Riviera: The Promised Land

"Riviera: And Old-School RPG with innovation flavour."

Introduction

Riviera: The Promised Land (Riviera: TPL from now on) is basically an RPG, that has been released about a year ago in Japan and now hit American shores with Atlus. A classic Old-School RPG with a little anime taste that has proven to be very good, many have rated the Japanese version and now I´ll go with the American one, let´s see if i can make it a bit more complete.

Game play

If you think that by saying that this is an old-school RPG I´ll define this, you are wrong my friends! This game it´s an interesting combination of classic and complex new features that give this one an unique new flavour. Let´s explain this a bit better, when i´m talking about old-school RPGs the first thing that comes to my head are turn based battles, swords and something called Final Fantasy, so it´s something like that. Battles are turn based, levels doesn't exist any more (just like FF2) and you gain stats by some items or events in teh map or learning new techniques with your Weapons. Let´s get in this first, each character has a mastery level in certain Weapons, Lv1, Lv2 and Lv3, and with the uses un battle of certain Weapons you can learn techniques, called Overdrives, from the Lv of mastery your character had (For example, Fia will learn Lv3 Overdrives with Rapiers). Overdrives are learned with battle uses, as i said before, each weapon needs a certain amount of uses to learn an overdrive, after they learn it they will earn some stats, a % of Hp, 1 point of Vit and some more depending on the Overdrive. Again, Overdrives have certain levels, 1, 2 and 3 that indicates it´s power and how much of the overdrive bar it´ll consume, the ultimate level it´s only available for the Diviners and it´s call Execution (Exl) and it shatters the Overdrive bar but are extremely powerful. The Overdrive bar it´s filled by hitting the enemy or being hitted, easy right?

Let´s go on, exploration. This game makes exploration based on a "select and go/look" system. It works with triggers in two modes, the move one, where you select where you want to go; and the Look one, in this one you explore the map trying to find items, open chests , and more things. There are two type of actions in this Look mode, the ones with the white triggers and teh ones with the red triggers, the only real difference between them it´s that the first ones don´t consume Tp while the red ones do. Tp are acquired by battling, after each battle you will be given a rank, depending in your performance, by this rank you will get a certain amount of Tp.

So, what i´m missing, oh right the item system, I personally hate it because it works just like any other item system, but your inventory it´s incredibly small, you´ll be throwing things away many times, and that won´t result very funny...

Story

I´ll try not to spoil much, really I won't spoil anything, it´s a classic Angels against demons kind of story, but the roles happen to not be very well defined as you could imagine, maybe the ones that must bo good, are worse that the "enemy", the games present the great story of a Wingless angel that is trying to protect the ones he was trying to destroy form the ones that create him. Pretty cool, eh? Sure the story it´s one of the pillars af this game, somehow predictable in some areas but with good twist and the classic White/Black of the games of the old time. Enjoy that know we will be able to understand it even if we don't know Japanese (Like me, I know less Japanese than an African squirrel). By the way the story has some things of anime so you will provably see more than one "innocent" insinuation...

Graphics/Sound

Anime based illustration looks really cool and the in-game sprites look good too, sometimes a bit like FFTA, but better for me, full of color and expression, you will just read your character expressions out of the art and understand them so much better than reading only.

The sound it´s not that awesome, but it has somethings that must be highlighted, The characters have recorded voices that sound great in both versions, and Overdrive names are Shouted in battle by the characters and sound pretty cool, and I have to say something... It seems that Fia learned Italian in a Chinese driving school, you will see why... funny fact.. but well, the sound is good but not great, voices are great.

It can be said that this game uses the GBA capacity to a very high point, it just looks and sounds great.

Play Time/Replayability

The game it´s not very lond and not very short, it just has got the perfect RPG size. I depends mostly of you, good RPG gamers should finish it between 10-20 hours, but the less avid ones should take more... It wont last a life but you wont get bored for a time.

This game has a incredibly big number of Extras that you can get in one play, but i'm sure you will need at least two, and you won´t get bored. The game has many ending with the girls the will need you to play it al least five times, so good luck!

Final Recommendation

This game it´s great if you are an RPG fan, if you are an old-school one, it´ll be just perfect, but for the casual gamer it might be a bit too complex. After all it´s a good and highly recommended in every part of it. Not perfect (Stupid item system...), but a future classic of the GBA RPGs. Buy or rent? Buy, if you happen to see a copy of it...

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 07/20/05