"Breaks with tradition, but is unique and still entertaining"

Riviera was once a very peaceful land, but it has now become the central battlefield of the war between the angels from Asgard and the demons, which used to be from Utgard, just like years ago in the battle of Ragnarok. And the only ones who can stop this war are the same ones that stopped it years ago, but in this game you will only have one of the famous Grim Angels, but he will be accompanied by four girls that seem to like him and a cat, which only the angel can understand. Riviera: The Promised Land is an RPG made exclusively for the GameBoy Advance and it is very original in its way, since I personally haven't played another game with this exact format of gameplay. This game is mostly worth because of the story since the gameplay tends to get boring and super-repetitive, but I liked it and maybe you will like it too.

This is, if it is to be classified as a genre video game, then it is an RPG with a turn-based battle system, just like Final Fantasy, but not really like final fantasy since Riviera, the whole game is totally based on turns, unlike Final Fantasy in which you get to move around when you are not fighting. You basically have a party, just like Final Fantasy and other games also, and you go around the world fighting and defeating demons in the world of Riviera. During this journey you also get a lot of weapons along the way, you also have to level up your characters and gain item s as well, just like a lot of other RPGs out there. In this game you can make a lot of choices in which depending which one you chose, the end will be different, not to the degree of Fable, but the end does change depending on your decisions. And also if you happen to like reading then in this game, in every single screen, the characters will say something unlike you already went passed through that screen, but that rarely ever happens. And also in most of the conversations in the game you also get to make decisions, they are not always that important but you do get to make decisions, but sometimes they affect the outcome of the current level you are within, and some of those will affect the end of the game.

The gameplay is quite interesting and unique, it does have a lot of elements from other traditional RPGs, but it is different from them. In this game, you can't really go around walking everywhere you want, like in most usual RPGS, but in orders to advance or to check on something, buttons appear in the screen and if you press the corresponding button then the character will realize the action that corresponds to the button you just pressed, I don't really like this system, it makes it boring and slow, but you'll get used to it and won't miss the other system after some time playing it. During the combat sequence, it is the traditional combat system of all the turn-based games, you pick one of the available attacks and then you watch as your characters realizes it waiting to see if you do enough damage to your opponent in order to kill it. You also have a party of five members, but you can only choose three of them to fight and one of them MUST be the boy, and you have to choose only four of all the items you have to use within that battle, you can have up to 15 items, but you can only use four of them in a battle. You can also choose which of you characters go in front and which go in the back, and if there are two in front and one in the back or backwards, two in the back and one in the front. Also the stats are the following: strength, magic, defense, vitality and I think that there are others, but each character has a different one, the HP(Hit Points) or your life also differs from character to character. Also like in Pokemon the enemies have strengths and weaknesses against certain elements of attack, like fire and others included. And the weapons and attacks you wield and use also differ in strength and range of attack and depending on which character uses the weapon, and just like Fire Emblem, the weapons also have a limited number of uses and when you finish those number of uses then the weapon breaks. Some of the weapons can be used infinitely but those are extremely rare.

Like in real life, you can only chose between one girl, well real life should be like that but we men are sometimes happy it isn't like that, but in this game it is like that, and of the four girls you have to favor one of them, and there are decision in which you can only please one of the girls and displease the other three, and depending on the times you pleased each girls the game will turn out differently during and at the end of your adventure. And if you make the correct decisions then you can get to see cut scenes that you wouldn't otherwise be able to see, so chose all of the decisions correctly.

In most of the RPGs, an important aspect is leveling up but in this game that aspect is somewhat unique and is different from the rest of the other RPGs, the traditional ones. You like in most of the traditional games of this type you usually level up and gain higher stats by battling opponents and gaining experience from them and from the experience that you get then your character would level up, but in this game it is different, instead of gaining experience in battle in order to level up your stats you must masters different weapons throughout the game. It work like this, when one of your characters uses one weapon a certain number of times predetermined by the game, which depending on which character uses which weapon it can vary from two to ten times, so when you master that weapon with the character, that character will gain two things for every weapon that is mastered. The first one is that the characters stats will come up, in other words it will get a level up, but in this game you really don't have levels, but it has the same effect, and the second thing that you get from mastering a weapon is that the character that mastered it, at the end of the battle he or she will learn a new technique with that weapon. Now when I began using this system, I thought that it would be hard to get my characters to level up and become strong because the weapons have a certain number of available uses, and after you use them that amount of times the weapon then breaks just like in Fire Emblem, and also that sometimes in order to master a weapon you needed to use it about eight times but you only had five uses for that weapon before it broke, but it seems that the creators of the game thought about it and made a solution for it. You see by entering from the menu in a practice battle you could have a practice battle, of course and you would be able to fight against one of the previous enemies that you fought before. Now the difference is that the weapons only decrease their number of uses when you use them in real battle, but in the practice battles, you are only practicing so your weapons' number of uses don't decrease at all and therefore you are able to master the weapons even before wasting one of the uses that the weapon has. So you can level up easily with this practice battles without worrying about the endurance of your weapons.

Now I now that the leveling up system of this game is very different from the traditional role-playing games, it is not that much different also since you also have to battle opponents to raise your stats and it also take a lot of time to gain the stats since later in the game you not always find new weapons if you now what I mean. So instead of being able to train for 78 hours straight leveling up your characters before you go into the next level you just have to go looking for a new weapon but the problem is finding it since mastering the weapons don't take long, so actually your characters don't really have to level up in the game but you are going to do it anyways because if you don't then the bosses of each chapter will beat you up bad, so like in traditional RPGs, you have to go out and train your characters and in this game mastering weapons is the only way to do it.

There are also other things that differ this game from the other RPGs, you know the traditional ones, and it's the item system. That is the number of items you can carry and also the way you can use them, well first of all you should know that you can only carry at the most 15 items at the same time, yes only fifteen and you are five characters, and you'll come to a point in which all your weapons will be very useful but gaining abother useful weapon will make you have to throw away one of those great items. And also you can only use four of your items in one battle and only three characters can fight at the same time and the guy HAS to fight. Also the battles almost all the same and there are no sidequests in the way that there has traditionally been. And once you complete an area you can go through it again, but despite all of that it's a good game overall.

The graphics of the game are better than most of the other GBA games that I have played, one of the best I must say, and just like in Golden Sun the attacks of the characters are very exaggeratedly animated and the whole screen is covered from the attack, not as much as Golden Sun's but it hangs in there. One thing that is bad though, the fact that the background are very repetitive but they are also good.

The sound of the game is also quite good, not awesome but I must say I wasn't disappointed with it, considering that this is a GBA game the number of voice acting, which is not really but whatever, is quite big since the characters do speak quite some amount. The music is good also I can't complain so that means that it wasn't created one day to another.

Even though it may not seem at first but this game will require some 30 hours of gameplay, just like the tradition RPG, that is unless you are extremely good or are using cheats but at least 25 hours to a better than average guy. You may want to replay it to see the other endings but I didn't since rent it and didn't have the time but I would have done it if I had bought it. This game is for the RPG fans, I guarantee all fanboys will like it, but some just fans like me may not like it for its break with tradition but it is still quite a good game. So, all in all this game is worth buying, even tough I rented it, but if you don't want to buy it then just rent it, since it is definitely worth playing it and giving it a try.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 08/03/05