoony, which is to be expected though on the GBA. All of the backgrounds are hand drawn and look very good and clean. However, you do see some repeats of the backgrounds. All the character sprites and what little animation there was looked very good. The cut scenes use an anime style drawing to tell the story. The menus were clean and easy to use and find your way around they also look very good.

Game Play - 9.5/10
Now we come to the most important aspect of the game. Although the story is typical of most RPG's the game is vastly different and very unique. Bear with me as I try to explain it. Fist of all there is no over world, well there is but you do not travel around it so much as you are just taken to where you need to be. You move by choosing which direction you want to go, North, East, South or West these directions correspond to a direction on the D-Pad, North is up, South is down and so on. You need only one button press to move to the next room. When you press A that takes you into Look Mode, this allows you to examine your surroundings and open chests and what not. However, each action that you do in look mode takes 1 TP (Turn Point), which you gain in battles. Now about the battles, in the battles you choose to take in 3 characters. You set them up in a formation that is either two people on the front row and 1 in the back or two in the back and one in the front. With the three characters you choose to take in you also must choose four weapons to take in. Each weapon has a preset number of times it can be used. Once you use it up, thats it and it shatters and is no longer usable. The weapons properties and the character that uses them determine which enemy you attack. As you deal damage and take damage you fill up a bar at the top of the screen called the overdrive bar. There are three levels to the bar. As you fill it up characters can start using special attacks, which use up varying amounts of your Overdrive Bar . First though to gain the speical attack ability you must use the weapon or item for a certain amount of uses. Depending on how you do in a battle you are awarded TP which as mentioned before can be used to open chests and what not. You are graded on your time and how you finished the battle. The rankings go in order of S, A, B, C and D. When you use a weapon enough to get the special attack you also level up. If you keep you levels until later in the game you get better level ups, of course the down side to this is that it makes the beginning harder. There is also a practice mode where you can fight any enemy that you have already defeated but it doesn't take weapon uses and you can still gain spiecal attacks and level up in practice. Also, there are no random battles, but you must do every one you come across, if you lose a battle you have the choice to go right back into that battle and you gain a more full Overdrive bar and your enemy's also lose some of their HP. If you keep losing your enemy's lose more HP and at the start of the battle you get more Overdrive points. I found this very nice as you no longer got stuck in battles trying to find the perfect way to beat it. There is also a relationship system in the game, depending on which character likes Ein the most there will be a different ending. A characters performance in battle will also be slightly affected by how they feel in relation to Ein. The puzzles although they are very few they are difficult and take a while to figure out. Sometimes when you try to open chests they are trapped and you then must play a mini-game in order to not take damage from the trap. The mini-games range from tapping a button a certain amount of times or entering a sequence of buttons, some times you must enter the buttons at a certain time, there is also one where you must stop the arrow on the white bar. At fist these mini-games are difficult but later they get a little bit easier. To conclude this game has some very innovative game play and is very fun to get into.

Re-playability - 9/10
There is some extra content to unlock and an extra dungeon. As mentioned before there are 5 different endings that you can get. The game lasts for about 25 hours or so.

Conclusion
Rent or buy? This game, if you can find it, buy it for sure. You will not be disappointed. This isn't the most advanced or stat-heavy RPG but it is very different from anything you've seen before. Everything is done so well and there is a great story to tie it all together. By all means go out and pick this one up.
FINAL SCORE - 9/10

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 07/06/05