Kien

"Do you expect a lot from this game?"

Nowadays most of the successful rpg games come from Japan. This game doesn't follow that "tradition", and was made in Italy, as far as I could tell, so... what quality are you expecting from this product?

Personally I didn't have a good experience with this game, but some different details found around here are a good addition normally not found in this genre. It kinda reminded me of "Ghouls 'N Ghosts", but in a more rpg-ish way.

Before starting your adventure you will instantly get in touch with the story of the game, presented to you in some black static text screens, with some images appearing between each of those. Basically, some ancient evil has been kept away from the world by the 7 masters of the absolute, but it has now reborn and those masters are no longer present. Therefore, it's up to their two apprentices (a warrior called Kjan and a priestess called Elendel) to stop this evil... Well, it may not be the most original story around, but at least it does the work.

Then, you will get to pick your character: Kjan is a warrior, and his skills rely mainly on his strength and on the power of his sword, but you can also play as the priestess Elendel, who has lower attack power but can use her magic to strike from far away.

You could be expecting their gameplay experience to be quite different, but since Elendel's magic can even be stopped easily with a simple shield by your enemies, the experience will be almost the same. Also, there are objects that you can retrieve (like new weapons, new spells or more defense) but those are only usable for a limited time, and you will probably come across many of them while facing your adventure.

Striking your enemy is also a very boring task, since the number of enemies appear to be constantly renewed (well, new members appear a couple seconds later) as you defeat them, and they can even use their shields to defend from your attacks, making you have an harder time when it comes to kill them.

On the main menu you will also be able to find a "Password" option. Yes, this is is one of those games in which you will have to write down your passwords to keep on playing later, and the strange thing is... as you finish the first level (which turns out being a tutorial one), there is yet no options to retrieve your password, making you lose a lot of your adventure if you have to stop playing for a while or the battery dies.

About the levels, you can expect them to be played like in "Ghouls 'N Ghosts", I mean, you will have to advance to the right while defeating enemies and interacting with the same objects that you will first hear of in the tutorial level. After defeating a certain amount of enemies you will gain a level up, and I can't manage to understand what's the point in that, since you appear not to gain any bonus except for an increased HP bar.

About the menus (which you won't see very often), they are somehow slow and hard to use.

Concerning the graphics, they are shiny but childish, with both our heroes and their enemies appearing to have been taken from a cartoon series. The static images to show us the story aren't very detailed, but they do the trick.

The sound is awful, personally I would say that it is glitched or something. It will hurt your ears, so be sure to turn it off as soon as possible.

Most people may not enjoy this game, but if you are wanting to play a different type of game, perhaps you should give this a try.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 07/07/05