Faselei!

"Quite an innovative game for NGPC"

INTRODUCTION:
Faselei is a strategy RPG. It's more of a war type game and less of a Japanese style game, with realism taking precedence over cuteness and charm. The story is really well done, involving a middle eastern war scenario, and the characters are interesting and have personalities. It is an excellent combination of politics and intrigue. It is a mech based game where you control one mech on a battlefield and have a computer controlled partner. You can battle friends in link play, redo missions as many times as you want, or just forge on to advance the story. This game was a European release only, but is of course fully importable, as it is in English.

GRAPHICS:
This game has some of the best graphics I've seen on the NGPC. The character portraits are beautiful and the still pictures are, too. The battlefields aren't the best, but are very clear and done in realistic colors.

CONTROL:
This games utilizes a new system called TIPS (Tactical Intelligent Programming System). This is a difficult system to explain. You use action chips that you program into your CPU, which is upgradable to hold more chips as you advance. Chips are used to move forward and backward, turn right and left, slide and turn about, and charge. They are also used to fire weapons you equip on your mech, and of course you can equip more weapons with better upgrades. Chips also can be used to set and disarm explosives and some other such functions, but I didn't use them much for that. You enter a string of commands, anticipating the enemies string of commands, enter the selections, and watch it play out, and then enter another string the next round. The system really works well and is a lot of fun. It's the best system next to the Shining Force battle system, which means it's great.

SOUND:
Good for a handheld, rather atmospheric, not in the usual sense though, war atmospheric. Sound effects are good. Overall great, but obviously not done by an orchestra or anything.

FUN FACTOR:
This game is very much fun. If you are a patient gamer, you will love this game, though it probably will not convert action only fans, for a strategy type game it is amazingly fun. I don't even like war games, yet I love this one. And if you like guns at all, you'll like this game, lots of guns, shoulder mounting and all that. I know nothing about guns, so I had to check the manual to see what a beam or a gattling was the whole time, but it was fun!

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 10/30/03